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The Simpsons: Hit & Run Review - Xbox

The Simpsons is easily the most well known cartoon around the world. Even Pokemon bows down to the all so mighty. We've never really seen a proper interpretation of the cartoon brought to video games however, but if you read on, you might find out why The Simpsons: Hit and Run is well worth the purchase. Packed with almost every Simpsons characters, and lots of generic characters to run over, Any Simpsons lover will find themselves in heaven. Although the town is slightly different, and The Simpsons' house is awfully close to a corner, Springfield has everything that you could want - The Church, The Quik-e-Mart, Springfield Elementary, and so much more.

Mysterious black vans and wasp-controlled cameras have appeared all over Springfield, rousing suspicion amongst the citizens. Where did they come from? Who is behind it all? Homer, Bart, Lisa, Marge and Apu set out to unravel the mystery plaguing Springfield.

Gameplay

At the start of the game, you jump into the body of Homer. Without hardly any introduction, you're off on your journey to do whatever you please. Although the game is linear with its missions, there's a lot of other stuff do to around town. Races, Bonus missions, 'Hit and running' people, and basically whatever you want all makes up the fun of The Simpsons: Hit and Run. Marge tells you to go to work, and then from there you'll find yourself bombarded with a handful of side missions before you finally get to work.

The big question in your mind is most likely, 'Is this game like GTA?' The answer to that question is simply 'Sort of'. You can run over people, You can get in to whatever car you want, You can run around bashing innocent generic Simpsons characters where they'll say 'It's a sad day for all generic characters', you can even do missions for the Mafia. However, you can't shoot and kill people, obviously to allow for a G8+ rating. There are even some missions where you'll have to hunt down a car and keep chasing it until it blows up, however the driver magically spawns next to the burnt wreck that was once a getaway car.

Much like a GTA game, once you work your way around the town, you'll find that there are a lot of shortcuts and massive jumps to get around the town quicker. When you're given a place to go to, green arrows will give you directions to the easiest way to get there on the road, however you'll soon learn that there's more often than not a lot faster way to get there using alleyways and backstreets. However nicely, if you're going the wrong way, you'll see red arrows on the ground.

There is a currency within the game, and some missions require you to buy a new car which starts off costing about $200, but then ... (continued next page)