The Incredible Hulk Review

Written by: Steve Martin Posted: 11th August 2008

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The Hulk maybe incredible, but this game sure isn't!

The Incredible Hulk Details:

	Action
	PC/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/Nintendo Wii/Nintendo DS
	Edge of Realty
	Sega

TBA

Out Now

N/A

The Incredible Hulk: The Official Videogame is loosely based on the 2008 film starring Edward Norton, using Marvel Comics famous anti-hero, The Hulk.
You play as Bruce Banner’s alter ego, The Hulk for the entirety of game.

The city of New York is used as a free-roaming area to explore, containing many of the real locations recreated in the game such as the Empire State University and Central Park. The area appears big when you first start but you can cut down on travelling time by using subways to cover large distances quickly. Everything within the city can be smashed and destroyed including the buildings. The more damage you do the higher your threat level, and eventually the Army will come to take you down. This is reminiscent of the police wanted level in the GTA series of games. Again, as in GTA to continue the storyline you must go to certain places highlighted on the map and accept the mission you find there.

There are 5 different storylines running parallel throughout the game. Some involve the characters from the film or the comic book series such as the U-Foes and Rick Jones. The main story line involves General Ross and Blonsky and the rest of the US Army trying to capture or destroy The Hulk. The other major storyline involves your constant search for a cure for your condition, with help from your friend, “Mr Blue” Dr. Samuel Sterns. There are also fights against the four Enclaves that have set up their headquarters in different areas of the city. Occasionally, enclave forces will appear out of nowhere and start destroying the city; by defeating these enemies you further the Enclave storyline.

As you attack and cause damage, your rage gauge builds up, this rage can then be used to perform special moves such as devastating attacks or to heal yourself. You gain special moves and other upgrades by completing feats which maybe completing a certain mission or something random like falling from a great height or destroying a certain number of buildings.

There are plenty of collectables to find within the game, such as the 100 Gamma Canisters that increase your health and the 100 Fury Canisters that increase your rage meter. There are also many comic book covers and 15 jump challenges, which are just golden rings that you must find and jump through to complete, there are also some boring mini-games that involve destroying buildings or enemies again.

The gameplay itself is really basic; the majority of the missions revolve around go to this place and kill these enemies or take this item here and destroy the baddies. Its very repetitive and the controls make it just frustrating. The Hulk is big and bulky and handles as such, making combat difficult and erratic as you just button bash B or Z to punch the enemies. You can perform combos by pressing the buttons in a certain sequence but it’s far easier just to repeatedly press the Z button to clear the enemies on screen.

You can pick cars or trucks up and use them as weapons, along with lampposts but this soon becomes boring. The city must be made of cardboard because everything breaks or blows up as soon as The Hulk goes near it. The collision detection is terrible and the action is uninspiring and dull. There is no real use of the Wii’s unique control method. The special moves are activated by pressing left or right on the control pad to choose which of the 4 special moves you want and then shaking the nunchuck and pressing B, but I found this worked infrequently and led to a more than a few bouts of frustration. The Wii remote itself is only used to manually direct the camera if you hold the + button!

The graphics are shocking for a Wii title and wouldn’t look out of place on the PSOne! The whole of the city is shrouded in fog, and you can barely see in front of you if you are on top of a building, this of course means that the pop-up is also appalling as buildings suddenly appear in front of you. The only time it looks good is during the short, pointless cut scenes that don’t help to get you interested in the storyline whatsoever.

The soundtrack is repetitive and uninspiring, during one mission the sound actually stuttered during play like a CD skipping, this is unforgivable. The only plus side maybe is the voice actors and that’s only because the person doing Bruce’s voice may well be Edward Norton, if not he’s quite convincing!

Overall, this game is technically flawed and so it is hard to recommend, as I derived no pleasure from playing it whatsoever. There is nothing incredible to report about this game.