The Hulk

Added September 11th, 2004 by Tryx

Introduction:

The world's most loveable green monster…. no wait it’s not Shrek here. Anyway after the recreation of the Hulk into a popular movie a video game was sure to be released, and this is it. You play as both The Hulk and Dr. Banner trying to stop the world from its utter destruction… What will you do with the rest of the morning?

Gameplay:

We all know the Hulk as the big and very angry monster featured in comics, books, movies, TV programs and now even games. Many of these have been a big bust and this is not that far off from those. The story line is pretty basic for a comic game, since they get a new story line twice a month… maybe a little more thought could have been put into this?

The story line is basically that Dr. Banner has been convinced someone has the ability to get rid of the Hulk inside him. So when he climbs aboard the machine unfortunately the scientist steals the Hulk energy and then plans to use it to create his own super human army, and with all villains he was to either take over the world or destroy it.

With Dr. Banner now it is a race against time to stop this evil plot from unfolding. But can the Hulk beat both the police and a super army just as strong as he is?

This is not the hardest game to follow as you can probably tell from my description of the story line, so its nothing special, and like predecessors like Spider-Man it has a host of evil people for you to battle against in boss mode.

No original designs since everyone of the ability to fight for long against the Hulk unless they are another type of Hulk, you get my meaning. All Hulks in one big brawl.

The game is a beat 'em up where you go through stages beating people up, and that's pretty much it, the gameplay is very shallow. It is fun to beat up guys with your Hulk powers and to use the environment against them. It is pretty fun at first to beat up on all the small enemies, but it does get repetitive pretty fast. There are also awful stealth stages, where you must sneak around as a weak Bruce Banner, which is really bad. The gameplay is very shallow and gets repetitive fast, but it is fun sometimes to smash things as The Hulk, but the Bruce Banner stages are downright awful.
Graphics:

Rounded and smooth graphics give the comic book effect of The Hulk a little something extra. With scenery that you can pick up and throw and walls that can be smashed through it feels like The Hulk could stop anything. The detail on some of the characters is not what it could be but those are just little annoying men who get killed in 4 seconds flat by a giant Hulk hand. Shadows seems to appear and disappear at some points but some being there are reacting to the amount of light around is a good thing.

Bosses and other main character are detailed incredibly, even showing their mood before anything happens, even though many have one mood setting, ANGRY! Some things are a little unrealistic, like when you throw a huge box at an enemy and it shatters into dust but this is only occasionally mainly you can pick up the shards to throw at other people as well, handy when you’re surrounded by many people.

Audio:

Nothing particularly special here, the sound in the background is just a bit of a blur, it reacts to how many enemies are on the screen becoming louder and faster when more and more surround you. What I found interesting was the sounds that everything made when you hit it something that was really BIG, the effect's sound is quite amazing.

Controls:

Left thumbstick: Move character
Right trigger: Targeting
Left trigger: Free look
Y button: Gamma (power attacks)
X button: Punch
B button: Action
A button: Jump/crouch

As with many other fighting games there are loads and I mean loads of combo options from the very simple X, X, X to the simple X, X, Y, X. Simple controls, those who have had there Xbox for any amount of time will find these way to simple, just bash some buttons and watch The Hulk smack someone very small into a concrete wall.
Replay:

Once the story mode of the game is finished like many others there’s not much to do with that BUT like with Spider-Man there are a few small games like Rampages and those others that get boring after about 2 ½ plays. There is one thing, if you want to replay any levels then the option is right there for you to do.

Summary:

So what we have here is an average game with not a lot really going for it, once its finished there is nothing else. No challenging after games and no interesting combos. Audio and Gameplay is average for any game like this. This could be one of those games that you bought because the comic was good, but then you were soon disappointed.