This may be the ultimate 'leave well enough alone' piece of nostalgia. Just like in 2003, booting Hit and Run up in 2022 initially feels incredibly novel. You're freely walking around the Simpsons garden! Hopping the fence to the Flanderseses! Taking a quick drive to the Kwik E Mart! The music is jaunty and even by modern standards the game looks great! The novelty of open world Springfield is still alive and well, and the folks behind this game did a great job stuffing it with nods, winks, references, nooks, and crannies to explore.

Unfortunately, once you get past the, say, two hour mark - it all comes flooding back. The thing we all sorta forget about our time with Hit and Run two decades ago, that is even worse with 2022 eyes; this game has maybe, MAYBE, four mission types.

It's incredibly repetitive; you're just following cars, or racing cars, or racing against the clock over and over and over again. And for the second half of the game, the way they attempt to spice it up is by trimming your objective time to a punishing degree.

Characters like Truckasaurus show up, but are relegated to cut scenes because the only bosses you battle in the game are generic four-door sedan cars and, well, very tight timing windows. There's barely even a handful of platforming levels in the game, despite being one of the more entertaining things about the game when they do crop up.

Still a wonderfully ambitious licensed game from the golden age of licensed games, but quite flawed.