The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
What’s green, has a limited vocabulary and succumbed to the weak vision of Ang Lee. Well, right, audiences after seeing the Hulk in theatres. The Hulk himself though stars in a new console game, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
and there’s nothing more fun than bashing, smashing and demolishing a
virtual New York and its residents. IH:UD gives you just that
opportunity. Not to mention a better storyline than the movie.
Hulk picks up the story of Bruce Banner and his search for a cure to
his Gamma-radiated condition with help from his
Doctor/Engineer/bio-physiolgist (mensa-boy) friend Doc Samson. Bruce is
on the verge of completing a machine that will help him tap his own
mind to discover and ultimately control his transformations. Theeeeen
the government discovers his shack in the woods, blows it and the
machine to bits and chases Banner off into the woods. Much of the story
missions involve the location of certain off-the-market parts needed to
rebuild the machine. Others require you to evade or destroy the the
onslaught of special agent Emil Blonsky and General Thaddeus Ross.
I really can’t begin to tell you how fun this is. Similar to Activision’s Spider-Man 2
game, Hulk delivers free roaming game play framed by a solid storyline.
Leap around two areas: New York City and the Badlands, a desert area
covered in secret military installtions. Even after completing the
basic story, both areas are scattered with side challenges that employ
the player in everything from timed races to home run derby’s using
soldiers as balls and giant oil pump arms as bats. Similar to Grand
Theft Auto, causing enough chaos during the free-roam scenario will
first alert police and eventually a military strike team will be called
in to take you out, consisting of giant flying mechs, tanks, harriers,
ground to air missile strikes…the works!
Each challenge,
story scenario and everything you smash earns you Smash Points, which
you can use to purcahse new moves to use in battle and bigger health
upgrades. Even abilities like grabbing onto aircraft and riding them
down to the ground or pile driving larger enemies. Beyond that, you’ll
find special tokens scattered throughout the areas that will open
behind-the-scenes movies, character renders, comic book covers and
codes to open up additional costumes (new shorts for the Hulk), health
upgrade cheats and environment changing effects.
My only real
complaint is a major difficulty in controlling the Hulk as he walks up
buildings and uses his dash to speed around town. Race challenges are
especially frustrating. More often then not you’ll be flying off the
edge of a building because of touchy controls, missing each checkpoint
by inches, but adding precious seconds to your total time. It’s the
same bane that Spider-Man 2 had unfortunately, and Sierra failed to
improve on it.
The game beyond that is literally a smashing
good time and even though you’ll be done with the story in a good solid
8 hours or so, the temptation to go back and destroy ever car, tree,
building and air conditioning unit in sight will keep you coming back
for more.
