The Simpsons: Hit & Run Review

Everything around you looks impressively good, the most noticeable things and even the smaller, not-as-noticed things! Houses look fine, and even scaled well compared to the character avatars. Trees look very nice as well as all the other natural aspects of your environment. Stores, gas stations, restaurants, and all other kinds of important buildings look just like they might in the show! Even such things as swingsets and bomb shelters in the backyard look impressively authentic! If you are in search of a Simpsons game that features one of the most impressive graphical presentations to date, H&R is most definitely what you’re looking for!

Finally, the last thing that you will see a lot of that is obviously the most integral part of the game is the game’s available vehicles!

Now this definitely isn’t your average run-of-the-mill game when it comes to what vehicles look like. You don’t have any licensed cars, nothing that would be seen in the real world. Now there are some vehicles that look like they could be real most definitely, but others are definitely “out of this world!”

You of course have Homer’s trademark pink car. But the more money you get and the more vehicles you unlock, the stranger and more advanced the vehicles will become! You will unlock anything from a brand new convertible to a space shuttle vehicle that is driven by Bart! That’s right, some vehicles are actually exclusive to certain characters, and it really only makes sense because of what some of the vehicles actually are. But as strange as some of the vehicles can get, they definitely look great, and this game is definitely very realistic when it comes to vehicle damage! You will see the smoke, you will see fire, and you will see explosions! Sure they aren’t the most realistic looking things in the gaming world, but they sure are fun to look at!

Overall, H&R features a very unique and impressive graphical presentation. The only thing one can really complain about is how bulgy the eyes can look in some of the characters. But considering the 3D conversion of the characters from their cel shaded origins on tv, it’s really nothing to get overly frustrated over. So with that minor quip, combined with everything else around you that looks great, it deserves a quality score!

With the license of the Simpsons, you just can’t go without what is needed most in this game! That’s right! Every character that you encounter or play in this game has a predetermined set of lines that he or she might typically say based on the television show. This is where the mild language of the ESRB rating comes in, because a couple of the characters actually do say some naughty words, but thankfully they don’t do much to ruin the overall experience of the game. Of course they could’ve been done without, but what do you expect with the Simpsons?

But obviously with the Simpsons come those one-liners that are meant to spice up the game’s comical atmosphere and bring that Simpsons feel to the game that fans of the television show get when they watch old or new episodes. Most of them are actually pretty funny and that’s hard to come by in this gaming generation. Whoever wrote the lines for the characters in this game had one heck of a tough job, and he/she/they performed beautifully. You really hear the personality of the Simpsons characters in their voices, and that is definitely a plus when it comes to this game. Now of course the one-liners to tend to get a little repetitive after awhile, but it’s not quite as fast as it might be with some other games. If you want a Simpsons game that has those trademark phrases and one that will make you laugh, H&R is most definitely for you.

As for the music in this game, it really wasn’t done too badly either. Although it didn’t seem to be as crucial to the game being a good one since so much of it was focused on the characters’ dialogue, it was still there, and definitely had a hand in making the experience what it was. A lot of the musical compositions are scores of techno and pop music, with some hints of rock here and there. Most of the music you hear happens during the game’s main missions, and especially when you’re at the peak of the mission time and the tempo of the music picks up a few notches.

The music will definitely bring you into the game and keep you interested in what’s going on, even if some of the scores are rather strange in some areas. Especially the area downtown by Moe’s Tavern, the music there is oddly mellow and delivers a sort of “melancholy” type mood, and that really doesn’t seem to fit considering how it normally is during the tv show. But nevertheless, most of the music in the game fits where it’s been placed, and that is a definite plus. The upbeat theme keeps the game fun and will help you to not get bored too quickly, even if a mission happens to be pestering you!