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The Hulk Review
TVG Staff
10/06/2003
Another mediocre movie tie-in might make us go all green and angry; let's hope The Hulk can change our impressions...
Hollywood has never played such a major role in the videogames industry as it currently enjoys; realising the need to make mega-bucks, publishers are snapping up movie licenses regardless of the quality ā“ witness BAMās dreadful āReign of Fireā cash-in.
Whilst this is a generally unstable model for the industry to follow, it doesnāt look likely to change anytime soon; however the slew of videogame franchises snapped up recently by movie houses should bring about an interesting paradigm.
After the recent release of āEnter The Matrixā weāre treated to an adaptation of the soon-to-be-released āIncredible Hulkā update. Following suit with X2: Wolverineās Revenge, the games storyline strays away from that offered by the movie, however thatās never going to stop a publisher from squeezing some bucks out of impressionable gamers.
Thankfully the Incredible Hulk offers a surprisingly enjoyable experience, itās not perfect but itās certainly beyond the movie tie-in trash that weāre usually treated to ā“ Minority Report anyone???
The gameās story involves all of the typical Hulk characters, however itās very unlikely to win any accolades for strong plotlines or character development; instead we have a traditional comic book styling that offers extreme actionā¦ and well thatās about it really.
Different missions within the game place players as either the mild-mannered Bruce Banning, or his aggressive opposite number the Incredible Hulk. Playing as Bruce offers a substantially different experience to the Hulk, as the game focuses on a stealth based approach and leaves players with very little opportunity for combat. Unfortunately the stealth aspects arenāt as deep as weād originally hoped for; players simply use a button to assume a crouched position and spend the rest of the time pushing crates and flipping switches. To be fair thereās a neat mini-game that is used predominantly in the Bruce Banner sections, which requires you to match a string of characters by flipping pairs left and right.
However the bulk of the game switches to a traditional beat-em-up as you assume the role of the jolly green giant. Whereas the Bruce Banner sections tend to feel a little underdeveloped and poorly implemented, the Hulk sections provide a lot of entertainment in a genre we thought had past its sell-by-date.
Although the game doesnāt do anything particularly different or exceptionally well, the execution feels strong and complete. The Hulk has at his disposal a limited range of attack moves designated to two face buttons, whilst another jumps and another acts as a grab. A variety of comboās are available from the basic button configurations, whilst you can also charge your attack for maximum damage.
Thanks to a particularly effective physics system, the Hulk can destroy and grab virtually anything that you can see on the screen, which can be used as a melee or projectile weapon. The physics engine realistically keeps a track of the movement of obstacles and allows you to do such cool manoeuvres as plucking a flying human soldier out of the air or smacking back rockets like a kid playing in the ballpark.
To make the effect even more impressive is the way that players can completely wreck an environment. Stairways, columns and pipes can all be peeled from their moorings, leaving gangways to come crashing down and water splashing everywhere. Although the environments are not completely destructible, itās a nice touch and the cut-scene used to greet Hulkās smashing entrance through typical doors never grows tired. Cut-scenes are used liberally through the games stages, splicing up the action and creating a cinematic effect to the overall proceedings.
In a similar manner to X2: Wolverineās Attack, the game features a āRage Meterā, which when topped grants the Hulk with even more power and the ability to perform two super moves that are guaranteed to bring the house down.
Whilst the games 10 missions wonāt last long, the game certainly chucks it at you with dozens of enemies incessantly attacking you. A variety of boss encounters provide some challenge, however theyāre not the most memorable encounters that youāll ever come across.
Unfortunately The Hulk suffers from the beat-em-up genreās Achilles Heel ā“ namely repetitiveness. Itās quite likely that youāll loose interest within a few hours off playing, simply because the strong Hulk sections never vary and the Banner aspects are too weak. It would have been nice to see the developers really go to town and not limit the switching between the Hulk and Bruce Banner to specific missions; instead opting for an open-ended approach whereby players would have to ensure they keep an eye on Bannerās aggression levels when needed and just be able to go crazy when the situation arose. As it stands, The Incredible Hulk doesnāt bring anything particularly new to the world of gaming and begins to feel a little outdated after only a short amount of time.
Radical Entertainment have opted for a visual style that looks cell-shaded but isnāt. The character models make heavy use of self-shadowing tricks to give an animated feel, but with a darker, more mature edge. In a very neat touch, virtually every environment texture has a āwreckedā texture associated with it; so when the Hulk jumps, the floor below crushes and when he throws something against a wall youāll see a crater form on it. Unfortunately the various environments lack detail, look extremely simplistic and begin to suffer from repetition too quickly. To its credit, the game manages to maintain a steady framerate throughout, despite how manic the action becomes on screen and the animation throughout is of a generally high standard.
In typical fashion, the Xbox version sports the finest visuals with slightly cleaner textures, better particle effects and less slowdown. The PS2 and GameCube versions look nigh on identical, however the textures are blurrier and slowdown more prone on the Cube version.
