Definitely the best racing game for an animated TV series. Finally, a game that fully expresses The Simpsons!
Okay, so I have played this game a little late, yet everything still managed to impress me. The fact that The Car Built for Homer (from the one of the episodes, like all the other vehicles) actually has the 'La Cucaracha' is genius. That's right - I'm a hardcore Simpsons fan, okay? The aim of the game is to go round solving missions with characters Homer, Bart, Lisa, Marge and Apu. You can travel by car or on foot and you can collect coins and collector cards to buy and win bonuses such as mini games. Each character has different costumes and their own car for each level. Like GTA, you can also steal cars from people driving around but unlike many other people, I do not find this to be the most amusing feature of the game. Within the different levels of Springfields, there are also races against other cars to complete and bonus missions. The only other mode apart from the story mode is bonus games, which is multiplayer, but I found it disapointing. You can race friends on a mini scaletrix type track which is not split screen - you can see all the cars and the whole track without the camera actually moving and it is very hard to control. No point really - I want to race my friends on a proper extract of one of the levels and split screen.
Anyway, the proper mode's gameplay is very good for this sort of game - the handling of the cars are just right, unlike other cartoony racing games such as Crash Nitro Kart. The graphics are, again, good for this type of game - the characters and cars are clear and therefore I will give it a better score for graphics then some realistic car games such as Test Drive Unlimited. As for sound, nearly all of the characters have their original voices and they all come up with funny remarks, such as Apu saying 'I am a lean, mean, vindaloo machine!'. There is a lot to do in the actual game, but I am disapointed with the multiplayer content.
Overall, this is definitely one of the best animated racing games - probably up there with the original Crash Team Racing. I can see it still being entertaining for people playing it ten years from now and it will go down in history like the legend it is.