Not only does it manage to stab the Simpsons in the back, but it does most everything you could think of wrong. Bravo.
The Simpsons Road Rage is based around a generic and paper-thin plot that has sadistic geezer Montgomery Burns buying all of the nuclear-powered buses in town and jacking the prices way up. Homer decides that he has to do something about it, and so he sets off in his car to taxi the citizens of Springfield to their varying destinations. Never mind Homer's classically unwavering indifference and selfishness.
If you're masochistic enough to think about this game for long enough, though, there's a few major flaws that take away from any potential charm. First of all, the story isn't even worthy of the Simpsons. Sure, I'm expecting something wacky, but this isn't even funny. In fact, little in the game is. Secondly, you can play as 15 different people - for the sake of gameplay this makes sense, but the entire concept of the game is a logical phallacy - there aren't that many characters in the Simpsons (a few dozen), and yet some of the people you end up driving have their own cars, as you find out later. So, basically, the storyline has you driving people around - people that have their own cars - so that you can raise enough money to buy back buses that no one is using. Uh-huh. What's more, no one uses the buses, so shouldn't they be self-defeating? The prices are so high that people are willing to wait for Homer to show up and take them somewhere instead of walking to the corner and paying the fare to get on. What's more, each district of the city is surprisingly small, and so naturally you would walk to save yourself money, to save the taxi drivers their trouble, and to spare us players an aneurysm.
Beyond just the overall conceptual gaps in the game you have the boring gameplay. You pick from one of 15 cars and play as one of 15 characters, most of which you unlock. You take said character and car, you drive around until you find someone, and then you take them where they want to go. Repeat. There is so little in between that you will have seen and experienced the entire game in a matter of minutes. Never mind the things that you can unlock, since they add nothing at all to the game. Even though there are seven districts you can race in, there is no incentive at all to race in more than one, since some are boring, some are difficult to learn, but basically just because you're going to get comfortable with the first one and not even want to try screwing around in the other ones. The characters have a handful of corny, pointless one-liners that have nothing to do with anything, and you don't even get to hear more dialogue by unlocking characters. Finally, all of the cars are different in the must superficial, vague ways, and so it'll suit you just fine to stick with the first car you encounter. The mission mode might have at least salvaged the game, but it also is pointless - the missions are boring and yet still there isn't enough of them.
When you do actually start playing, and you pick somebody up, you basically just follow the arrow, or if you've played enough, you'll already know where the person wants to go and how to get there. Occasionally the game will award you with bonus points for avoiding other cars (hmm... cars... I wonder what the buses are for) or going crazy on obstacles such as trees en route to your destination. I honestly can't think of anything else that there is to it. The way the control scheme, physics, and level design co-exist isn't at all good - the cars handle smoothly but unrealistically, and for some unknown reason some kind of mold infection has turned all the trees into cardboard.
Along similar lines, the graphics really don't have anything going for them. Picture weak cel-shading or just bad cartoon animation with a decent frame-rate, and you have Simpsons Road Rage graphics. The sound is also bad, bad enough to where the real Simpsons voice actors can't save any of it. The music is repetitive and annoying, the sound effects are bland and unattractive, and the dialogue is simply belittling to the human spirit. The dialogue makes absolutely no sense, has no context at all, and most importantly, just isn't funny. If you're going to make a bad Simpsons game, at least give me a couple of laughs along the way!
Assessing value for this game is difficult, mostly since I don't know what type of person you are. If you like whipping yourself with heavy chains or hacking away at your jugular, this game just might be your new calling. Get off the rack and go buy this game. Otherwise, there is no value, unless you feel the need to put a value on death. You can't. Therefore, there is no value. Welcome to my world of logic.
So, why is The Simpsons Road Rage bad? Because, simply put, there is nothing good going for it. It tries to live up to the Simpsons, and yet it ends up stabbing them in the back. It isn't so bad for the first five minutes, when it's actually new, but those five minutes lull you into a false sense of security for the downhill ride of a lifetime. It's ironic that a game this bad gives me a cynicism that I end up using to describe the game. But, in all likelihood, it'll happen to you too. All of these reasons should be screaming to you, telling you to not play this game. And if you can't hear the calling, I won't come to save you from blowing yourself away. It's bad enough for me to have to say this. Any questions?