- Let's Play The Simpsons Road Rage Apu Full
- The Simpsons Road Rage Wii
- Let's Play The Simpsons Road Rage Apu Movie
There was a point in time(between 2001 to 2007) where the Simpsons began churning out a few games that were very unsubtle rip-offs/clones of other very successful and popular games at the time(like wrestling games, Tony Hawk, GTA, etc.) with mixed results to say the least, ranging from great, like Hit & Run and The Simpsons Game(2007), to outright abysmal like The Simpsons Skateboarding and Wrestling. The Simpsons Road Rage is very different on the other hand, it's easily the least subtle rip-off of the bunch. Is it a gem like Hit & Run, or a car crash like Wrestling? Let's find out
The Simpsons Road Rage
Platforms: PS2, Xbox, Gamecube
Developed by Radical Entertainment
Published by EA
This is my replay of The Simpsons Hit and Run. I did a walkthrough version of this project back in 2007 with bad video quality and no commentary. Dec 25, 2015 Sports Car - Christmas Apu - Nuclear Power Plant (The Simpsons Road Rage Gameplay Part 132) - Duration: 17:04. Simpsons Road Rage Gameplay 6,352 views.
Story
The story is, erm, underwhelming to say the least, though pretty par the course for Simpsons games. Mr. Burns buys out the Bus Transportation Systems in Springfield, and replaces the buses with ones that run on nuclear power. And this is obviously a threat to public health, so the Simpsons and a few other members of Springfield ban together to raise money($1 million) to buy it back from Burns. Of course, one has to wonder how $1 million is enough to change Burns' mind considering he's a billionaire. And to go along with that, the delivery isn't very interesting or funny enough to be invested in it, not to mention Burns' motivation for buying the transportation system is never explained.
Gameplay
If you're already aware of the game Crazy Taxi, then you already know what the game plays like. You drive around 6 different levels of Springfield picking up different locals an take them to the destinations in a certain amount of time, and the amount of money you receive from the passenger depending on how fast they get there. The more money you raise the more characters and locations you can unlock.
There are 6 locations of Springfield, consisting of the usual spots like Moe's, the Kwiki-Mart, or the Android Dungeon, to more obscure places fans will recognize like Springfield Gorge or The Box Factory, and the places characters are either places they normally visit or places they've visited in past episodes sometimes with a a quote related to that episode. There are also 17 playable characters to choose from(including 3 versions of Homer). There is also a Sunday Drive mode with is more or less a 'Practice Mode' which is mostly just for you to explore different locations, looking for shortcuts that can benefit you in the main game, there is also no time limit or money earned, so you don't have to worry about any penalties. Lastly there is a Mission Mode where you play missions with certain stipulations and finishing them all gets you a reward, The Car Built For Homer. There's also a multiplayer mode where you race against another player to get your passengers quicker.
Overall, the gameplay, while not awful, is not amazing and gets old quickly. The cars themselves drive very quickly and turn quickly, though perhaps to quickly, there are many moments where you take a corner to quick and lose your path and must recover often wasting time. There's also some very sketchy hitboxes between cars, items, and buildings, as there are many times where a small piece of debris can get you stuck and you must mess with your car or reset your position to get out of it, same with buildings, as hitting corners can also get you stuck. Raising money's not very difficult, as in each playthrough you can get a good $10000 if your quick enough, and it's not very difficult to master either. Thus the easy difficulty makes it very tedious. There's also the lackluster mission mode, no clever mission, with all of them consisting of you hit X amount of Y in Z amount of time. Only three levels really take advantage of the game's main gimmick. The mission's aren't very hard either, as you have enough time to complete them and there's usually an infinite amount of items to destroy, and whether you accomplish them depends on where you are if you're in a lucky place. The absolute worst mission is Lisa's mission, which consists of her destroying groups of tree's in a small amount of time, and unlike the other mission's there's a finite amount of logs to destroy as well as a fork in the road, with both roads containing a group of logs, and there just isn't enough time to get through the other fork and is near impossible to make. I swear no matter how I approached the level I could never find away to complete it in time. Then there's also the fact that if you lose/restart a mission enough times you can skip it completely and move on to the next one, and unlike The Simpsons Hit & Run, these DO count as a completed mission, thus making doing these missions a waste of time.
There's also the problem with the characters, they all feel the same. Some exceptions like Mr Plow, Plow King, and the Canyonero are mainly due to their size, and cars like the Hover Car, Apu's Sports Car, and the L'il Bandit due to being sports cars/high tech, but even then the differences are negligible, especially once you get going.
Visuals
As you can see, the game doesn't look very good. While not awful, the game could look better, character models look very strange and, at least for the year the game was released, it still could look better. The buildings also have very saturated colors, as a lot of them look a lot darker than their TV show counterparts. Also, why is the Simpsons house red? On the bright side, the vehicles look great, while some of them do have saturated colors, it's no where near as bad as the buildings, and they really benefit from a bit of cel-shading.
Audio/Music
The Simpsons usually relies on humor, dialogue and jokes for its main source of entertainment. Unfortunately very little bit of it is there, as 90% of the time they just throw out one-liners that get old and annoying quickly. There are some funny exchanges between certain characters(which happen rarely unfortunately), or towards the locations they're attending, but both of these are very rare and not really worth sitting through everything else. The music is really nothing special either, there is a nice jazz tune played during Sunday Drive, but otherwise the OST is pretty uninspired and forgettable.
Summary
+ A lot of playable characters
+ Easy to start
+ Some funny jokes here and there
+ Some decent fanservice and with lots of locations to see
- But gets dull very quick
- lackluster visuals
- Lots of annoying one-liners
- Little to no diversity between characters
- Weak multiplayer
- Weak Story
- Awful Mission mode
Overall, to reiterate, the game isn't awful, it's playable and can be fun in short bursts. But as I've repeated, it gets old very quickly, there's not enough diversity between the characters, and while the levels can be interesting, it can't carry the game. The mission mode is also a complete waste of time and the story just isn't interesting enough to care. I can really only recommend it to Simpsons fans who might enjoy some of the dialogue/jokes and the references, but even then it won't keep their attention for long.
The Simpsons had a reptuation for starring in a lot of below average licensed games before Road Rage. And I do mean a lot. The Simpsons Wrestling was bad, sure, but I wouldn't recommend looking up any of the NES or SNES era ventures, either. Radical Entertainment came along, and being a developer that always has their heart in the right place, put their best foot forward to bring us a good licensed game about the already-really-lengthy television series.
...And?
Well, it's a lot like Crazy Taxi. So much that SEGA got the tiniest bit mad at Radical for the game's similarities. That was silly though, and SEGA was silly. Road Rage has its own level design, quirks, and personality. Certainly enough to help it stand as a separate game, and one worth playing for a lot of reasons. It's fast, there are many distinct vehicles, the locations are inventive, and all the characters from The Simpsons make jokes during gameplay. Always.
About the Let's Play
Let's Play The Simpsons Road Rage Apu Full
We're going to be showing off all of the six driving locations in the game with six different vehicles, specifically chosen to give us the most variety possible and minimize any potential repetition. We'll also play through all of the levels in 'Mission Mode', and get to see the incredibly short, not-at-all-worth-the-immense-time-investment-required-to-unlock-it ending.
EclecticTastes posted:
The Springfield Dam, as it appears in this game, is almost certainly non-canon, as the actual dam in the series was never finished, nor would it have existed very long if it had been, as Cecil, Sideshow Bob's brother, had cheaped out on the building materials to make off with the money (also he tried to blow the dam up to hide his wrongdoing), before being caught by Bart and Lisa, as seen in the season eight classic, 'Brother From Another Series' (a reference to Cecil being voiced by David Hyde-Pierce, playing opposite Kelsey Grammar as Sideshow Bob, as they were also fictional siblings on Frasier).
EclecticTastes posted:
Professor Frink's car is definitely non-canon, but seems to be a reference to his hover-bike from 'Lemon of Troy', one of the essential season six episodes. Bart ignored it in favor of shoving his hand in wet cement to permanently vandalize some new sidewalk towards the start of the episode, and when he was later on the run from the villainous children of Shelbyville, Frink passed by on the bike, taunting him about his earlier apathy towards it.
EclecticTastes posted:
The biggest difference between Homer's car and Moe's is that Moe's car is insured for a surprisingly large amount of money. He hatched a plot with Homer in the season nine episode, 'Dumbbell Indemnity', to use it in an insurance fraud scam in order to use the money to pay for more extravagant dates with his girlfriend for the episode, Renee. Naturally, this backfires, and ultimately ends with Renee leaving Moe in disgust.
EclecticTastes posted:
Otto driving over a bunch of traffic cones is likely a reference to his attempt to get back his bus driver's license in season three's 'The Otto Show'. Additionally, since it was part of Reverend Lovejoy's entrance, I want to point out that Moe seems to be a fan of Little Women. He was first seen reading it to the homeless at the local shelter, explaining why his bar's always closed on Wednesdays as part of a cutaway gag in the season 5 episode, 'Homer Loves Flanders'. Long after this game was released, he'd later be seen hastily disposing of it in the season 20 episode, 'Eeny Meeny Maya Moe', in which he meets a woman (Maya) online, and only learns after meeting her in person that she's only three feet tall (why yes, this is another episode about Moe meeting a woman and falling in love, then ruining it with his own insecurities, turns out after the second straight decade of production, you gotta return to some old wells). Little Women shows up a couple other times in the series, so one can assume that somebody on the staff likes it.
By the way, Krusty's car is the only one besides Frink's that wasn't either explicitly featured in an existing Simpsons episode, or is the associated character's normal vehicle (Ned's station wagon is more often seen parked than being driven, but the color and general make of the car look show-accurate).
The Simpsons Road Rage Wii
EclecticTastes posted:
It wouldn't be surprising if the Honor Roller had a higher downhill speed coded in, given that it was originally a soapbox racer. It was designed and driven by Martin, originally (hence the dorky name), but was so fast he ended up in a cast, so Bart drove it for him, as seen in the season 3 episode, 'Saturdays of Thunder'.