Developer: Radical Games / Publisher: Sierra || Overall: 8.7/10
It’s open to question whether The Incredible Hulk has ever gotten a game worthy of his comic book heritage — that is until VU Games released The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction! And what a game it is. Set in a GTA-style “free roam” world, you are the Hulk and the city is yours to destroy as you please. Filled with enough variety to keep anyone who enjoys the game busy for a while, you’ll encounter experiences that really can not otherwise be had if it weren’t for the fact you are The Hulk.
As one of the few games released based on a comic book character that is not based on a movie, Ultimate Destruction is the best comic book character game I’ve played since Spider-Man for the PlayStation. At The Hulk’s disposal are a myriad of attacks and abilities that will take a lot of practice to master being able to use all of them effectively. As you progress farther and farther the action gets more and more intense as the enemies become harder, faster, and larger forcing you to learn how to use the abilities strategically. The battle system is chock full of so many abilities that you get a feeling of freedom as you control the Hulk. You can do anything from a simple punch to creating a force shockwave in the ground, to swinging a tank around and around, launching it at a foe. Once you reach Critical Mass (the state which The Hulk is at his strongest), all of his attacks become more powerful, as well as having the ability to use special attacks that create huge amounts of damage. After each chapter of the story missions you complete, more abilities will be available for you to buy.
There are a few types of collectibles that are important to say the least. Green orbs (that can come in different sizes) add health to Hulk’s gauge, and is also required to add energy to the Critical Mass gauge as well. At certain points you’ll be able to increase your gauges and increase your power. Yellow orbs give you a certain amount of “Smash Points.” Smash Points are used to buy new moves for Hulk to use, and other than acquiring the yellow orbs, you get them basically by smashing or destroying anything. While very easy to obtain, you’ll need a lot of Smash Points to buy new moves. Green “C”s representing comic books are also floating around. These “comic books” give you extra things such as unlockables in the extras gallery (like enemy renders, Hulk renders, making of movies, etc.), cheats, and Smash Points. There are also green question marks that give you hints about the game play and things you can do. Supposedly if you collect all the hint question marks, something good happens, so it entices you to look around for the hints or at least get them when you see them.
Most of the enemies you’ll encounter are military units from the United States Army. You’ll encounter no mercy as they send tanks, harrier jets, helicopters, rocket launchers, infantry, and developed-just-to-kill-The-Hulk Hulkbusters. The Hulkbusters are simply just mechs, and as you progress through the story missions they will become more and more of a nuisance as they get stronger, faster, bigger, and team up on you. But if you’re good at the game, you’re usually not going to have too much trouble with them. The only times they REALLY get challenging is when you fight a huge robot in a boss battle, which happens quite often. One of the shining aspects of the game is that the boss battles take a long time, not being all too boring at all since they really challenge your skills and are very fast-paced nature.
In addition to the linear story missions, there are “challenges” that put The Hulk into unique situations to have fun in. Some of the challenges include seeing how fast you can get through a predetermined path, kicking field goals with a car, and quite a few that have you destroy as many enemies as possible in a limited amount of time. You’re also able to revisit the challenges (once you complete them the first time after finding them on the map) from the menu screen, which allows you to see the whole list of all the challenges and the records that you hold in each. This feature makes it seem like it’d almost be fun to play with a friend because the challenges are so different and require different skills, and when it comes down to it, they’re really just mini-games.
What is great about the game as a whole is that nearly everything can be interacted with including being picked up and thrown, and weaponized. Weaponization allows you to create weapons out of the things around you, and in conjunction with your other abilities, you can use them to defeat your enemies. For example, you can create “steel fists” out of small cars, “shields” out of larger trucks (that can double as a skateboard-type thing), and huge bowling balls. You can also catch, punch-back, and use missiles to destroy enemies.
The story itself follows Eric Banner in his pursuit of creating a machine that will allow him to be cured of The Hulk before he loses all his sanity. Throughout the adventure, you’ll encounter your arch-nemesis of sorts, called The Abomination, who is basically another Hulk-type mutant of a man named Emil Blonsky. His roots and intentions are explained well, and you’ll be seeing him quite a few times throughout.
Not saying that the game is perfect, there are problems with it that I’d like to point out. While most is nearly flawless in its execution, the biggest problem is the loading. Before each mission/challenge you undertake you’ll have to sit there waiting for the loading to finish, which is obvious, but this wouldn’t have been something to complain about if it wasn’t for the fact that the loading takes a long time, and if you retry a mission/challenge it has to load everything again. Another problem was that I felt the city didn’t look as diverse as it should have been. There aren’t many special landmarks or easily identifiable buildings which would usually be characteristic of a true city.
Any reservations I had about the game when I played the demo have all been forgotten, and I’m glad to have experienced The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction in all its astonishing fun. Just by being able to do things like throw a bus at a helicopter floating above a building, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is definitely the ultimate Hulk game. The world of Ultimate Destruction is yours to rampage through, and it’s pretty incredible.
