Title: The Incredible Hulk
Platform: 360/PS3/Wii/PC/DS/PS2
Developer: Edge of Reality
Publisher: Sega
MSRP: $59.99 (360/PS3), $49.99 (Wii), $29.99 (PC/PS2/DS)
Editor: Loren '
AgtFox' Halek
The Incredible Hulk Review
Okay class, let’s get started. Who here thought the new movie tie-in game
The Incredible Hulk was going to suck like most movie tie-in games do? Yeah, I thought so. If I went by my first roughly two hours with the game I would have said the experience is serviceable to slightly above average. The longer I played the more problems and frustration I encountered until I just had to turn the game off. It is obvious that Edge of Reality and Sega were trying to duplicate last generation’s
Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and while they have a good go at it in the end it just pales in comparison
The actual movie is not out yet, but I believe there are two storylines in this game. One is based upon the movie and has cutscenes with all the movie’s voice cast doing their characters and the other is more of a comic book storyline with other enemies from the Hulk series outside of the Abomination (Emil Blonsky). The sad thing is that the animated cutscenes are poorly done and honestly makes it look like the movie is going to disappoint, but it is difficult to know for sure.
In many ways this is built like one of the better movie tie-in games ever,
Spider-Man 2.
After the initial battle with the Army that is highly annoying right off the bat, the Hulk is dropped into New York City and a sandbox environment. You are free to jump around the city, climb the buildings and cause general destruction if you so wish. The mini-map in the lower left corner will show different colored X marks where a mission can be partaken, whether it be a story-centric one or a number of mini-game options like destroying 25 cars in a certain amount of time or destroying as much of the city as possible. If you complete those mini-games quickly you get a gold, silver or bronze medal, much like you did in the old
Burnout games. I played a couple of the mini-games and was not impressed so I never picked up a medal to see what might be unlocked.
Early on you will notice that while the graphics are nice, there are a myriad of problems present such as huge amounts of pop-in, framerate slowdown and watching the Hulk mysteriously fly across the side of a building while trying to destroy it. The sound in the game is also quite disapointing. Even with all the volume bars cranked up to 100 you will find yourself turning up the volume on your speaker system in order to hear the actors talking in any of the cutscenes. I’m not sure what happened in the sound editing creation of this game, but the cutscenes could have used a sound boost. The sounds inside of the game are pretty well done, although they are repeated ad nauseum with the Hulk rage scream being the biggest offender.
The gameplay itself is also a grab bag of good and bad. On the good side are the controls once you get used to them. I had a problem early on with controlling Hulk’s jumps because even his regular jump is a super high one. If you hold down the A button you can do an even higher jump and as the game goes on you increase your jumping power. Fighting is done easily with the X button being regular punch, Y button for a more powerful punch and B button to pick things up along with the L trigger to lock onto targets and the R trigger to defend against attacks. Combining a jump with the Y button allows you to do the famous Hulk slam with his fist from above and as you go through the game you unlock other powers such as the thunderclap which use up Rage cells.
As you go through the game you have a health meter and a Rage meter at the bottom left side of the screen.
As long as you have at least 5 Rage cells full you will be able to self-heal Hulk by holding down on the d-pad and pressing the Y and B buttons together. Enemies seem to just stop what they are doing and not attack Hulk when he is busy healing himself (what better time to attack, right? Not here). As you go on you will get other powers you can use on the d-pad along with the two buttons. Each move takes a larger amount of Rage cells in order to unleash. As far as I know, you increase Rage cells by fighting enemies because destroying buildings doesn’t do it unless you make enough of a stink that enemies come to take you down.
There are at least three things I can think of off the top of my head that just don’t work right while playing this game. The first one is the lock on mechanic. By holding the L trigger you can lock on a target for unleashing such things as throwing a weapon or concentrating all your hurt on one enemy. The problem is that the enemy you get locked onto seems to be entirely arbitrary because it doesn’t go directly to the closest enemy and will usually only lock onto something if it is in Hulk’s viewpoint on the screen. It becomes almost unwieldy, but the lock on is important several times in the game.
The second problem is the collision detection and more acutely when trying to grab onto an object/living being. There are times where the Hulk swings at an enemy and no hit is delivered. With grabbing items I have seen the Hulk not be able to grab an item close by but be able to grab, or better yet suck in, an item from a feet away. This reeks of bad quality assurance done on the game. I’m not sure if they were on a deadline since this game came out a week before the movie.
The last problem to talk about is the camera.
In many ways this game has the same problem the recently released
Ninja Gaiden II has with being attacked by enemies not even in the Hulk’s field of view. Much like NG2 you can click the right stick in and center up the camera, but here hitting that button doesn’t necessarily put the camera behind the Hulk like it does with Ryu and the problem continues. The nice thing here is that there aren’t as many enemies at one time in this game, so it is somewhat forgivable and also another instance of the poor quality assurance put on this game.
With all that out of the way it is hard to recommend
The Incredible Hulk and I certainly can’t tell you in good conscience to buy it for $60. At first I was turned off, but when I got to the sandbox part I was a bit more excited. After a while I started to become bored and didn’t really see any variety in the gameplay on the mission side of things doing mostly defense and destruction missions. I think you’d be better off going to your local used game business and finding
Ultimate Destruction which is still the best Hulk game available. At best this is a good weekend rental distraction you, but you will soon find the problems I talk about above as well as laugh off the story that weaves through the game. With a little more time I think this game could have been better, but as it stands there is just too much wrong to own.
The Good- Being able to destroy everything
- Being able to use almost anything as a weapon
- Enjoyable at the beginning once you get past the initial Army breakout
The Bad- Collision detection seems off
- Copious amounts of pop-in
- The camera can be maddening at times
- Game freezes experienced (and I don’t think it is my 360)
- After a while the game becomes boring and/or frustrating and I no longer wanted to play
The Ugly- How exactly does the Hulk travel in the subway? Does he actually ride in the subway? And what do New Yorkers think when he boards the subway?
*Note – This review based on the Xbox 360 version of the game.
