Video Games Reloaded - The Incredible Hulk (XBOX 360)

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The Incredible Hulk (XBOX 360)
By: Adam Waddilove

This game will turn you green, literally..

Fuelled with fury, SEGA’s The Incredible Hulk features key moments from the film, as well as additional plotlines and characters from the character’s rich comic-book universe. Players smash through New York City, battling gigantic enemies amidst soaring skyscrapers in a massive open world.

The Incredible Hulk Features:

Unlimited Destruction: Become the Incredible Hulk and experience unlimited destruction. Players can demolish anything in their path and also use it as a weapon – pieces of a crumbling building…a passing car…a street lamp. Players can even demolish buildings with their bare hands. Damage is persistent, and gamers can use it to gain access to previously unreachable areas.

Powerful Rage: Rage is power. Build the Hulk’s rage to learn powerful moves. Cause unheard-of damage to gain and upgrade his abilities.

Incredible Scale: New York City’s towering skyscrapers allow for exciting vertically based gameplay, while powerful, massive enemies such as Bi-Beast and the Abomination challenge the Hulk’s might.

Dynamic Open World: A realistic next-gen, open-world representation of Manhattan provides gamers with an immense playground of destruction that also contains sub-quests, minigames, and a story that reaches beyond the film to include elements from classic Marvel comics.

Bruce Banner has a lot to be angry about; he’s got the government trying to kill him, he’s got a new actor playing him and a new actress playing his love interest, sure it’s sexy Liv Tyler, but its still gotta be annoying for the green guy. On top of all that stress comes a videogame that is bound to enrage him even more. The Incredible Hulk isn’t nearly as “incredible” as we all hoped.

To everyone, Incredible Hulk may appear to take the Spider-Man 2/3 formula by letting you free-roam NYC, smashing everything in your path, take on missions and mini-games, but it’s really a poor attempt on it. The real problem with Hulk is its presentation, it looks horrible. To be honest, it looks like a bad PS2 game and the skyline itself looks like something from the N64 era. Character models are also very disappointing to look at during cutscenes, it’s clear that the game wasn’t designed with the next-gen systems in mind.

The mission structure is fairly simple. It’s a case of going from A to B, smashing something and going to the next area to smash more things. There are small variations like escort missions or boss fights, but that’s really as far as the variety goes. On top of that, the game is actually quite easy thanks to a move that lets Hulk regain a ton of health, I have yet to see the actual film but from what I can tell, it hardly replicates it with uninspiring voice-acting and duff cinematics.

Minigames are probably the most fun in Incredible Hulk; one gives you a target of damage to do to the city in a minute. It’s simple, but destroying things is still enjoyable. Another issue is with destruction itself, you can sprint during the game and hit detection is incredibly bad, objects nowhere near you will just blow up or get smashed, its ridiculously inaccurate. There are also a ton of bugs in the game, you can fall through the floor half-way, cars can stack on top of each other thanks to the invention of no accurate gravity, it’s all a complete mess.

Combat is a button-bashing frenzy, nothing more. You will have to mix things up to find weak points, but it’s fairly easy to work out, especially when a screen pops up telling you what it is, how ridiculous is that? The main problem with The Incredible Hulk is that nothing about it is memorable, sure it’s fun to destroy everything in sight...but it gets old, quick. The 360 version adds more replay value in the way of achievements, but chances are that you won’t earn them all. Most of them are easily obtained, but the game is frustrating to play and hard to look at, so you’ll probably stop it before getting them.

The Verdict

The “Incredible” Hulk sounds a bit ironic really. The game is a complete mess, full of bugs and graphical glitches. Mission structure is incredibly bland and the game looks horrendous for a next-gen videogame. How could they get it so wrong?