This Guy Remaking The Simpsons: Hit & Run As An Open World Game Is One Of The Best Things On YouTube
Reuben 'Reubs' Ward is a game dev who has made a name for himself on YouTube remaking games like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Skyrim in Unreal Engine. His videos are hugely entertaining, thanks in part to his laid back personality, but also because of how he takes something as complex and mystifying as game development and makes it digestible for the average viewer. In his most popular video, which is currently sitting at 7.2 million views, he remakes classic PS2 game The Simpsons: Hit & Run in a week.
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It was one of his favourite games growing up, and short of an official remake, he decided to just make one himself. Hit & Run launched in 2003 for the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube, and was developed by Canadian studio Radical Entertainment—one of the most prolific devs of the era. Scarface: The World Is Yours, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, and Prototype are just a few of the killer games it made in its heyday. Today it's a support studio for Bungie, but in the 2000s it was pumping out quality games on the reg.
Reubs' first video, embedded above, is fascinating. He imports assets from the PS2 game into Unreal, and uses this as the basis for a pretty solid-looking, perfectly playable remake. He makes it all look so easy, in the way only an Unreal Engine expert can, and the end result is seriously impressive. Watching him implement cutscenes, dialogue, quests, a functioning UI, and a first-person view gives you a real sense of how software like Unreal works, even as a layman. Whether it's his intention or not, it really makes me want to make a game.
A year later, Reubs is back with a new series—this time
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