[Mini-Review] Over the Hedge
Under our expectations.
Published: May 22, 2006
The Good
Licensed games, as a rule, are shite. Children's games are, in most cases, playable only by children, and if you happen to get a kid's game based on a CG movie license for a big blockbuster, well, it all tends to collapse in on itself in huge black hole of suck.
Over the Hedge doesn't suck -- at least not to the black hole extent that the perfect storm of licenses and game design decisions would normally warrant. Thing is, it's not terribly good either, it's just sort of... there, like an example that we're moving past the point where a movie license spells instant death for the game that it's based on. This is simply a purely mediocre game in every sense.
The game appropriates the general plot of the movie (or so it would seem) fairly handily; woodland creatures wreak havoc on picturesque 'burbs, trying to steal food by way of elaborate schemes while ducking a pissy bear and determined exterminator. One can assume these are the primary antagonists of the movie too, but it's not really elaborated upon in the game.
In most levels, stealing food takes a back seat to wading through many, many things to mash the attack button in the general direction of, and though you'll probably tire of this quickly, the animation for all the characters, as well as the framerate as a whole, is really quite nicely done. Apparently Activision's own Shaba Games helped chip in on animation duties, and their hard work means the critters you'll guide around bound and skitter and amble along smoothly.
The Bad
If there's humor in the game, I completely missed it. The jokes seemed to alternate between being absurd non-sequitur comments or clichéd punchlines, and neither were funny. That the game shoves it in your face with dozens of pre-rendered cutscenes (done with in-game assets, mind you, not clips from the movie) doesn't help things, and so much of the game just feels forced.
Then there's the gameplay, which recycles the same basic goals and item fetching until you're sick of it -- and then there's still another 10 or so levels to go. Though the game makes use of the characters from the film, none of them feel terribly different, something that could have been used given the wealth of textbook character types at the developers' disposal; you've got your mischievous raccoon, your neurotic turtle, your spazoid squirrel, fainting possums and... well, you get the idea. None of the playable characters exhibit any real compelling reasons to go with one over the other.
What's worse, the voice actors hired to cover the requisite big-name Hollywood talent for the movies range from being impressively on to absolutely terrible. The approximations of Wanda Sykes and William Shatner's performances are very well done indeed, but trying to figure out that Bruce Willis, Steve Carell and Gary Shandling are also in the movie is impossible without looking it up, and the performances for all three are poor on top of it.
The Verdict
Even if licensed games are starting to escape the curse of being doomed from the start, there are still plenty of examples of games simply done to sell copies in conjunction with the release of the movie. Over the Hedge is the quintessential example of this. It's just that now instead of being both poorly made and a terrible use of the license, we're stuck with functional but horribly bland.
I debated not even mentioning that the game has a nicely implemented two-player mode (if you're flying solo, you can switch between characters with a shoulder button press) because I didn't want a parent thinking, "oh, hey, I can play this game with my kid." No, no you can't, and nobody should be forced to even try.
Licensed games, as a rule, are shite. Children's games are, in most cases, playable only by children, and if you happen to get a kid's game based on a CG movie license for a big blockbuster, well, it all tends to collapse in on itself in huge black hole of suck.
Over the Hedge doesn't suck -- at least not to the black hole extent that the perfect storm of licenses and game design decisions would normally warrant. Thing is, it's not terribly good either, it's just sort of... there, like an example that we're moving past the point where a movie license spells instant death for the game that it's based on. This is simply a purely mediocre game in every sense.
The game appropriates the general plot of the movie (or so it would seem) fairly handily; woodland creatures wreak havoc on picturesque 'burbs, trying to steal food by way of elaborate schemes while ducking a pissy bear and determined exterminator. One can assume these are the primary antagonists of the movie too, but it's not really elaborated upon in the game.
In most levels, stealing food takes a back seat to wading through many, many things to mash the attack button in the general direction of, and though you'll probably tire of this quickly, the animation for all the characters, as well as the framerate as a whole, is really quite nicely done. Apparently Activision's own Shaba Games helped chip in on animation duties, and their hard work means the critters you'll guide around bound and skitter and amble along smoothly.
The Bad
If there's humor in the game, I completely missed it. The jokes seemed to alternate between being absurd non-sequitur comments or clichéd punchlines, and neither were funny. That the game shoves it in your face with dozens of pre-rendered cutscenes (done with in-game assets, mind you, not clips from the movie) doesn't help things, and so much of the game just feels forced.
Then there's the gameplay, which recycles the same basic goals and item fetching until you're sick of it -- and then there's still another 10 or so levels to go. Though the game makes use of the characters from the film, none of them feel terribly different, something that could have been used given the wealth of textbook character types at the developers' disposal; you've got your mischievous raccoon, your neurotic turtle, your spazoid squirrel, fainting possums and... well, you get the idea. None of the playable characters exhibit any real compelling reasons to go with one over the other.
What's worse, the voice actors hired to cover the requisite big-name Hollywood talent for the movies range from being impressively on to absolutely terrible. The approximations of Wanda Sykes and William Shatner's performances are very well done indeed, but trying to figure out that Bruce Willis, Steve Carell and Gary Shandling are also in the movie is impossible without looking it up, and the performances for all three are poor on top of it.
The Verdict
Even if licensed games are starting to escape the curse of being doomed from the start, there are still plenty of examples of games simply done to sell copies in conjunction with the release of the movie. Over the Hedge is the quintessential example of this. It's just that now instead of being both poorly made and a terrible use of the license, we're stuck with functional but horribly bland.
I debated not even mentioning that the game has a nicely implemented two-player mode (if you're flying solo, you can switch between characters with a shoulder button press) because I didn't want a parent thinking, "oh, hey, I can play this game with my kid." No, no you can't, and nobody should be forced to even try.
