Simpsons Hit & Run - Gamecube

I'm not sure why but for the most part video games based off of The Simpsons are pretty bad. Sure there's a couple that are okay, but overall they're not great. Maybe it's because most video games based off of TV shows/movies tend to be bad, but I was always kind of disappointed that there wasn't a really good Simpsons game.

About five or six years ago I picked up Simpsons Hit & Run for the PC and thought "This is the game I've been wanting!" It was funny, there was a ton of references sprinkled throughout, it had the voice actors doing all the lines, and it was a pretty fun little sand box game.

I would play it for a bit and then would forget about it. Then a year or so later I would remember how much fun I had playing it and would start it up again. I would get to about the third level and then find some other game that interested me more and start playing it. I never managed to make it past the third level.

Well one day I was sitting around and thought "I should see if I can get Simpsons Hit & Run on some console I have." What would you know, Amazon had it for Gamecube for $4. Done.

I have to admit, I was pretty excited about playing Simpsons Hit & Run, and really it was everything I remember. There were actually some pretty funny lines, I did laugh out loud at one point. There are tons of hidden little references throughout the game, like head into the Kwik-E-Mart and you'll see Frostillicus in the freezer. There's a lot of little in jokes if you pay attention. I was having a pretty good time, I finally made it to the third level and realized that I had only played a bit of it, from here on it was going to be new to me.

After the third level Simpsons Hit & Run morphed into some sort of horrid beast from the dark depths of hell. I went from describing the game as fun to "possibly the most frustrating game I have ever played." That's no lie, I honestly cannot remember a game that so thoroughly frustrated me. There were times I'm pretty sure I was just yelling a string of expletives at my TV.

Up to level three it wasn't that difficult. There were timed missions but nothing to hard. After level three it seemed like EVERY mission was timed, also you never got enough time. The game worked on the idea that you needed EXACTLY 47 seconds to do a mission, so they would give you 45 seconds. Hey you have a spare 2 seconds, what are you complaining about! As long as you don't crash, slow down, or do anything that may eat up your precious 2 seconds you're fine. Also when I say you needed 45 seconds that's only if you know all of the shortcuts. If you don't you're going to need about 60 seconds... better know those shortcuts! I'm not kidding. There were missions that I did in a fast car, didn't crash, took all of the shortcuts, and overall drove incredibly well... and still ran out of time. This wasn't an occasional problem, this was on about 90% of the missions after level three. I would say on average I probably would fail a mission at least once, but more likely two or three times. If it was because I was doing poorly, I can understand it... mostly though it was just because you had a VERY limited amount of time and any little thing that screwed that up made you fail the mission.

The missions are what killed Simpsons Hit & Run. As I've said I hate timed anything in video games and think they shouldn't be in them. Almost all the missions in Simpsons Hit & Run are timed and done horribly. So much to the point where you become incredibly frustrated and want to break the game in as many pieces as possible. It's lucky it survived.

Squid.