Back in the day when I was 15 years old, my parents bestowed upon me a gift that would make the weekly Woodwork classes at school bearable. It was a watch (Casio I think) that could play a simple racing game which involved dodging oncoming cars- that’s it. It did little else apart from tell the time, but I was king of my class for a few short weeks until the buzz died down. The year was 1985 and to play a game on a watch was the equivalent of Microsoft squeezing Windows 7 onto a watch today. I fondly remember that game and am sure that if I played it again now I would be hugely disappointed at what I thought was great at the time. Fortunately I don’t need to do that and can look to Hit ‘n’ Run for the iPhone instead.
I had seen the game mentioned on a few sites, but initially dismissed it as too simple to be capable of providing a long term challenge. Two minutes after I bought it I was hooked, and so was my son, and so was my wife. We all know that simple games can provide the most enjoyment of which Bejeweled, Doodle Jump and WordPop! are prime examples, but Hit ‘n’ Run takes an idea from the 1980’s, adds a twist to it and for good measure a wonderful soundtrack alongside near perfect 3D graphics.
The premise is simple; you drive a car along a motorway (of freeway or whatever you call it where you live) and have to avoid hitting the other vehicles. However, if your car is red you need to hit as many red vehicles as possible at which point it will likely change to another colour and you then have to hit cars that correspond to your current colour. At times the action becomes frantic, but there is more. On the hard shoulders there are bonus targets that can turn your car into a ghost for a few seconds; here you can hit any car and not lose a life. Heavy traffic is another bonus that pops up, but like the ‘Speed up’ bonus it is far from a good thing. One useful bonus is the faster hard shoulder which means you can avoid as many cars as you like and keep up with the traffic. Normally moving onto the hard shoulder would slow you down and this causes potential crashes when you rejoin the main motorway.
Hit ‘n’ Run is a simple game moulded from the classic gaming days of the past, but one which has been brought bang up to date and it is as much fun as I remember my Casio watch to be all those years ago. HIGHLY recommended.
