In general, based on what I've experienced from this mod, it's a pretty fun first attempt at a full campaign mod with some minor grievances. The decision to have Bart be the primary protagonist of this mod and the story of the mod
(Bart cuts class to be a little sneak) are both ideas that lend themselves incredibly well to Hit & Run's destruction-based gameplay. You don't really end up having to justify Bart's destruction because, well,
it's Bart! Quite a few of the mission concepts also capitalize on this concept pretty well.
I also do think the mod has a pretty interesting concept with a majority of the missions revolving around the school setting chosen. After the player ends up clearing
Mission 1, all of the mission starting points revolve around this small region. I think it does help enforce the central premise of the mod and almost creates an interesting 'centralized HUB' for the missions. Outside of the Bonus Mission for this mod, everything the player needs to progress to the end is right in front of them. It's interesting and definitely feels like intentional design! The Stage Messages still encourage that you follow the Story Missions, but the way the other optional missions are positioned in front of the player's vision after clearing Mission 1 feels like it encourages experimentation with doing the missions out of order.
The Street Races here, however, are re-named
Challenges and have the gimmick of being full-fledged Missions with multiple objectives. This isn't something I mind and each play into the central theme of the mod itself. The original post also promotes these Street Race changes as entirely separate Bonus Missions as well, and given the mod is one Level long, I don't think this is a bad thing. However, the Challenges seem to have an intentionally higher difficulty than the Story Missions, with stricter time limits and more complex objective conditions.
It's not necessarily something I mind though since the Challenges grant the
Open Wheel Race Car, which is leagues better than anything stat-wise you're given elsewhere. The complexity and higher difficulty became more understandable after I unlocked this, and it's a pretty neat idea! It's satisfying to give the player an intentionally overpowered vehicle as a pat on the back for having conquered the toughest challenges, balancing be
darned. Players are still thrown a bone with the opportunity to buy cars from Jimbo if they need assistance completing the Challenges/Story Missions legitimately, and the picks here all feel pretty reasonable and 'in-character' for Bart Simpson.
Despite my above praise for the playground setting's compact nature, I do feel like some additional heads-up or subtle clues about the difficulty increase might have helped encourage that players don't try these missions unless they're interested in a bigger challenge or after clearing the rest of the mod. The difficulty of these missions was surprisingly high compared to the rest of the mod, which is also compounded by the more complex failure conditions.
I also feel like the
Bonus Mission (
the one mission the player has to leave the school to reach) is considerably easier than the missions present at the school. If the player chooses to tackle the Story Missions first, I think it's a bit less likely they'll return to this area afterwards and conquer that. They might instead be more tempted to choose the other Challenges since they're more convenient to access, is what I'm attempting to communicate. I didn't notice Comic Book Guy on my radar prior to trying M1.
The mod's difficulty past these challenges feel pretty decently reasonable, with a sharp increase towards the end of the run in
Pranksters' Paradise (M7).
The Cola Chaos (M0) intentionally eases the player in with a lack of any objectives the player can actually fail, much like the vanilla game. Once the mod began introducing timers, I found myself usually being able to complete stages that had them with around 20 or so seconds to spare. It feels like the timers start somewhere close to Level 3's difficulty, and ramps itself up towards the end. The other objectives
(lose a particular AI vehicle, destroy this AI car) felt significantly more complex in comparison. They usually end up combining things in a way the vanilla game doesn't but feels more typical in other mods
(hit this car and collect items while making sure you don't lose the car, for instance). None of this is anything I shun! It was an observation I did however make during gameplay, and I do like seeing this stuff experimented with!
While replaying the missions to get a nicer feel for them and to make more notes, I noticed that the mod seems to have a 50-50 split between Forced Car missions and Missions that offer complete control over what you want to drive. While the context for using the forced cars make a fair amount of sense, I feel some could be adjusted to allow for more player control. The half split in a short mod like this makes these Forced Car missions feel more frequent than they actually are.
Mission 3 has the player assisting Skinner to avoid punishment, but the player ends up returning to the school after doing everything like the other missions. While it's a bit less logical, it would be nice if the mission was adjusted so the player just had to go back to him with his lunch in hand. Mission 4 is also a Forced Car mission, forcing two back-to-back scenarios where the player doesn't have control over what car they can choose. Strangely, the car Nelson uses is the Ferrini,
which is one that the player can purchase for personal use from Jimbo. Because of the player having the option to purchase this car, I almost feel like it'd be better to instead just let the player have their choice here as well. The player can then simply return to Nelson to tell him the deeds have been done, or he tags along as a passenger.