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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Awesomely frustrating, January 26, 2004
If you suffer from high blood pressure or a low pain threshold, then for the love of Jebus, do not buy this game. It's a bunch of fun, it's funny, the graphics are good, the sound is great, and yes, it's like GTA3 but without the violence. You are given a whole world to play in, several characters to inhabit, plenty of vehicles and bonus missions and a dozen other lovely goodies. Perfect for the kiddies or, sickeningly, the kid in us all.What you are not given, however, is a chance. All in all this is a very short game - you can play the story missions all the way through in under a couple hours. What makes it last longer than three episodes of the television show, however, is the insane level of difficulty in the mid to later missions. Not only are they mind-numbingly repetitive, but they are just ridiculous in their execution. You are given time limits and minimum distance from the vehicle/item, otherwise you fail the mission. There's no reason for these time limits - not that we're looking for reason in a fantasy world - but nevertheless they seem only to serve to make the game more difficult and, hence, stretch out the playtime. Some missions you will try over a dozen times, maybe twenty or more. Even the game realises it's too hard - if you fail a mission something like five or more times, it gives you the option to "skip" that mission and move on to the next one. Only the next one's going to be much worse. Another thing is that you aren't sufficiently rewarded. Play through a mission, tearing out your hair and chewing your fingernails to pieces, screaming obscenities at the computer and kicking the cat, and finally you reach your objective with a second to spare, black smoke pouring out of your vehicle. And what happens? Do you get a new vehicle, some money, some kind of bonus powerup? Very rarely, if at all. Instead you are immediately transported into the next painfully frustrating "collect 'em all" or "smash 'em up" or "race 'em there" (yes, there are only three types of mission) task, which is twice as hard as the last. Pretty soon you get bored of the whole thing, playing the same annoying missions over and over just to progress the story. And the story's ridiculous, but we didn't expect anything else. What we expect as game players is to be given some sort of pat on the back for a job well done - not just another two lines of dialogue for the fanboys. We want better vehicles, better weapons, something, ANYTHING. Sure, from time to time you'll get an extra car, but that's it. And if the mission's too hard, you're not even given the satisfaction of finally *winning* it - you just have to skip to the next one. What I propose Vivendi do is implement some sort of sliding difficulty scale. If the game realises that you're having a hard time, it should automatically give you an extra few seconds on the timer for your next attempt, or make your car slightly tougher, or give you more "strikes" before the cops turn up, or marginally improve handling. I'm a pretty good gamer, but I've been stuck on the final mission for about thirty tries, and yes, I've skipped a few others before that one. Besides that, there's only one way to finish a mission. Unlike GTA3, where you are usually given the freedom to explore and try different approaches to an objective, with Hit & Run, there's just one way to do it - go as fast as you can and take all the shortcuts you find, and try not to hit anything along the way, or else the stupid cops will appear out of nowhere and annoy you even more. This gets old fast, and when you couple complete linearity with the eye-bleeding difficulty level and repetitiveness of the missions, it's hard to recommend this game to anyone. However, the saving grace is that this is, yes, a Simpsons game. All the characters are there doing their various wacky things, and dialogue from the actors has been recorded especially for the game, making it an occasionally hilarious experience. You get to explore all of Springfield which is a bunch of fun, take on a few self-imposed sidequests (destroy all cameras, collect all cards, make as much money as you can to buy cars and clothes by smashing stuff up, find all the gags etc.), or just generally goof around. These things save the game from mediocrity, but only barely. If this was anything but a Simpsons game, I would advise you to stay well clear of it. But as it stands it's a potentially worthwhile purchase for the fan (when the price drops a bit), so long as you're not too keen on actually "winning" the game. If you want a game like this with challenges you can actually *overcome* through your own ingenuity, and not just sheer luck or digital dexterity, then stick with the GTA games, or True Crime. And if you just want a laugh, try an old adventure title from Lucasarts. But if you want to learn to hate your computer, then sure, buy this.
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