Over the Hedge: Hammy Goes Nuts!

Over the Hedge: Hammy Goes Nuts is a 2006 action-adventure platformer miniature golf game released for the Game Boy Advance, developed by Vicarious Visions, and the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable, developed by Amaze Entertainment. Mostly based on the film mh:greatestmovies:Over the Hedge, this was the second Over the Hedge game released, with the first one being a tie-in for the movie.

This article will mainly focus on the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable versions of the game.

Nintendo DS
Hammy agrees to help Boris the Beaver create a dam, but in order to do so, Hammy and his friends have to sneak into the neighbourhood in order to get the materials needed to create the dam.

PlayStation Portable
After Hammy loses his cable because of the “Tool Guy” switching the cables over, Hammy decides to get revenge by planning to destroy the satellite reception from the neighbourhood.

Nintendo DS Version

 * 1) Repetitive gameplay, as most of the levels have the same exact formula which never changes throughout the game, most of it consists of picking up an item, the game showing where you need to put the item, put the item where you need to put it, and that’s it for the whole game.
 * 2) Characters move very slowly in this game, and there’s no power ups to make them go faster, making the game more boring.
 * 3) While the controls are decent, using the touch screen to move the characters instead of the D-Pad is pretty awkward to use, which causes you to accidentally bump into things when you don’t want to.
 * 4) All of the characters play the same with no alternations whatsoever.
 * 5) Some sound effects are painful to listen to, especially the item destroying sound effect, which sounds like if the sound effect got corrupted during development.
 * 6) Poorly-made cutscenes, even for DS standards, with most of these cutscenes suffering from awkwardly stilted animations and (sometimes) frame rate issues that look like slideshow quality levels of terrible, with this problem being a bit noticeable in the ending cutscene.
 * 7) Uninspiring level design, on top of the repetitive gameplay, the levels feel all the same, just with a different coat of paint.
 * 8) Every snack you collect is all the same throughout the game, no matter what, it’s as if the developers were too lazy to add more snacks to make the snack collecting more unique, so decided to reuse the same one throughout the whole game.
 * 9) Very short length, only clocking in around a few hours, mostly around 3-4 hours.
 * 10) Levels drag on for way too long and feel like they go on forever, mainly due to the repetitive gameplay offered in all the levels, along with the boring fetch quests, not to mention, most of the levels go on for around 10-15 minutes.
 * 11) Ozzie and Heather are completely absent from the game for no reason at all, despite being one of the main characters of the film.

PlayStation Portable Version

 * 1) Horrible graphics that look like the bare-bones shovelware game released for the fifth generation consoles, the textures look very low-quality, almost the level of quality from a mh:awesomegames:PlayStation game released in 1996, mh:awesomegames:Daxter came out on the same system, on the same year, and looks much better than this garbage.
 * 2) Laughably terrible animations in the cutscenes, most of it looks stiffly animated and lifeless compared to the movie, and the lip movements are so weird, they hardly feel like they’re talking and look like they’re possessed by a demon.
 * 3) Linear and barren platforming level design that doesn’t offer much challenge, the obstacles are lackluster and pathetic, since they can be very easily avoided, like the sprinklers in the first level, and the enemies can be easily taken down by spamming the attack buttons.
 * 4) Ozzie and Heather, along with Stella, aren’t well represented in this game, with them only appearing once in the whole game, the former appearing in one cutscene, and the latter appearing in one level just to complete an objective for her.
 * 5) Clunky camera which can sometimes glitch up on you for no reason at all, this could make platforming extra annoying than it needs to be.
 * 6) Some of the music is blatantly recycled from the movie game, which is beyond lazy, and kinda strange, since Amaze developed this port and not Edge of Reality.
 * 7) Only 10 levels in this game, compared to 15 levels in the DS version, which is unacceptable for a console with better hardware than its competitor.
 * 8) Due to the fact that the PSP has one analog stick, you have to move the camera with L and R, which is a bit awkward at first and can cause some problems.
 * 9) Sometimes, the sound mixing can be not properly balanced, with some sound effects sounding louder than the music or voices, this is especially noticeable in the Sewer level with the water/steam effects.

Nintendo DS Version

 * 1) Passable music, despite some of it being a little repetitive.
 * 2) The graphics aren’t that bad and look nice for an early DS game.

PlayStation Portable Version

 * 1) While some of the soundtrack is recycled from the movie game, the original soundtrack is decent.
 * 2) The voice acting is also good, as the VA’s from the movie game reprise their roles, which is nice.
 * 3) The multiplayer options are the best part of the game, and what’s cooler is that it allows up to four players at a time.
 * 4) If you go for the collectibles, you can unlock panels from the Over the Hedge comic, which the movie is based on, which is a neat nod to the original source material.

Nintendo DS Version
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PlayStation Portable Version
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