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Over The Hedge
is the game of the movie from DreamWorks. This 3D Platform title
tells the story of some woodland animals whose habitat is about to
be destroyed by a sinister lady named Gladys,  so she can have a
swimming pool in her back garden. The animals decide if they can
get some endangered species to live in the forest then the
construction workers wouldn’t be able to knock down all the
trees, and so, the adventure begins.
The main aim of the game is to convince these rare creatures to move-in
by stealing the items they have requested from the houses which
surround the woodland in which the animals live. You take control
of three different animals; RJ the raccoon, Hammy the forest
squirrel and Verne the turtle, each of which have different
abilities. RJ seems to be the standard character, who can jump a
moderate height, pick-up items and pick locks of the various boxes
you find in the different houses with the help of a Stethoscope.
Verne can retreat into his shell and be used as a projectile to
throw over areas too high to jump to or hit Switches which are out
of reach, however he is quite a slow moving character and cannot
jump very high. Hammy, on the other hand, can jump the highest of
the three and can dash fast, overcoming obstacles and traps others
can’t; he isn’t able to carry items like the others on account
of his size. Very often two characters will be sent in together in
order to complete the Missions which require a certain degree of
swapping between characters - which sometimes work better than
others.
This game makes plenty of visual use of two screens with the top screen
showing a view from just behind the character. This can be changed
into First-Person view by clicking the Left Shoulder Button,
although you can only look around rather than actually move which
seems to have little purpose and is very rarely used. Unfortunately
the camera feels too low-down and many items become obscured so
that very often it is easier to use the Touch Screen - which gives
a top-down view - to see where you are going and see who or what is
just around the corner. The Touch Screen also shows you the
line-of-sight all humans and pets have. Avoiding these
lines-of-sight is essential to survival as the pets will maul the
characters and knock them out, and the humans will either take
photos for the dreaded taxidermist or shoot you with tranquilizer
guns.
Levels are focused around the three streets and the construction
site which back onto the forest, which in itself acts as the HUB
for the whole game. You cannot move freely around the streets, each
of them is shown on the Touch Screen and a simple tap on a house is
all you need to get into it. Once a Level is completed you can
revisit it with other characters to forage for food, but this
isn’t compulsory and really serves to add little to the game,
except a shallow attempt to add longevity to this title.
The enemy A.I. is laughable at best, infuriating at worst. You can just
touch on an enemy’s line-of-sight and they won’t register you
are there. They all follow set paths and rarely deviate from these
unless they are following you or decide to stand in a set place for
a while. It kind of
destroys the whole point of having a Detection-Radius, even though
these occurrences happen infrequently.
The Missions themselves usually involve the theft of possessions from
people’s houses, avoiding the family pets and all the humans who
obviously wouldn’t want a dirty raccoon or a red squirrel in
their home. There isn’t much variation with the Levels with only
a couple of timed Missions and ones which involve throwing stuff
out of windows.  If you get caught by humans or one of the security
cameras (people from this street really are extremely hostile to
cute forest animals), if they don’t try and take you out
themselves chances are the taxidermist will come by the house in
order to turn the little raccoon into a hat or purse or something.
The Difficulty Curve is very slow, with little change within the
Levels until right at the end, where there is a Difficulty Spike
which makes it challenging all of a sudden!
Graphically, it’s not NintendoDS’s best effort, it’s passable yet
there are many so instances of Polygon Pop-Up and Misplacement;
especially on traps - one cannot help but wonder if they paid any
attention to it whatsoever. In one instance the character was
standing next to three electric fences and they just disappeared!
Even when shocked by one of them, they remained invisible.
The sound is little more than comfortable too. The music is the same most
of the way through and offers little imagination, with the music
only changing when there is mortal danger to the character. The
characters also utter various squeaks, squeals and catchphrases at
different points which, although not annoying, offer little to
endear you to the characters plight. One feature which does show a
little effort even if not used a great deal is the ability to use
the Microphone to attract the humans attention and wake-up
unconscious characters. This can be switched on-and-off at will, so
outside noise does not set it off, very useful for if you happen to
be playing in a noisy environment.
The Multi-Player option, although offering Single Card Download, isn’t
ever so interesting. You basically run around collecting pieces of
fruit, the person who collects the most wins. The different
character attributes are lost so all the characters are standard
and after a few games it becomes very boring and is certainly not
one you will be playing over-and-over again.
Over The Hedge
doesn’t really offer us anything new or exciting for the
NintendoDS. You will be a little disappointed in the lack of use
for the Touch Screen, the Map being perfect opportunity to utilise
the Touch Screen for movement. However the only purpose it served
was to lock onto a target to throw Verne into, and to change the
characters and Microphone Settings. Even though this game is
clearly aimed at younger players it offers such little variation
even children may soon become bored with the title, as the
objectives do remain mostly the same with the exception of the
final Level. Even if you are crazy about the movie, this is a
lack-lustre title which maybe should be left on the shelf.
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