The “Simpsons: Hit & Run” is “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” but for children whose parents did not want them playing “GTA: San Andreas.” Considered a cult classic among those who believe the PlayStation 2 to be the end-all-be-all game system, the game in no way deserves this.
I only bought and played the game because I saw Jerma985 live-stream and beat the whole game in one sitting and I wanted to recreate this. In short, I failed and lost my sanity and basic communication skills to function as a well-adjusted human being.
The game is split into seven “chapters” where you play as one of the beloved characters from the Simpsons: Homer (twice), Bart (twice), Lisa, Marge and Apu. The game does get points for the fact that they do have the original voice actors for the characters however they only have a few voice lines while driving as reactions to crashing into stuff and completing goals.
This gets old fast. Thank the good lord above and the developers for giving us the options to mute the voices. Even with the original voice actors I believe the writers had never seen the show since Bart’s line is “eat my shorts,” so imagine my reaction when I hear Bart run over an old lady and say, “eat *EXPLICIT*.” That is not his line.
For this being the “family friendly GTA,” I was surprised to see that I could run people over. The downside is you do fill up a hit and run meter (name title in play here) that would send the cops after me. This felt novel at the beginning of the game but became the bane of my existence in the later missions where you are required to drive on the sidewalks.
You also could get out of cars and kick people filling this meter. I did find it fun kicking Milhouse off a cliff and watch him quantum fold his way back up the ledge. The hit and run sequence does have banger music that makes up for how blood thirsty the cops are.
Little insert here, but the game does have some quality music that fits the missions and characters. It drowns out the cries of the NPC’s cries of pain.
The overall structure of the game does have an issue with the variety of mission styles granted the game was probably not designed to be played in one sitting over the course of 11 hours but it suffers from this issue.
It is either follow target A, collect object B, drive to point A then to point B and outrun pursuer C. Rinse and repeat for all seven “chapters” and theme it to whoever the playable character is or what the location is. The last “chapter” is just the same mission repeated four times with a spooky Halloween theme.
I had to follow the same black sedan over two dozen times. Now when I see a sedan, I get the urge to run it off the road. This all follows a “plot”, but I use that word loosely because some missions are just fillers. Here is an abridged version of the “plot”: Aliens are using Earth for a reality TV show and are using soda to mind control the people into doing what they want.
The aliens plan to distribute laser guns at “free laser gun stands” to the humans to attack each other for the reality TV show. It took me two bottles of wine to fully understand how a black sedan fits into this plot. If you want to know how buy your own wine and play the game yourself.
For the gameplay, I have concluded you need near perfect human input to complete some of these missions, and even then, most aspects of why you fail are out of your control. If you are a purist, you would be playing this on the PS2, so there would be so much input lag between your controller and the game it would make the Mars rover look quick and responsive.
To add onto the lag the NPC cars in the game can be described as the driver of JFK’s car after he got shot. They speed up and merge right in front of you when you are in the left lane doing 80 MPH through the downtown district. They are in the wrong not me. This game is so silly that it makes me want to merge into traffic without looking.
The point that made me break and stop playing at 1:00 a.m. was this section in Apu’s chapter when he had to collect trash under a time limit. I failed many times but once I collected it all then found out I had to outrun a black Sedan I was done, it broke me. I turned off the game and have not played it since.
The “Simpsons Hit & Run” is a game I will look at and say it was ok just to gaslight myself into not remembering the trauma it has put me through. This game sent me down a spiral that tossed me into playing Genshin Impact and I will never forgive Bart Simpson for doing this to me.
If you want to feel true pain and laugh while slowly dying, I recommend playing this game but make sure to download it on your computer and do not go out and buy the physical game.
