Hammy the squirrel in the Over the Hedge movie was easily the family favorite in our house, so when we heard that a game was coming out featuring just Hammy, we were all excited. My hope had been that this would be a game that all my kids would giggle over and enjoy. Over the Hedge Hammy Goes Nuts came close to being that sort of game, but didn't quite make it for all three of my kids. There was too much reading, and too much need for strategy when playing, for my youngest, but he's only 5 so I wasn't too surprised. It is hard to make games on the GBA that are friendly to kids that young.The storyline of the game is pretty much what you'd expect from an Over the Hedge game. The animals are trying to break in to a human house and get food. After a few scenes, Boris, a beaver, enters the scene and for some reason he is more interested collecting the tools of humans than the food. Then the scenes start to flip between construction sites, where the animals are trying to break up the construction of new human homes, and inside various rooms in the human's homes. You're using a golf ball to break up... well, whatever needs to be broken. Everything from a refrigerator to construction sign can be broken by a well placed golf ball. Hammy's roll in all this is to set up the golf course before you start hitting the ball around. As you progress through the game, Hammy can make more and more modifications to the course. At first he's only able to turn triangle shaped boxes that the ball will bounce off of to change direction, but as the game progresses there will be objects to move which can create obsticales, be used to trigger pressure plates that open gates, and even turn off and on fans. Each of these items has some effect on which way the ball travels, as do garbage bags, bouncing babies, and giant molds of jello. (Don't ask, scale is not something that seems to matter in this world.) This is where the strategy part of the game comes in. It isn't just skill that is needed when trying to clear a course, you also have to think ahead and try to figure out the best, or easiest, path through the scene. And then, of course, once Hammy is done setting up the course, it depends on how hard you hit the ball how fast and how far it travels.
In addition to the golf levels every few scenes Hammy gets a chance to play a game of Boomerang against one of the animals enemies, usually a giant machine of some sort. In Boomerang, Hammy moves back and forth across the screen in a Pong-like game trying to take down three power generators, but of course you're being blocked by a Depleter Turbo. The fewer boomerangs you use to destroy all three generators, the higher your score. And in between some other levels, Hammy gets to play a game of WinBall. We like WinBall in this house. Think of a pinball machine where your goal is to break little garden gnomes, and you know what WinBall is all about. You score higher if you use fewer balls, but this is far from easy. The little porcupine children help you in WinBall by using their tails like flippers to hit the ball back in to play when it rolls to the bottom of the screen. As I said, not easy, but a lot of fun.
One thing we like most about this game is that more than one person can be playing it. Though there aren't multiple save files, once you pass a scene in story mode, you can still go back and repeat it whenever you want. So what has been happening most of the time is that I'll play and unlock the levels, and one of the kids will come back and play them behind me. It isn't a perfect solution to the need for having multiple game saves, but it does let more than one person be playing at a time without having to erase the other person's game.
So what do we think of Over the Hedge Hammy Goes Nuts? I'll let my daughter say it best. “Being Hammy is awesome. He's a crazy squirrel that makes me laugh. I like the funny things he says.” The game is one of the best GBA games that we've played in a long time. It's more than just a story game, it is a mini-golf game in a Gameboy Advance.
I’ve played computer games since college, addicted first to story type games like Might and Magic. I have 3 children who also love computer games. My oldest son is a typical kid who loves the challenge of pressing the right combination of buttons and levers on a joystick in just the right way to make something happens, and frequently gets frustrated with mom’s slow fingers. ;) We use computers for both education and entertainment, and sometimes even bribery for good behavior.
The “glory days” of computer gaming for me were when games like Spectre Supreme, Pirate’s Gold, the Might and Magic series, the original Prince of Persia… those sorts of games were coming out on a regular basis. Back then I owned a Macintosh and was a die hard Mac fan. I was one of the first in my area to buy an iMac and on it learned the joy of playing games on the internet like daily crossword puzzle and “mind bender” type puzzles. My first online RPG was given to me for Christmas the year EQ was released, and I was hooked from day one. I played EQ for about a year. I started playing DaoC during late alpha testing, and was hooked on it.. well, to be honest I still am. I’ve tried pretty much every MMORPG I can get my hands on, from big names like EQ, to more obscure ones such as Underlight. I’ve been writing for IMGS since the first DaoC guide, and find I love the challenge of learning a game and presenting what I’ve learned (and sometimes my opinions), to other players.
I’m not a very strong player as far as learning PvE or quick reaction times, so I tend to stay away from games where I’m pitted against someone else in a way that requires physical (rather than mental) response. I still enjoy story and puzzle games, and in a way that’s how I still approach online games. I would much rather spend hours working through a quest than 5 minutes in combat against another player. I still get lost in simulation type games, obsessing over them until I’ve gotten them beaten. And I like being able to sit down at the computer when I’ve got less than half an hour and playing through a few levels of a puzzle game. I tend not to like first-person shooter type games, or anything with person to person violence, so I steer away from them unless they are fantasy based settings. All in all, I enjoy computer gaming so much that my life feels incomplete somehow when my computer is down.
