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The Simpsons Skateboarding Review
Chris Leyton
06/12/2002
The latest Simpsons game leaves us asking when oh when will a decent Simpsons game arrive???
When oh when is somebody going to create a good Simpsons game, instead of mindlessly applying the franchise to any genre thatās particularly popular at the present time.
After the awful Simpsons Wrestling and the so-so Simpsons: Road Rage, we now have to endure a cash-in on the recent extreme sports fascination, as Homer and the gang jump on a skateboard and try to win the $99 up for grabs at the Springfield Tournament.
The Simpsons Skateboarding follows the formula laid out in the recent Tony Hawks Pro Skateboarding 4; instead of having closed environments, large and expansive areas of Springfield are filled with a variety of different challenges that you can participate in at your own free will.
In a similar manner to the previous two Simpsons titles, youāll only have access to the four primary Simpsons members (Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa), each of which have different stats and attributes. As you progress through the game youāll earn money to enhance each your chosen charactersā attributes, whilst completing a stage opens up the next one and ultimately unlocks further characters to use.
The game begins with a tutorial that teaches you the basic grab, flick and grind manoeuvres; to be fair anyone whoās played a Tony Hawk game will instantly be accustomed to the controls as it completely rips the rulebook laid out on these titles.
Having progressed through this youāll have access to the Springfield Elementary stage; each of the games levels feature similar types of objectives to complete. To be fair these provide a mild amount of humour and are appropriately linked to the content offered by the show; typically the objectives challenge you to collect three donuts, collect letters that make up a word and a themed objective such as knocking the head off Jebediah Springfield; each level also contains a competition of sorts, whereby youāve got to score a specific score within a certain time limit. Itās safe to say that the game rips up every element offered in the superior Tony Hawkās titles.
If the actual gameplay had been strong enough then weād have little to really complain about, but unfortunately the game just feels like a castrated version of Tony Hawkās. To make matters worse there are a number of crucial flaws within the gameplay; for starters because the grind meter resets to the centre point whenever you activate a new grind, itās possible to very easily just get on a rail and keep switching between different grinds to score thousands of points with very little difficulty! The actual handling of the board is extremely sloppy, itās too hard to get up to speed, whilst turning arcs are far wider then they need to be; the end result is a frustrating experience and really makes you appreciate just how spot-on NeverSoft have got the Tony Hawkās titles.
The moves are limited with a mediocre selection of grabs, flicks and grinds; you can pull of manuals and reverts in a similar manner to THPS but the execution is nowhere near to the delights of the NeverSoft title.
Compounding the experience are some very ropey visuals; to be fair the environments are expansive affairs and feature a number of objects and touches that capture that Simpsons feel, but character models and environments sport ludicrously low polygon counts and texture detail is atrocious ā“ weāre almost convinced that this game started out on the PSOne!
Virtually every character from the show makes an appearance with a wide selection of witty phrases, whilst anchorman Kent Brockman provides the commentary throughout the game. This is arguably the strongest feature within the game, but still begins to grate after only a short while.
To extend some interest in the title are two multiplayer modes, once again blatantly copied from the Tony Hawk games. The first is a score based challenge, whilst the other rips of the 'HORSE' event that THPS first introduced; they're good for awhile but the sloppy gameplay means you won't be playing them for long.
