The Story

You are a small mercenary trying to get to the top. To achieve your goal of becoming the best in the business, you have to accept increasingly difficult, but also increasingly well paid jobs. In fire fights you get a bullet in the head quicker than you might think, so often a bit of headwork is worth more than a quick trigger finger!

The world map

When you start a new game or when you have finished a mission, you are presented a map of the world. Here you can select your next mission; when you start out, only the easiest and poorliest paid jobs are available, however as you proceed, you will have more and more difficult and exciting jobs to select from. You select a mission by pressing the up and down cursor keys and hitting the return key once you have found a mission that appeals to you. An aiming cross will show you the location of the current mission, and the info text at the bottom of the screen will brief you about the job and tell you how well paid it is. By pressing the escape key, you can enter the menu screen in order to save or change the options.

The equipment screen

Here you can equip yourself with all sorts of fine devices that will certainly aid you in your missions. All the luxury does of course have its price, and you will only be able to afford the cooler weapons after a few successful jobs. To purchase a weapon or ammo, choose it with the up/down cursor keys and buy it with the return key. But be careful: there is no way to sell the goods once you have purchased them, so better think twice before you buy.
Once you are done shopping, select "Start mission".

The game

Just to make this clear: you are the small guy in camouflage clothes. The unpleasant landscape around you is your mission area. And (almost) all the other guys are baddies you are supposed to shoot, knife down, blow into pieces or simply avoid. Remember you don't get extra score for killed enemies!
The two numbers at the bottom of the screen tell you the number of bullets in your current round and the number of rounds you have left for your current weapon. Remember to reload when there are no bullets left in your round! (Hint: you will also have to do this when you first start a mission.)
The missions can roughly by divided into various groups, each of which presents a specific task to you:

kill all enemies: okay, here you will definitely have to eliminate them all.
eliminate a subject: just do whatever you need to do to get rid of him.
rescue a hostage: run right up to the hostage, the poor guy will then follow you around wherever you go. Unfortunately he will be under the effects of a trauma, meaning he won't act too intelligently. You should definitely get rid of the kidnapper who will open fire at the hostage in case he spots or hears you or even hears other baddies who have spotted you. You always have to bring the hostage to a specific spot you are told about in the briefing (normally your starting position). Oh yes, in case the hostage dies, the mission is a failure!
air strike: in this sort of mission you will have a laser pointer which you can use by pressing the 7 key; when you have line of sight with the target you are supposed to designate, toggle the laser pointer on with the fire key and hold it still on your target for a couple of seconds. Once this is done, you will hear the distant roar of a bomber; now lean back and enjoy the spectacle! (Unless you are too close to the target, in which case you should really consider running as fast as you can.)

Shortly after you have achieved the goal of the mission, you will get a message and the mission is completed. You get the payment for the job added to your funds and can invest it into new equipment.

Controls

Cursor keys: turn, walk forwards, backwards
Ctrl: fire weapon
Shift: hold to turn slowly
Tab: hold to run
Alt + left/right: sidestep
1: select knife
2: select handgun
3: select machine gun
4: select sniper rifle
5: select rocket launcher
6: select tear gas grenade
7: select laser pointer
X: attach/detach hand gun silencer
R: reload
F6: QuickSave
F7: QuickLoad
Num block multiply (*): toggle manual scroll mode
8,2,4,6 (num block): scroll up, down, left, right (manual scroll mode only)
Esc: enter menu

The weapons

Knife: the standard weapon you always have and you obviously can't run out of ammo for. You can get rid of enemies very quietly with this weapon, however this needs a bit of practice.
Hand gun: a small, yet effective weapon. It is quite a bit quieter than the machine gun; when equipped with a silencer, it can only be heard from very short distances.
Machine gun: much faster fire rate than the hand gun, but also much louder. Best used to eliminate large groups of enemies the inelegant way.
Sniper rifle: use this weapon to finish off enemies from large distances. You should never use this weapon in close combat because it has to be put on a stand; hence you cannot move around while using this weapon. Besides you don't turn as quick so you can aim better. A laser pointer is standard issue with this baby.
Rocket launcher: if you're a fan of heavy weaponry, this is for you. Use this pocket artillery to blow away large groups of enemies at once. A laser dot shows you the approximate point of impact. Another advantage is that the explosion of the rocket can injure or kill enemies even through walls.
Tear gas grenade: An elegant method to stun enemies for a short period of time. Every enemy who inhales the gas will be practically blind for a couple of seconds and can't harm you; you should however act quickly or the enemy will regain his senses.
Laser pointer: not an actual weapon, but only for use in air strike missions.

The enemies

There are two types of events the enemies react to: either they see you - each of them has only a limited field of view and view distance -, or they hear your shots and other noises. When you walk normally, you don't make any noise, only when you run can they hear you. When the soldiers notice you, they either shoot immediately if you are in their shooting range or they pursue you. Note that enemies do NOT react to corpses that are lying around; they can, however, shout to each other where they saw you, so whole troops of soldiers can notice you when only one of them originally spotted you.
Besides there is a special sort of enemy, the kidnapper: he always keeps his eyes on the hostage, and when he hears a loud noise or spots you, he opens fire at the poor hostage. Should he kill his prisoner, your mission is a failure!

Saving

In Hit&Run you can save in two different ways: during a mission, you can only use the QuickSave and QuickLoad keys. Once you finished a mission and have arrived at the world map, you can press Escape and select "save game" to save your current game in a slot you can name yourself. Both types of games can be loaded at every time by choosing "load game" and selecting either the QuickSave slot or your own slot.