Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

Ever go camping and see those furry creatures running around, scavenging for food?  In the movie Over the Hedge a squirrel, raccoon, turtle, and others find themselves doing the same thing in a different sort of wilderness.  That is the wilderness of the city suburbs.  Apparently the squad of RJ, Hammy, and Verne were successful on the big screen that Activision created a new game for release with the DVD.  This is where we find out how Hammy Goes Nuts.

In Over the Hedge: Hammy Goes Nuts (HGN), you play as Hammy the squirrel, RJ the raccoon, and Verne the turtle.  Hammy is watching TV when it goes completely out.  They discover that the Tool Guy has switched from cable, which Hammy was stealing from, to satellite TV.  This doesn’t sit well with Hammy, so they devise a plan for him to get the cable TV back, with a little help from Boris the Beaver.

Looking at HGN, the character models are rather blocky.  The first hedge that you see looks nothing more than a block with a texture painted on it.  The polygon counts of the characters are lower than you expect, showing odd angles when looking at them from certain camera placements.  The animations for each character are different depending on who you are controlling, so it’s disappointing when the character’s graphics feel poorly done.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the backgrounds were detailed.  While the levels you traverse are littered with items, the areas are so sparse that you won’t see anything unnecessary in the levels.  If you see something in the level, you need to use it.  The textures are bland as well, leaving little detail to the items.  There are a few times when something useful is added to the graphics, like spider webs created between two boilers, but most of the time the graphics leave you flat.

The music in HGN is lighthearted, as you might expect.  Cheerful and happy, the music is just as the animals that you are with.  However, the sound effects are nothing out of the ordinary.  You won’t find anything here you haven’t found playing other games.  There isn’t a lot of variety in the sound effects either.

The voice actors in HGN aren’t the celebrities found in the movie, as I’m sure that would create a huge increase in the development budget.  They do a competent job though, and you won’t find them too distracting.  They say their lines with the right amount of energy and don’t go overboard with their lines.

Movement is handled with the analog nub while pushing down on the D-pad lets you access a first-person camera to give you a better look at your surroundings.  Hitting X lets you jump and double jump.  Circle does regular actions like attacking and hitting switches.  Hitting Circle three times performs a combo attack.  Triangle grabs objects and ledges, and picks up and drops items.  Square performs special attacks, tosses boomerangs, and launches the fishing pole.  The L and R buttons rotate the camera and pressing both centers the camera.

Moving your character isn’t so bad, but rotating the camera takes a long time.  It’s much slower than it should be, and there isn’t any way to adjust the speed of the camera rotation.  This makes some puzzles difficult and more trying than they really should be.  Also, the buttons feel like they have a bit of a lag in response time.  When the response times are critical for the platforming, the game is much more frustrating than it should be.

In HGN, you are reunited with the characters in Over the Hedge.  You’ll play as Hammy the squirrel, RJ the raccoon, and Verne the turtle.  Each of these characters has their own unique abilities.  Hammy goes into Hammy Time, which is basically letting Hammy go into a mode where he runs around really fast as if he’s hyper from a sugar high.  RJ has the ability to swing golf clubs and throw boomerangs to hit enemies, as well as use a fishing pole as a grappling hook.  Vern can hide in his shell or attack with his shell as well as grab onto ledges.

In the levels you lead the characters through the levels.  You aren’t given any kind of choice as far as which character you want to play, though you may switch which character you are playing in the middle of the level.  Usually this is to utilize the characteristics of the character for the challenges within the level.

During the mission you will usually have some kind of combat.  The combat is very simple though.  Usually you encounter combat as RJ and use his golf club, but the other characters can experience combat as well.  Enemies include rats, house cats, hamster balls, and Chihuahuas.  You have a health bar that goes down with each hit.  If you lose all of your life, you start at the most recent checkpoint, so dying really doesn’t have any real penalty.

In the middle of the levels you have an opportunity to gather human food.  Gathering human food fills a Health Log.  When that gets filled up, a bonus is added to your health bar.  These sections are timed, so you have to hurry to get all the food.  These feel more like a puzzle instead of a quick action segment.

The levels in HGN are linear.  Once you go to one area, you follow on towards the next area.  You really don’t have any side areas to go into.  However, there are hidden acorns scattered over the level.  Sometimes you need to look all over to find them.  These are used to unlock special content.

The puzzles within most of the levels are pretty simplistic.  The puzzles amount to moving a box or hitting a switch.  Sometimes you need to look through the first person camera to get an idea of the situation, but most of the time the solution to the puzzle is fairly obvious.

The biggest part of the problem with the game lies in the platforming.  While the platforming isn’t that difficult, if you miss a jump or not latch onto a ledge, you can lose a significant amount of progress in the level.  I am fairly level-headed when I play games, but there were times when I wanted to toss my PSP across the room and smash it from playing this game.  If I was having issues with the game and the progress lost from misjudging a ledge, how do you expect an eight-year-old to respond?

The game isn’t that long, but it will take a kid a few sit-down gaming sessions to finish the game.  If you don’t grab all of the acorns, you might want to go back and try to find them all to unlock the special content.

It’s surprising the amount of multiplayer content is included in HGN.  You are able to play games of up to four players.  There are five modes and eight arenas.  In Heist mode you collect as much food as you can and then drop it into any dropoff point.  In Tag you collect as much food as you can without being tagged.  Once you are tagged you can’t collect food again until you tag another person.  In Basket Tag there is one person with a basket who can collect points for food.  Everyone else tries to knock the picnic basket out of the hands of the character carrying it.  In Hedgeball you gather food and then put it into your own color-coded basket.  In Hedgeball Faceoff you collect food and drop it off into your opponent’s colored basket.  For each piece of food you gain two points and your opponent loses one point.  Each of the modes has power-ups that can help you to be successful against your opponents.

The multiplayer is held by the fact that the multiplayer is only available through a local network game.  You aren’t able to play over the internet.  Finding other players with the game is a difficult proposition, making these multiplayer games likely to be ignored.

Over the Hedge: Hammy Goes Nuts is sadly another attempt to cash into the name of a popular movie franchise with cute animal characters.  The game could have been a lot better, but the linearity of the levels, the slow camera controls, and sparse levels make this game difficult to recommend to anyone except the most fanatical fans of Over the Hedge.  If you value the life of your PSP, don’t pick up this game.

Gaming Trend Score

60

1. Graphics: 68
2. Audio: 72
3. Controls: 68
4. Gameplay: 40
5. Value/Replay: 70
6. OVERALL:60