The Simpsons: Hit & Run

In the universe of tie-in licenses, The Simpsons has always been as deceptive as the show itself, which uses its simplistic animation to disguise its razor-sharp satire. (At least, since the first couple of Bart-centric seasons; hardcore fans prefer to forget that the sub-Saturday Night Live-quality catchphrases "Don't have a cow, man!" and "Eat my shorts!" put the show on the American pop-culture radar, and I can't say I blame 'em.) Video games are about action and interaction, but The Simpsons is about humor, which is something that very few video games (or movies, or books, or TV shows) do well. We've received a decade of Simpsons games with Simpsons graphics and sound that capture the look of Matt Groening's creation, but not the anarchic spirit.

Hit & Run "is," or technically "will be" that game -- and since my preview version is so far along, I'm more than willing to make the premature declaration that this "will be" the best Simpsons game ever. Not because of its solid gameplay, which we'll address anon, but because it's funny. The dialogue is crafted by the show's writing staff and voice-acted by the show's incredible cast, so it's often like watching a Simpsons marathon, minus the commercials. Whether you're a Simpsons FAQ writer or just a casual watcher, Hit & Run will make you laugh early and often.

While last year's Road Rage was "inspired by" Crazy Taxi, this year's Hit & Run, as the name implies, shamelessly steals from Grand Theft Auto. You can carjack any vehicle on the road, run over pedestrians (who bounce instead of splatter, and utter non sequiturs instead of profanities), wander each of the game's seven levels on foot, find a multitude of secrets and bonus missions, draw the unwanted attention of the police, and purchase additional cars and clothes for your characters.

Over the course of Hit & Run's seven levels, you play as all four members of the Simpson clan (minus Maggie), and once as Apu. There are eight missions in each level, most of them closer to Driverthan GTA in execution, with the player racing, chasing, and/or smashing other cars. An icon in the upper-left corner of the screen shows your next objective, and the radar in the lower-right corner of the screen guides you to it; some missions even throw arrows onto the road in front of you for additional guidance. And, for the particularly slow players, the first level also includes an optional tutorial mode, voiced by the ubiquitous Bart.

As with Grand Theft Auto, the missions are just a small part of the Hit & Run experience. The majority of your time is spent exploring the hell out of each level, collecting coins, jumping across platforms, and gathering secrets. Calling up the "Level Progress" option, for example, reveals a wealth of categories: story missions, bonus missions, street races, collector cards, character clothing, vehicles, "wasp cameras" (which tie into the game's storyline), and "gags" (hard-to-find sight gags that range from dumb to very, very funny). Unfortunately, there's not an in-game map, which makes free-roaming exploration more confusing than it should be. I didn't get any documentation with my preview version, so perhaps retail copies will include a map in the instruction manual.

The entire game is filled with references to make Simpsons worshippers tingly all over, but the collector cards are the most extreme example of fan service; each one describes a classic episode of the show and shares a line of dialogue. Sierra has included bonus video content in many recent tie-in games, so I was mildly surprised that the cards didn't unlock scenes from the episodes, since there's plenty of room left on the disc. (One especially keen feature of the Xbox Debug Kit -- I previewed both Xbox and PS2 versions, which are identical -- is that it tells you exactly how much data is on an inserted DVD-R.)

The most surprising aspect of Hit & Run, for me, was the amount of platforming involved; the characters are even blessed with double jumps to allow for more complicated and challenging design in the platform section. Many of the game's secrets are stashed on rooftops and in areas that can only be reached with mighty leaps.

Hit & Run's 3D engine does an adequate job of portraying the various sections of Springfield, and while it's filled with glitches and goofiness, it's honestly no buggier than Rockstar's legendarily flaky GTA engine. The various characters and car designs are great, but the textures are merely okay. The voice acting is sensational, as you might expect from people who've had more than a decade to settle into their roles, and there's a lot of dialogue. The background music is subtle and surprisingly good, with occasional phrases and lengthy silences between them, to keep the nonstop dialogue at the forefront.

Hit & Run ships in mid-September, and while Simpsons fans will buy it no matter what the critic-weasels have to say, at least we won't be disgusted with them for doing so. How crazy is it that of the handful of GTA clones on the horizon, The Simpsons: Hit & Run might end up the best of the bunch?