Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: The Simpsons: Skateboarding

Written by John Scalzo on May 13, 2003

Full Review: At this point it's almost redundant to use the "sucks and blows" quote.

The Simpsons have never been one to shy away from a little good satire in their fourteen seasons and 300+ episodes. So it should come as no surprise that EA Games and Fox Interactive have taken the same tack with the latest slew of Simpsons based video games. After the WWE/Street Fighter inspired Simpsons Wrestling and the under appreciated Simpsonization of Crazy Taxi in Simpsons: Road Rage, we now move on to the Tony Hawk-like Simpsons Skateboarding.

It's time for the Sprignfield Skatefest. The people of Springfield have erected skateramps and grind rails all over the town. Everyone has grabbed a board and wants that $99 grand prize. This sets the stage for the ten-year old who's brave and bold, when he's not in class, he's risking his ass, the world's greatest daredevil, Bart Simpson! OK, I watch too much Simpsons.

The game is broken up into your three standard extreme modes: Skillz School, Skatefest, and Timed Trick Contest. Skillz School is your basic tutorial system that not only tries to teach the skills needed to score big points in Simpsons Skateboarding, but also lets you earn cash to buy attribute points to make your skater better. Skatefest is the Simpsons term for a career mode. And Timed Trick Contest is exactly how it sounds. You are given 80 seconds to perform as many tricks as you can. If you score enough points you win attribute points and if you get the high score twice you unlock a new skater.

On the surface these modes and the idea behind this game seem like a good idea. Bart and his skateboard have been inseparable since the beginning. But the curse of the licensed game rears it's ugly early and often in this exercise and when you are given an eternity to think about this craptacular game during the many "Wait... Loading" screens it gets old fast. In fact, the load times are so bad that I wrote down and underlined "horrible load times" in my notes three times without even realizing it.

I'd rather not waste my time and yours with this sorry game so I'll just list off the game's faults as quickly as I can. First some good, each Skatefest level is very large. That was quick. Oh, and some of the bonuses are cool too. But when you have to go through the following to get them you have to ask is it worth it?

The control is terrible. The Simpsons are clumsy, with slow turns and an unresponsive jumping system the biggest offenders. The bad control leads right into the lame level goals. Each level features the same five goals: round up a group of Springfieldians, collect a set of letters in order and within a time limit, smash signs, collecting clocks and scoring enough points before you're buzzed, and collecting a set of items. Sure the goals are prettied up slightly by making it a different word in each level and having a different group in need of rounding up, but honestly, they're all still the same. The trick system is also rather pointless because the only real way to get good points is to hit a pipe at top speed and then start smashing buttons while your boarder is in the air.

The goals are also often obscure or just near impossible. Sure practice makes perfect and all that jazz, but blind luck is constantly needed to hit goals. The control makes it difficult to line up an item correctly to snatch it and if you whiz past something, good luck trying to turn back around to get it. To help this the game gives you a giant arrow of fate to point you in the direction you need to go. But the arrow rarely points in the right direction and the graphics make it worse (I'll get to that soon). If that weren't enough, many goals require you to skate uphill to achieve them. Not up pipes, but up an actual steep hill. I think Science Fair queen Lisa would have something to say about that.

Now let's get to those graphics. They are UG--LY! Everything bleeds together making landmarks, item pickups, and people at a distance difficult to make out. The environments are boxy and washed out. With the arrow of fate and the graphics working against you and the unforgiving clock tick-tocking towards zero, Simpsons Skateboarding gets frustrating fast. And animation glitches abound with the skateboarder characters. Prepare to fall many times for no reason what-so-ever.

The sound is equally bad. The music is an uninspired MIDI mess. A few beeps, a few bops, and a few bars from The Simpsons theme. And then there are the voice samples. Each character is repetitive and just plain not funny. "I'm a shredophile!" Bart shouts after landing a complicated trick. Let's break that sentence down, they took the word pedophile, which is a person who molests children, and changed it to shred, meaning to skate well. I'm speechless. But I think Helen Lovejoy can find the right words: "Won't someone please think of the children!" Bart also opines "This both sucks and blows." I couldn't have said it better myself.

The Simpsons Skateboarding

Full Review: At this point it's almost redundant to use the "sucks and blows" quote.