Over the Hedge (Xbox)

For many video games based on films, they’ll go for a fairly similar approach. They’ll follow the major story beats of the film, but in between those moments they’ll add in more content for a more robust and varied experience. However, the Over the Hedge game for Xbox goes for a rather strange approach, choosing not to adapt the entire film but instead throwing us into the finale of the 2006 animated Dreamworks film and then picking up with a story that follows up on its events.

Unfortunately, this unusual approach can be jarring if you dive into the game with no knowledge of the film. Kicking off with the climax of the film basically denies the player the story setup or chance to understand the character dynamics as they unfold in what was meant to be the culmination of a story’s plot elements rather than the starting point for a new one. In the film, RJ is a fast-talking raccoon who has learned that suburban human families hold an incredible amount of food he can pilfer, but since his skills aren’t up to snuff, he steals from a bear named Vincent who had keened onto the same idea. When the food store is destroyed in their confrontation, Vincent demands RJ replace it in a week or the raccoon will be on the dinner menu instead, but to make up for his own failings, RJ talks a group of forest critters into crossing the hedge outlining the suburban area to perform small heists to steal human food. The humans soon resort to drastic measures to protect their food like calling in an over the top pest control service with lethal traps, the Over the Hedge video game kicking off right as Vincent, the humans, and the animals working under RJ all collide without any real attempt to explain why this bear is after them or why the other animals now distrust RJ since his ulterior motive for recruiting them for the heists was never brought up in the game itself.

After you play the film’s climax robbed of its context though, the game moves off to explore its own follow-up tale. The animals and RJ are now on good terms and continuing their work stealing food and luxuries from humans without the threat of Vincent hanging over them, but the pest control service has stepped up its game in a most unexpected way. While the exterminator was already doing things like turning barbecues into flying devices with spinning blades or unleashing lawn equipment on the animals, he’s now concocted helmets that can control other wildlife so they help fight back against the thieving forest critters. The core group of characters ends up not only trying to take what they like from the humans but also hope to put the exterminator off their tail and free the animals from his grip, but the mission structure does primarily remain focused on just grabbing goodies until this game’s own climax that thankfully does have all the context in place.

Getting worked up over a licensed game’s plot might seem strange, but surprisingly, Over the Hedge’s writing has a decent amount of wit to it. RJ’s role as group leader means he’s constantly concocting the plans, but his salesman-like attitude mixes with his frank honesty so that he’s outright able to tell people he has no clue what he’s talking about with such confidence they still go along with his plans anyway. Even when covering important info for the upcoming food-stealing mission he’s throwing in quips and word play at such a rapid pace you almost don’t have time to parse them before the next one hits you, and while they’re not gut-bustingly funny, it does make the plentiful dialogue actually worth sitting through. The turtle Verne is a great counterbalance to him as well, his nervousness and fear of the danger the group puts themself in constantly coming through the filter of dry sarcasm that is practically the inverse of RJ’s snappy approach to humor in that Verne’s precision strikes might need a second to work out but are clever once you’ve filled in the unspoken context behind his comment.

The rest of the cast isn’t quite as well-written as our two main leads. Over the Hedge has you playing as four of the animals, RJ and Verne being two of them and Hammy the hyperactive squirrel and Stella the sassy skunk being the others. Hammy’s non-sequiturs really feel jarring when the rest of the writing has a nice natural flow between information and quips and even when he’s actually talking about the subject at hand his responses aren’t particularly imaginative as he falls back on food quite often but his antics might amuse young players. Stella, despite being the most forceful in personality, is perhaps a bit understated in comparison because a lot of her lines are built off large reactions to other characters, but she does have a better track record than some of the supporting cast. The four heroes of Over the Hedge have some other forest life helping them out, such as a pair of possums who really can’t stop talking about how important it is they play dead properly. A family of porcupines are defined by their family concerns, and while a helpful bluejay character has an attitude to him, he’s mostly written around expressing that attitude rather than saying something interesting while angry.

When it comes to the gameplay side of things, Over the Hedge still shows some promise. The 3D action platforming may take place in a few too many similar houses, backyards, and city streets, but the developers definitely attempted to infuse some imagination into certain locations. Certain missions will take you an elaborate shooting gallery where you weave through targets that are being shot at, you’ll find yourself climbing onto and around a rollercoaster track or fighting your way to the front of a train, and you’ll need to cross electrified power lines to get between attics. Even familiar places sometimes have a spark of inspiration like one backyard birthday party having an enormous play castle you need to tear down and one house interior having its entire floor electrified so you need to identify where to jump to and fight carefully atop a pool table to avoid being knocked to the ground.

Between the writing and attempts at area variety, Over the Hedge looks like it wanted to be more than a forgettable tie-in game, but certain unavoidable problems arise when you start looking at how it actually plays. Over the Hedge leans far too hard on combat despite it barely having anything too it.  Fighting the rats, gophers, rabbits, and other animals who have been mind controlled boils down to swinging whichever tool or piece of sport equipment your current animal is wielding as a weapon, and while you have a slam attack and the ability to hit small objects at baddies from afar, most of your fights are going to be mindlessly swinging your weapon until the opposing animal is down. Even the exterminator’s more elaborate robotic enemies are mostly just about avoiding an attack and then moving in to strike or pestering them from afar with your projectiles until they eventually break down, so the repetitiveness of the combat really makes things feel rote and mindless. Rarely you might get to pick up items like a ball launcher or freeze gun, but the ball launcher’s odd homing takes the aiming out of the equation so its more button hammering and the freeze gun feels oddly weak and inconsequential for something that completely encases an enemy in ice for a time. Some areas do have nifty ideas for little puzzles or areas where you need to avoid dangers like laser grids, but they come and go so quickly while the game keeps whipping out less exciting ideas like defending a wagon full of food multiple times by just whacking away at all the animals who approach it. The game does try to toss in a few shake-ups like running segments or minigames like bouncing food to the wagon or disabling security systems with Hammy, but they are all fairly simple and shallow so they can’t really do much to break up the monotony.

The camera is outside of your control as well which makes getting around certain spots a headache, especially when you’re meant to cross a space multiple times and you can’t even see the laser tripwires you can stumble into. Many levels contain optional objectives like finding extra objects, doing the level without falling for traps, or saving the porcupine children, but the deviations are often not too substantial or you can be undone by a flaw in camera design. Glitches are present as well such as a point where the game held on RJ falling in place for a while since it wanted to trigger a cutscene but couldn’t resolve the raccoon’s drop until over a minute later, and while you can unlock a set of minigames like RC car races or golf cart battles, these are poorly constructed and one time winning a race for some reason was presented as me getting fourth place instead. With even the boss battles repetitive as you run in and strike and run off without much strategy beyond that, Over the Hedge unfortunately drops the ball on execution when it had so many creative ideas in other departments.

THE VERDICT: The Over the Hedge Xbox game has surprising amount of thought put into the dialogue writing, making listening to the main characters banter one of the best parts of the experience. Not all of them are cleverly written, but that mix of characters who are far too basic and the more inspired ones lines up with the approach to area design as well. Over the Hedge tries to concoct unique scenarios for some of its missions and others you’re retreading familiar backyards and home interiors, but the creativity that could have landed the game somewhere higher on the scale goes to waste since too much of the game is about the mindless combat that lacks the substance needed to keep you entertained. Constant brainless battles make it harder to enjoy when Over the Hedge presents a decent idea for its action platforming or plot, and sadly the game just isn’t clever enough to overcome its problems with repetition.

And so, I give Over the Hedge for Xbox…

A BAD rating. Younger players certainly seem to have a higher tolerance for repetition, so the wild swinging of sports equipment might not grow old for them quite as reliably. Perhaps in 2006 this meant kids who were fans of the animated film would at least enjoy the tie-in game, but over 15 years later and it’s hard to imagine a child who has enough of an attachment to the film to want to play through this game, and when the brand isn’t clicking, even kids start to better see the cracks in something’s design. The combat practically becomes menial work as you push through this short but padded experience, and while the character dialogue and unique set pieces or area concepts do help the game keep up some level of energy, the overall shallowness holds the game back from making the most of some of the design love the developers put into it. The technical roughness could have been easy enough to forgive and recycling some content is just an inevitability of game design at times, but if the fighting system was going to be at the heart of so much of the action, it should have at least either been more involved or have enemies who challenge it in interesting ways. Embracing extra weapon types or simply having foes that require specific approaches could do a lot to help the combat get around how plain its design consistently proves to be, but instead we’re left with fights that are just about swinging away until you win.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Over the Hedge game is still its approach to its story, and positioning itself as a sequel of sorts wasn’t a bad idea. If anything, the game almost feels like it could be episodes of a T.V. series after the movie where the food thieving animals routinely run into trouble with the exterminator and humans, but starting off with the climax of the film that it doesn’t adequately explain is a rough start to a game that unfortunately comes off as rather rough over all. It has its bright spots where you can tell the developers and writers were trying, but it’s just not enough to push back against the recycled content’s prevalence and the lack of originality in the fighting segments.