The Simpsons Road Rage (Gamecube) Review

Overview
The evil Mr Burns has decided to buy out the Springfield Transit Corporation and in the process converted all the buses to nuclear power and raised the prices of the fares.But the good people of Springfield have decided to take a stand by hiring out there services (no not that kind of wayI know what your thinking) by driving people to their preferred destination.Your aim is to get one million dollars to buy back the Transit Corporation and rid the nuclear powered buses and high prices to restore Springfield as it once was.

Graphics
Funnily enough the graphics have that cartoony feel about them. The instruction booklet says the game uses Toon Renderer technology to get the authentic look of the Simpsons. With only minor frame rate drop there are not real complains here. The 3D scene when you boot up is also pretty cool. Another downsider is that some of the landscape is blurry, nothing to hissyfit over though. The levels have been re-created to look just like Springfield from the church to the school to Moes tavern. It all looks quite spectacular.

Gameplay
The game is simple. Pick a character. Pick up passengers. Get to the destination in the quickest possible way and youre a winner. As soon as you pop in the game you a greeted with a 3D (remember that Simpsons episode where Homer is 3D) scene which pretty much explains the storyline to the game. I must say it looks pretty cool. Once that is done you will be shown a menu of selectable game modes ranging from Road Rage to Mission Mode. Here is a list as well as some info on all the modes:

Sunday Drive – Its pretty simple. You choose your character and level and start driving. There is no time limit to this mode so you can freely roam around picking up passengers and drop them off to their destination. You cant get any money in this mode so I would suggest you use this mode to get to know your way around levels and if you want to learn how the game plays.

Road Rage – This is the big daddy. Again you choose your character and level then off you go. Road Rage is the same idea as Sunday Drive except this time you get to earn huge amounts of $$$ (if you are good), adding to the one million dollars you need to earn. Also earning a certain amount of money allows you to unlock new levels and characters. I will talk about this later. There is also a rating depending on how much you earn. This ranges from $0 (a loser), to $15,000+ (a Madman). The people you pick up have a blue sorta warp zone looking thing around them that you must stop in to pick them up. There is also a map to the bottom left of your screen showing where you are and where the passenger wants to go (the place is indicated by a red dot on the map).

Mission Mode – There are 10 mission you have to complete ranging from sneaking Homer back to work after a ball game before Mr Burns catches him to taking your anger out on mascots. All missions have a certain time limit to them. Mission Mode is way too easy. I dont know why they would make it that easy. Even the last mission is way too easy. You could finish this mode in one sitting. You also get something special when you complete all the missions.

Head To Head – This is the multiplayer mode. SRR allows for 2 players to compete head to head until the target earning is earned. You can choose from either $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000. A good feature to this mode is that you are allowed to steal each others passengers.
Options – Your usual mode. You are able to set controls, game difficulty, sound settings. You are also able to view high score, the opening and closing movie as well as the game credit

The game is a pick up and play style game where A button is Accelerate, B and Y is used for hand brake, R button for horn, Analogue or D-pad for steering. You can also use the C-Stick as accelerate (push up on the stick) and brake/reverse (down on the stick). The problem is with the vehicles is that when you crash into something all they seem to do is bounce off the object with no real sense of crashing. The gameplay get repetitive after playing it a while. Picking up passengers and dropping them off over and over isnt the best of gameplay ideas. Buts its fun while it lasts. The only reason you will keep on playing it over and over is to unlock the new characters and levels. If the rewards system was in place you would only find your self playing this game for an hour or so, wait for the cover to smell of mothballs then get it back out again and repeat the process. You get the idea.

Lastability
Once you unlock everything, finish the missions, get sick of multiplayer, there isnt anything else to do except beat your high scores. It will entertain you for a little while though if you try to get the one million dollars and all the locked stuff unlocked.

Graphics 8.0

Gameplay 6.0

Sound 7.0

Tilt 6.0

Value 6.0