The Simpsons Road Rage (2012 Review)

Platform reviewed – Playstation 2

Other platforms – Xbox, Gamecube, Game Boy Advance

Developer – Radical Entertainment

Publishers – Electronic Arts

Rating – 3+Genre – Racing

Release dates

PS2 – November 2001

Xbox – March 2002

Gamecube – May 2002

Ah, there’s nothing like some Simpson’s hilarity mixed in with hectic driving in a crazy bid to earn money as a taxi service, right? The wind in your hair (or lack of in Homer’s case) as you rip up the streets, picking up other Springfieldians and taking them to their destination on time; the overall goal? To earn as much cash as possible in the time limit.

Sound familiar? Well if you’ve played Sega’s Crazy Taxi it should. Radical Entertainment aimed to take this extremely popular arcade gameplay style and blend it with The Simpsons, creating a funny, easy-to-grasp game for all ages. In fact, the game was so much like Crazy Taxi that Radical Entertainment was actually sued by Sega for patent infringement. The case of ‘Sega of America, Inc. V. Fox Interactive, et al.’ was settled in private for an undisclosed amount. (For a related article about the case to find out a little more, go here.)

Now the plot is fairly simplistic due to the main feature of this game merely being a driving, taxi-based game, but is still something you would expect to see in an actual episode of The Simpsons. Charles Montgomery Burns with his money and power has bought all the transit systems in Springfield in a bid for control and on top of this has created a new form of transport; a radioactive bus.

The Burns Atomic Mega-bus is faster, cheaper and completely safe!

The safety of these busses though is left to be desired though as the bright green glow that surrounds it looks the complete opposite of safe.

Hearing how the busses are a threat to public health Homer gets the smart, yet crazy, idea to take to the streets and use his own car as a means of safer public transport. Others quickly follow him in this wacky idea though as together the residents must earn one million dollars altogether to be able to take back the transit system, effectively returning the town to normal and overthrowing Mr. Burns’ transit reign of terror..

All’s fare in love and war!

The greedy corporate stereotype won’t go down without a fight though and aims to slow you down throughout levels by bashing into you with ramming speed and depending on whether he hits you or not results in a funny line being spewed by the rich old man’s mouth.

Now in order to gather up the money the game takes you through six large levels, each jam-packed with memorable places such as the Simpsons’ household, the Kwik-e-Mart, the Nuclear Power Plant and even Springfield Gorge in which you can actually cross (hopefully more successfully than Homer’s attempt when on that skateboard). Though you only start off with Evergreen Terrace you can unlock more places to visit through gathering money and reaching certain milestones, allowing you to explore more places in Springfield and experience more challenges.

Now the main gameplay takes form in the Road Rage Mode, which is where the main storyline ties in. In this mode you are given a certain amount of time, depending on the difficulty you have selected, in which to find, pick-up and deliver passengers to their destinations. You receive money each second you have a passenger with you and receive a bonus in form of a tip depending on how long you took to get there.

A time bonus is also given out as well as the tip and is the key to staying on the level for long periods of time. Beware though of the additional time limit which starts when picking someone up; if that runs out then the passenger flees the vehicle, leaving you without a money or time bonus.

Other bonuses such as Safe Trip and Road Rage are given if you avoid traffic or destroy a certain amount of the destructible environment while driving. These can be hard to achieve though if you allow the many hurdles and hazards you are faced with to get the better of you. Other vehicles, transit busses, pitfalls, Mr.Burns and the occasional invisible wall (due to slightly poor design) are what you must look out for to enable a successful taxi run.

Gameplay featuring Homer escorting Jasper in the Crazy-Taxi-esque style.

Meet the Family!

Though you start off with Homer, Bart, Marge, Lisa and Grampa you have the ability to unlock twelve other characters such as Krusty the Clown, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and even Ned Flanders as the game progresses and the milestones mentioned previously have been hit. Classic vehicles such as Marge’s Canyonero, Bart’s space shuttle Soapbox Racer and Mr.Plow’s snow plough are some examples and offer a range of different handling and quotes from the series itself.

The invisible barriers that are left in the game, which links to the game’s graphics and poor design, can make the game a tiny bit annoying, though on the whole it does not affect the overall gameplay at all and is still possible to score extremely high scores. The learning curve and controls are easy enough to grasp and through the crazy mesh of cars and destroyed objects, which is nice to see still fallen and not instantly disappear.

Feeling in the need for speed?

Road Rage Mode is not the only mode there is to play through though, by all means no. There is in fact a number of other types of play modes to smash through; one of them being Sunday Drive. This pleasantly serene mode is one where you go around locations at your own pace, picking up customers with no time limit and effectively allowing you to explore at your own leisure. This mode is particularly useful when you just want to have a relaxing, stress-free play as well as being useful for finding shortcuts to help you in Road Rage Mode and gathering the strengths and weaknesses of certain characters driving styles and bulk.

The second mission for Mission Mode featuring Bart and the ever so irresponsible Homer.

Another single-player mode is Mission Mode which is a very fun 10 mission filled section. In this mode you take the role of different residents of Springfield who are playable in the other modes mentioned with the overall goal of clearing the mission objective. The price for completing them all is a secret and shall not be discussed, want to find out look elsewhere.

The final mode you can play on is Head-to-Head, and yes as you can guess by the name it is in fact a multiplayer mode. In this game play mode you and your opponent must drive around to pick up the same passenger and deliver them to their destination while aiming to reach a pre-determined amount of earnings.

Your rival can bump into you to steal your customer away and try to claim the fare, so beware. Overall thought this mode allows more hilarity and craziness (as well as more road rage) as you both tear up the streets to win. In my opinion all these modes make this game really great.

In terms of replay value there is some, though not much. It’s nice to drive around in Sunday Drive and Road Rage mode and try to get a high score, and it’s nice to go head-to-head with a friend, though once that one million dollar mark has been reached there is no longer anything to strive for apart from being top of the leader board. I know all good things must come to an end though and the use of the milestones as a means of unlocking new content is a nice touch.

The game has nice camera angles, only changing when going over a long jump or something similar though doesn’t impact on the gameplay and mainly keeps you in check as you weave in and out of traffic.

Got Road Rage?

The graphics are nothing amazing and state of the art but were not so terrible that watching the cut-scenes or playing the game was difficult or cringe-worthy. You can tell what is what when driving around and even though the trees, ground and water look fairly simplistic this suits the style in which the television show is done in, creating more of an element you are in The Simpsons world.

With nicely destructible environments you can crash into tree trunks, go through fences and smash through glass, but there is only one problem I have encounter a number of times, and that one sign could be easily rammed into and knocked down, while another is solid, causing you to have a head-on collision, wasting valuable time and money.

Another annoying element is already destroyed objects latching themselves onto you, or a pile up of objects and cars which block your road as the time limit is getting scarily close to ending, though this element is just part of the hectic gameplay style of the game. This next point though is an element which isn’t a hazard the developers intended to have in at all and is the fact of invisible walls. These annoying obstacles are usually found when investigating shortcuts or flying into areas during jumps which were not meant to be crossed causes you to flail about again wasting time and money.

(Video created and posted on Youtube by; damsoft1.)

On terms of sound the game features the original cast of voice actors for the characters proving both new dialogue and that of voice clips from the TV show. As well as this the much-loved humour is also present, and with both of these elements combined with the overall Simpsons-style of appearance the game gives off a nice, warm, familiar feel which I love.

The witty, classic jokes and quotes are used throughout and are trigged in numerous ways, causing a smile to appear on my face as I recall or try to remember what episodes they are linked to (back in the day I was a massive Simpsons fan). This linked with the gags and believable cut-scenes allows you to believe that this sort of thing could happen in the actual television show. The only problem with the quotes is the fact that over numerous play-throughs the dialogue will become somewhat repetitive, though in my opinion the humour is something which is hard to become annoying, and even after hearing the same line over and over I still cannot help but find it enjoyable.

Can you name the truck with four wheel drive, smells like a steak, and seats thirty five? Canyonero!

The music is nothing to write home about though, the music for the main menu is interesting though as it involves the classic Simpsons tune but given a new style and sound. I cannot quite name what style it is, but I like what I hear. For each of the levels the music isn’t one of the strong points, as the frantic gameplay as well as the voices sort of take over the music, though it isn’t boring or irritating to say the least, more cheery and the sort of music which would suit a quick-paced taxi-service game.

From what I can see online on CEX the price of this game, considering its age, is quite reasonable (for the PS2, the Gamcube price is sort of pushing it). The pricing on Amazon goes for quite a bit of money due to it not being in circulation for such a long time though on ebay it can go from around £5 upwards on Buy it Now.

In my opinion I feel this game was a good addition to the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox (there is a Game Boy Advance version, but that version is quite different then the home console) and deserves the platinum hits title it was bestowed with. With a piece of my late primary school childhood embedded within it I feel this game was good and playable then and still the same now. With alright but colourful graphics, funny, memorable quotes and humour with a dash of craziness this game is a must have for any Simpson fans collection. Not the best game in the world, but by no means the worst.

7 rupees out of 10

Spider-Man The Movie (2012 Review)

Platform reviewed – Playstation 2

Other platforms – Gamecube, Xbox, PC, Game Boy Advance

Developer – Treyarch, Digital Eclipse Software (GBA), LTI Gray Matter (Windows)

Publishers – Activision

Genre – Sports game

Rating – 7+

Release date – June 2002

This is how his story begins; good-hearted, yet solitary, Peter Parker is your average nerdy teenager trying to make his way through the bowels of a typical American high-school. Who would have thought that it would be he would be granted what so many of us would want, super-hero powers.

While on a school trip Peter was bitten by a genetically altered spider which escaped from captivity, it is the next morning that he discovers his perfect vision, muscular body and the mysterious, glue-like substance which adhered itself from his hands.

Using his new-found abilities in order to gain money to impress his love interest, Mary Jane, it takes the death of his beloved Uncle Ben to realise that “with great power comes great responsibility.” It’s these words which change Peter into the Amazing Spider-Man, a super-hero who fights for the justice and safety of New York from the many perils it is faced with.

Though all is not as easy as beating a few petty thugs and bank robbers, no. At an OsCorp lab a new nemesis is about to reveal himself and is just as fast, strong and agile as the web-slinger.

With great power, comes good game-playability!

Just hanging out; use a variety of different moves to surprise and hide from foes.

Now as you have guessed this game is based on the Marvel super-hero movie, Spider-Man, which was out just after the new millennia. Overall this game is a pretty good example of how to make a pretty good video game based off a movie with its decent gameplay, level design and horde of secrets.

The downside though is the limited game length of the main storyline, with it being able to be completed in a short amount of time with limited challenges to slow you down.

The enemies and bosses you will encounter are nothing spectacular, though combat in this game can be quite difficult and clunky with hordes of bad guys which can result in you taking quite a beating. This downside is saved though by the quite useful list of combo moves Spider-Man to execute against them, by pushing different buttons in different orders you can use new moves to make fights so much easier while also increasing your in-game combat score; the variety of moves you use causes this score to be extremely high giving you a nice overall combat score, moves that are used repetitively though decrease in value the more you use them usually, causing your overall score to be quite low.

Levels are split up into different styles and involve both indoor and outdoor levels. The game opens with an optional tutorial with hints and narration done by Bruce Campbell; here you learn how to use the powers and abilities Spider-Man has to offer such as how to hang down from ceilings, spin webs and overall just beat the webbing out of the bad guys as well as the basic game controls.

Metal Gear Spider!

Now the gameplay style is mixed between aerial acrobatics, combat and stealth to give the game a pleasant change now and then, the only downside is the fact that the controls as a whole can be quite annoying to deal with, especially on the indoor levels.

Now it may just be me due to how I use the analogue stick for movement, but the controls on foot feel quite sloppy. It’s not at all smooth and takes a while for it to register you want to change direction, sometimes causing you to go onto a wall and start to climb up it without you even wanting it to. This is nothing that would prevent the games completion though and on the whole is still extremely playable, it’s just a little annoyance which makes some of the levels a bit clunky, especially when it comes to fast moving stealth.

Just swing, swing along!
Take to the heights of New York as you web-swing from building to building!

When on stealth missions you must stay in the shadows which are on walls, ceilings and floors. Obviously the aim is to not let the enemy see you and if you pull that off then a stealth bonus is rewarded to you after the levels completion.

With the slightly bad controls and also the bad camera angles these not only affect these levels but also the combat. While the Lock-On function is pretty good at countering the bad camera angles even this has its flaws as you are reduce to clunky jumping around dodging attacks, the lack of a decent dodge introduced in later Spider-Man games make normal combat against thugs not all that enjoyable.

Now previously I mentioned aerial acrobatics, and while this game claims to have it I don’t feel it’s up to scratch; sure it’s playable, but the movements of swinging are so dull, simplistic and boring. You press the swing button and that’s it, you’re off, you can then change direction as well as go up and down using the directional buttons and can speed up by holding down the swing button (but at a cost of easy manoeuvrability).

In some outside areas though, usually when very high up above some of the tallest buildings, it looks like the web hasn’t actually stuck to anything. Sometimes it looks like there is no way it could have attached itself to anything; this is corrected though in the games sequel as the web attaches itself to the building and can lend a hand in swinging in different directions as well as with the speed.

That possibly would not have worked in this game though as you are limited to how far down you can go, once you pass a certain point you fall to your death, failing the level you are on. As well as this you are also bound by the confines of the level parameters in the distance, as if you try to swing out of them you will be automatically bought back into the level’s area of play. In saying how the swinging mode in the sequel would not work in this game it may have worked if utilised correctly and may even have made the aerial chase scenes that much more acrobatic and enjoyable and faster.

Now as you could possibly guess from the way I have described the levels you may have gathered that this game is not free roaming. This game goes level by level through different areas so it does not give you the option to explore New York at your leisure, this choice of gameplay is a reason why the game has limited game length and by adding a free roaming function in it could have made the game that little bit longer.

Though the game is not all bad camera angles and so-called aerial acrobatics, no; the boss battles in this game are fun yet tough incertain situations. They offer challenges and different styles of combat which will require you to get to grips with aerial, ground combat or a mix of both.

Ruffle some of Vulture’s feathers as you take to the skies to fight him along side a variety of different Spider-Man baddies.

The main storyline events may be short, but the other special features present in the game helps keep the game as a whole relatively long. The special mode and gallery are two other features which will offer a few extra hours of gameplay. With the gallery featuring a movie viewer as well as production art you unlock there is replay value in finding hidden secrets.

Shhhh! It’s a secret!

As mentioned before there is a load of combo moves Spider-Man can learn, but just how do you get them in the first place? Well the answer is that you must locate hidden golden spider icons around the various levels, some are easy to find, while others are more difficult. Taking the time to find these extra moves will definitely benefit you in the long run.

These are not the only thing to look out for though, secret areas in some levels are also available and while they do not necessary unlock any specifically they do cause you to gain a nice bonus upon the levels completion.

Multiple times have I mentioned bonus scores that you receive at the end of levels and apart from showing just how well you finished the level they also have another use, unlocking awesome features in the special menu. Now this menu contains the credits, the many training sessions to help you get to grips with both basic and advanced combat and overall control settings, a level warp to previous levels, a cheat section and a secret store.

The main thing you should focus on is the secret store though as the points you aquire at the end of each level adds up as bonus points and can be used to unlock content such as a special Pinhead Bowling training session, secret movies and the ability to play as different skins for Spider-Man such as Peter Parker and Alex Ross‘ original design for Spider-Man (which will also allow you to fight Alex Ross’ early design of what the Green Goblin was going to look like too).

Depending on if you get enough of these bonus points you may even unlock a whole new way to play (which I won’t spoil); this mode increases the games replay value as even though the levels and what you have to accomplish stays the same the actual plotline has been altered with new controls and abilities to master.

The graphics are not too terrible though nothing extremely beautiful and picture perfect, all in all has pretty good content with enemies and allies looking like what they are supposed to, though the different type of thugs usually do look the same with very little variation and colour changes. The combat actions and fighting styles are varied and pretty well animated both for Spider-Man and the bosses, though for the random thugs the overall graphics and animation is pretty basic. The jumping, crawling and other basic movements of Spider-Man are all well done which makes the annoying controls a little bit more bearable.

Take part in chase scenes which require both precision and speed to catch up to the fleeing villain.

The graphics for non-CGI cutscenes, unlike the standard main cutscenes which are viewable in the games gallery, look exactly like the in-game graphics; they are not very smooth and the faces look quite flat. On the plus side though there is some lip moving which fits in slightly with the voices, so the synchronisation of the two are pretty good, but like most of the game nothing spectacular.

The music used is fitting for the environments and creates, in some parts, a super-hero sense of accomplishment and greatness, especially in the earlier levels when Spider-Man is just starting out in his wrestling outfit (the link showing the movie not the game, if it had those kind of graphics then… wow).

The rest of the sound is pretty good as it creates the right atmosphere for the variety of levels; for sewer levels the music is vastly different then when you are soaring through the air being attacked by a load of robots. Some of the music is in fact reused though from time to time though it’s nothing too bad or noticeable.

Defoe VS Maguire

The voice acting though is the main part of this game; it’s good to see both Tobey Maguire and Willem Defoe provide the voices for Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. While these are the only voices which are similar to the movie the voice acting from Defoe is extremely good in my opinion, he captured the Green Goblin using his voice just as well as he did from acting as him in the films. What he says and the way he says them just makes his fight scenes really enjoyable to play; Maguire on the other hand has okayish voice, though just not as good as Defoe; sure his voice sounds exactly as it does in the movie and everything (obviously) but something is just off.

The price for this game is extremely cheap both on the High Street and online from places such as CEX, Amazon and ebay; though the game is not all that special it is worth a play especially if you enjoyed the Spider-Man film; the price for it is worth it for that purpose.

While the game is not that great visually and has quite bad controls and camera design overall it’s a good game, just nothing special. The upside though is the replayability when you unlock enough bonus points as well as a handy feature to select a difficulty for the game, causing you to unlock different bonuses after each difficulty is cleared. With standard graphics, okay music and sound as well as an alright combat system this game is an alright buy.

7 rupees out of 10