Nintendo DS NintendoSpin.com / Reviews / Over the Hedge

Posted on March 14th, 2007 - 1525 Reads

Rated Everyone Over the Hedge Nintendo DS Review

-- Written by Clark Nielsen



 Over the Hedge for the DS starts off on a promising foot. We've been told that the DS can only do 3D on one screen at a time, but this game's done the unthinkable. The top screen displays a third-person view of the action while the bottom screen displays an overhead view (not to be mistaken with a 2D map). It looks great and is definitely fun to see in motion, but that's not reason enough to pick up this otherwise paltry movie tie-in.

Over the Hedge puts you in the shoes (er... paws... feet...) of Verne, RJ, and Hammy as you infiltrate human dwellings to steal food and other necessities and bring them back to the hedge. Sounds like a really great premises, right? And for the first few runs, it's not too bad. The houses (or is it just one house... it doesn't seem to change much) are laid out in a believable manner and include all the climbable tables, chairs, and bookcases you need to successfully stay out of sight of wandering pets and humans. For if you are spotted, you run the risk of being knocked unconscious and turned into a taxidermist's work of art. In a way, then, it's like playing Metal Gear Solid with animals.

If somebody does see you, you do have the option of running and hiding. The trouble with this tactic is that humans and pets have an uncanny reach and can hit you even when they technically shouldn't. It isn't Game Over unless you've been hit too many times in a row, but every time you get hit, you spin around in a daze. So getting hit once essentially means you're going to die, anyway. This also exasperates the many traps and hazards in the house, such as laser fences or "night lamps" that emit toxic smoke. A frequent occurrence is to get hit by smoke, which throws you into a laser, at which point you die. About the only obstacles that don't ultimately end in death are the speakers. When the animals get too close to a speaker playing music, they will stop in their tracks, drop whatever they were carrying, and dance. Listening to Verne say, "Must-- dance! Must-- must-- dance!" is annoying, but not as annoying as trying to recover what you just dropped. As soon as you pick it up again, it's back to, "Must-- dance! Must-- must-- dance!"

Trying to pick up an object or read a help sign is needlessly frustrating. Your character has to be positioned just right, or else you get nothing, and positioning them "just right" takes way too long. The controls are horribly clunky. It takes after Tomb Raider in that you pivot left/right instead of running left/right, and you slowly back up instead of turning around and running in the opposite direction. It may have sounded good on paper to model the D-pad after the arrow keys on a keyboard, but it just doesn't work in practice. Granted, Super Mario 64 DS wasn't perfect without full analog control, but its rudimentary D-pad setup would have done wonders for Over the Hedge, a game that feels too sluggish and unresponsive as is.

But the hardest part about enjoying Over the Hedge is realizing just how generic it really is. The potential involved in exploring a house and stealing food is never met. Instead, food is lying around in plain sight, and lugging it back to the hedge over and over ends up being rather tedious, not fun. The puzzles present are pretty standard, too, such as turning the TV on to distract a human into another room (which isn't even necessary) or pushing stools across the kitchen floor to create a bridge. There's even a time when Hammy has to push a button every five seconds to deactivate the laser fences so RJ can make it into the house. Switch to Hammy, push button, switch to RJ, move a few steps, switch to Hammy, push button, switch to RJ, move a few steps, etc. etc. If this sounds fun to you, well... I'm going to assume that it doesn't. And Over the Hedge, which only takes a few hours to complete, anyway, runs out of steam well before then.

Final Comments:
Over the Hedge is nothing special. Don't let the amazing graphics deceive you (as I'm sure they will). This game is more tedious than it is fun. What could have been an awesome game of exploration and hide and seek is made average by clunky Tomb Raider controls, uninteresting puzzles, and obstacles that annoy instead of presenting a challenge. If you need a fix of stealth and action, this is not it.

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