Upon seeing The Incredible Hulk opening night, I was very optimistic and excited about renting the game. However, upon playing the game, and taking careful measure of all it’s faults and successes, I realized that this is a title that I would have been better off just re-renting Ultimate Destruction(a title that, despite being 3 years old, still holds up today) and enjoying that game instead.  For a current-gen title(it’s time we finally stop referring to it as next-gen), The Incredible Hulk feels like it was designed for a system 5 years ago…and it wasn’t even designed well. 

Developed by Edge of Reality, as their first game on the current-gen systems, this game at first appeared to be the successor to The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction of a few years ago, but with some plot differences.  Taking place in an open-world area, and loosely following the plot of the movie, The Incredible Hulk follows Bruce Banner on another of his quests to flee from the U.S. government, his many foes, and the beast within himself.  The story begins in a similar fashion to Ultimate Destruction, with you engaging in a fight with the military as a tutorial of sorts. Upon beating this mission, the setting will move to New York, where the vast majority of the game will take place.  Upon entering New York, and playing around a bit, you’ll save Rick Jones, the Hulk’s semi-sidekick, from the military, and a series of missions, divided into sets, will be unlocked.  While it’s not required that you play these missions right off the bat, and you are allowed to roam around the map as much as you’d like, it is necessary that you play every mission in each set to unlock the next set, and continue the storyline.  While this does keep the story moving, it also feels forced, as some of the missions are a bit on the, shall we say, boring side.  While there are unlockables and tokens that you can find in the world, you also need to continue the story to find these, as they only show up after certain missions are completed…a fact which frustrated me to no end. Also, the open world gameplay grows stale after a few hours, as the civilian/military A.I. is very repetitive, and the military offers no real threat during your rampages. 

The graphics in The Incredible Hulk, despite being a title on both the 360 and the PS3, look barely better than the graphics in Ultimate Destruction for the PS2, which is quite sad when you consider the differences in potential power. Not only are the graphics drab and boring, but every time there are more than a few objects on-screen, the framerate gets very stuttered, and becomes a pain to watch.  In a post-GTA IV world, environments really need a lot more detail put into them to even compete, and attention to detail in the environment is sorely lacking in this game; the environments may look nice from a reasonable distance, but once you get close, they all look the same.  However, the character design for the Hulk and the bosses he encounters are well-done, and, while not perfect, are actually fun to look at.      

Another gripe I had with this game was the horrendous soundwork done in it. The soundtrack is boring about 90% of the time, and while the sound effects aren’t horrible, they do get quite repetitive after a few minutes of hearing the same noises…over, and over, and over again.  While the voices aren’t bad, there isn’t anything that really makes them stand out from the crowd.

The controls for The Incredible Hulk, while not great, are also not bad, and are oddly one of the best things considering how bad everything else is.  While a lot of combos have been removed, along with the easy targeting system, it makes the combat simpler and faster, without the need to learn alot of long combos.  While the combos in Ultimate Destruction weren’t exceptionally hard, at times they did interrupt the flow of battle, as you tried to remember a specific combo that worked on a certain baddy. This has been done away with, and honestly, it’s more enjoyable that while, although for players seeking more depth in combat…they are not going to enjoy this change.     

The last, and, in my opinion(which differs quite a bit from that of the graphics-gameplay bunch), most important aspect of this game is how well it plays, and how much fun it is.  I wish I could say that, even with all of it’s faults, The Incredible Hulk was still a fun game. But, alas, I cannot.  Not only is the combat simplified from the fun, addicting combat of Ultimate Destruction, but it’s also much easier.  The enemies in this game pose more threat to civilians and the surrounding enviroment than they do to you.  While this would be ok, seeing as you’re playing as a living engine of destruction, the damage they do to the environment causes more baddies to come after you, and continues a cycle of uselessly repetitive fights, that aren’t even fun due to the poor A.I., bad collision detection, and shallow moveset.  After the first hour of gameplay, I don’t think I participated in a single fight where I actually had fun…even the boss fights are boring, as they consist of nothing more than  staying away from your enemy until they’re dazed, then running in and landing some cheap hits.  For a game based on the strongest creature in the world…this is just sad.   

The Incredible Hulk has SOME redeeming qualities, but I honestly don’t think it deserves a renting.  Much more fun can be had by going out and renting the PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube versions of Ultimate Destruction.  Despite The Incredible Hulk’s attempt to be as much fun as Ultimate Destruction, it fails in almost every way.