The Simpsons: Road Rage Review (PS2)
It's a Crazy Taxy clone set in Springfield, and it's pretty ok!
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Publisher: EA
Release Date: PS2; 30th November 2001 (EU), 19th November 2001 (NA) Xbox; 22 March 2002 (EU), 1st December 2001 (NA) GameCube; 17th May 2002 (EU) 19th December 2001 (NA) GBA; 27th June 2003 (EU), 3rd July 2003 (NA)
Platforms: PS2, Xbox, GameCube, GameBoy Advance.
The Simpsons have had a fun history in video games. From a stellar arcade outing to dubious NES releases, the late 90’s-early 2000’s saw the famous family start to copy other video games. There was The Simpsons Wrestling, arguably an arcadier version of the WWE games of the time which was fine? A bit stiff with a lot of problems and Smithers that was a total ass to go against. There was a Tony Hawk’s clone with Simpsons Skateboarding which was rather broken. Later on they would clone GTA with Simpsons Hit and Run, perhaps the best Simpsons game next to 2007’s self titled adventure. And here, today, we see The Simpsons cloning Crazy Taxy, Sega’s arcade and Dreamcast hit racing game that sees you racing around as numerous taxi drivers racing against the clock to attain as many fares as you can across a linear map. And it’s the same with Road Rage.
The plot of the game sees Mr. Burns replacing buses and taxis across Springfield with nuclear powered buses. Of course Mayor Quimby allows it because money, but the denizens of Springfield are none too happy with it, what with the dangerous amounts of radiation the buses emit. So Springfield takes matters into its own hands and starts its own rival taxi service much to Mr. Burns’ chagrin. The plot is very much condensed and to the point in the opening cutscene with Bart remarking “Yeah, yeah, we got the point. Can we get to the game already?” And Homer races off out of the house and into his car to pick up his first fare. It doesn’t dilly dally, it knows what it’s doing and just gets right to it. Great!
You have 17 playable characters in total— though Homer is available a second time as Mr. Plow, give you three guesses what his taxi is— with Bart, Homer, Lisa, Marge and Grandpa Abe as your starting characters.
Road Rage is the main game mode and if you’ve played Crazy Taxi before then you already know how it goes. You race around picking up fares and the amount of money you earn depends on how well you do. If you’re nice and quick on a single fare you get $1000 bonus, too slow you only get a measly percentage or they bail. Some fares will have special objectives for you to complete for a pay bonus such as driving safely and avoiding everything or smash everything you possibly can. Completing fares adds a little more time back on the timer. You can also increase the amount of time you have left by smashing Burns’ bus shelters adding on an extra 2 seconds. Completing a level you can earn up to at most $15,000+ and at the end of your run you get a rating for how well you did depending on how much you earned. You unlock your first reward at $1000 earned then successively at $10,000, $30,000, $50,000, $75,000, $100,000, $125k, $150k, $200k, $250k, $300k, and then every $100k until you reach $1,000,000. At each reward you can unlock either a new character or a new area to drive around in, of which there are 6 areas to choose; Evergreen Terrace, Entertainment District, Springfield Dam, Nuclear Power Plant, Downtown, and Springfield Mountains.
There’s also a Sunday Drive mode where you can drive around freely without any time limit though you don’t earn any fares for it. It’s just a playground to piss around in, get familiar with the map and whichever character you’re using because each character does feel rather different. No one races quite the same as the other. For example Bart’s Honor Roller seems to have a bad habit of driving stiffly, crashing into stuff too easily, and flinging around uncontrollably while Snake’s Lil’ Bandit might be one of the quickest and easiest to handle vehicles in the game.
And of course there’s a mission mode! There’s 10 missions with specific objectives to complete. For the most part it is incredibly easy and you can fly through it all within an hour or so. The last three missions can be a bit tricky however. Not The Trees you play as Lisa in the Electaurus through the mountains and you have to smash up 24 piles of logs, because logging is bad for the environment. This is tricky because through the map’s winding roads you have to hit a very specific path to get them all and you have to be very, very quick because the timing is very tight. Krusty’s Escape is another tightly timed mission where you have to smash 15 street signs directing people to Krusty’s home. For the most part it follows a pretty simple trail but somewhere along the way the trail goes cold and somehow diverts all the way over there making pathfinding a little confusing. And then there’s the final mission, Burns’ Arena. As Homer you invade Burns’ back garden and you have to smash up 20 of his prized statues all the while being bombarded by Smithers. What makes this mission so difficult is the atrocious overhead camera it throws at you out of nowhere messing up how you control. Numerous times I kept misjudging the distance between the car and the statue completely driving by them. Fortunately you can change the camera! Hitting select you can go into first person mode and just like that I instantly completed it without problems. What a hassle. Completing mission mode rewards you with The Car Built For Homer however, so that’s nice!
So as a Crazy Taxi clone, it’s actually pretty decent and a lot of fun. Mission mode is sort of superfluous but a nice objective based mode to go through. Nothing too fantastic but your time isn’t wasted doing it and it does introduce you to new characters and maps. The gameplay soon becomes quite addictive in Road Rage mode, especially when you manage to learn there’s a particular pattern to driving around and catching fares. I found that racing around as Snake in the Entertainment District earns me an easy $10,000-$12,000 or so and learning each character you pick up always tends to go to the same locations, so you can pick out an easy point to point route knowing “ok this character goes to the donut shop, there’s someone right outside there who wants to go to the box factory and right outside there someone wants to go to Moe’s” and so on. The later levels earn you more money on fares but navigating around is much trickier, so I feel grinding to get the rest of the characters and maps the Entertainment District is the best bet next to Downtown.
As I mentioned earlier each character and their vehicle does drive differently so that adds for great variety and reason to try and play as different characters. Some are quicker and more fluid to drive as while others can be a little stiffer and rougher. If you want a trickier difficulty. But for the most part it does feel great racing around as various Simpsons characters throughout Springfield.
The look and sound of the game is easily one of the best aspects though. Springfield looks lovingly created and each level feels right from the show. Evergreen Terrace, Entertainment District and Downtown are the busiest places but with great detail to its surroundings. The Mountains, Nuclear Power Plant and the Dam feel the weaker ones however as they feel a bit sparse and the Dam is especially difficult to navigate around, especially in trying to catch a fare quick enough. There are also some that want to go from the bottom of the map and back up to the observatory above but what makes this tricky is there’s a jump at the foot of the dam that you can’t get back up to without missing it and crashing below. Or there is a method to get back up and I just haven’t discovered it yet. Either way that’s frustrating to get around.
As for the sound the music is composed by Christopher Tyng (composer for Futurama no less!) and is very appropriate for the game, but the thing that shines the most is you have the Simpson’s cast doing their voices. Because how can you not? That would be like a Nickelodeon game where they don’t use any of the voice casts for the characters—ohh, right… But there are so many witty lines between your playable character and the characters you pick up. I was shocked to hear how many variations of lines there are and I still haven’t discovered all of them but each one is of the show down to a tee. The dialogue was written by Tim Long and show writer Matt Selman, so that’s as authentic as you can possibly get to the Simpson’s voices. One surprising thing I noticed is a lot of voice lines in this were later reused for Hit and Run.
Road Rage looks like The Simpsons, it sounds like The Simpsons, it’s authentic to the show, and it plays like a very fair Crazy Taxi clone. It’s harmless. Well, not exactly harmless because Sega sued Fox, EA and Radical for patent infringement that got quietly settled in private so, ha… But it’s an ok game! The gameplay can be addicting sucking you into it for a good couple of hours for an afternoon of easy fun. It’s simple to get right into it. It’s funny thanks to the cast and the writing, it doesn’t have an overly complicated or overbearing plot, it’s very direct and wastes no time. If for whatever reason you’ve never played Crazy Taxi this is a good close second to it and if you have played Crazy Taxi then there’s no harm in giving this a try either. Same thing just with an appropriate Simpsons satire skin over it. It’s worth a play!
Where to Purhcase:
Ebay: £4- £70 (Why???)/ $14-$4,0000 (WHY?????)
Amazon: £1.40-£60/ $35-$98
CeX: £8-£18