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The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction Review

Jon Wilcox

09/09/2005

TVG gets angry and turns a nice shade of green playing Radical and VU Games' Incredible Hulk...

"Don't get me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry" - nope, not a quote from VU Games' Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, but Mr Editor himself when he was told that we'd run out of coffee in the office. But rather than dwell on that sorry episode of life at TVG Towers, how about we just focus on the return of the Hulk to the world of videogames? Yet another superhero adaptation from the acclaimed Marvel universe, Ultimate Destruction is free from the somewhat restraining shackles of a movie license, which in theory, allows the developers (Radical Entertainment) a blank canvas to create an engaging storyline that would appeal to hardcore Hulk fans and newcomers to the world of everything green-skinned alike.

Opening up with a tutorial based around the idea of a virtual reality simulation developed by the army to control and therefore understand the Hulk's wide scope for destruction and long range jumping, Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction follows the attempts of Bruce Banner and Dr Leonard Samson to remove the Hulk persona from Banner's body. Of course no story is as straightforward as that so enter the game's main antagonist, Ex-NSA and head of the sinister organisation 'Division' Emil Blonsky who later becomes the Hulk's arch-nemesis, the Abomination.

In the game there are two types of missions to be played: Story, and Challenge. As you'd expect the Story Mode propels the narrative, following Banner and Samson as they try to build a chamber to separate the two personalities housed in Banner's brain. Although there is an attempt to add some variety to the gameplay of the Story Mode, a lot of the objectives include finding or disabling a piece of equipment before taking it back to the church where Samson continues to work on building a machine to help Banner. Other mission objectives follow the general guide of intercepting and destroying various aspects of the US Army forces such as the Hulkbusters, mechs that wouldn't look out of place in MechWarrior.

Away from the primary set of Story driven missions, the Challenge missions set the player up with a series of scenarios that inject a certain amount of fun into them, including races around certain areas of the city, batting SWAT members a la baseball, and personal favourite - floating down to land in a ring of flares by using a giant inflatable. In an attempt to bring depth to the otherwise superficial narrative, Radical has introduced the âBlonsky Filesâ, a series of supposed computer files on the various aspects and characters in the game. Whilst accessing them isnât an imperative part of the game, they do offer further details on the goals and objectives of Emil Blonsky. Further content is unlocked throughout the course of the game via the collection of Comic Book tokens; cheats, additional smash points and other âgoodiesâ are all a neat little by-product of free-roaming for the green coloured discs.

After the completion of several Story missons, the Hulk faces an end of chapter boss such as the Abomination or Mercy, each with their own vulnerabilities at the end of which, further weapons are available to purchase. Like Activisionâs Spider-Man 2 however, the delicate balance between free-roaming and story progression isnât quite met in Ultimate Destruction, and players will find that going through the Challenge missions and just traversing the city is in actual fact far more fun and engaging than the actual storyline itself.

With a name like Ultimate Destruction, it would be fair to expect that wherever the player would go with Hulk, rubble and ruin would follow, and it's good to see that for once a moniker actually lives up to expectation. The ability to smash, crush, throw, and obliterate pretty much in the Hulkâs path is available to players thanks to an impressive range of powerful moves that can be purchased at Doc Samsonâs base of operations. Beside the more standard moves such as punching and kicking, the Hulk has a range of superhero manoeuvres that really do decimate such as the Ground Smash, Steel Fists (where the Hulk tears a vehicle in two and uses the halves as boxing gloves), and Running Grab â“ but thatâs not all.

Through the course of destruction the Hulk collects the green orbs left behind; these not only replenish lost health but build up a meter that when full causes the Hulk to go to âCritical Massâ, where the player has the ability (if they have purchased the correct moves from Samson) to cause even greater damage with moves such as the Atomic Slam. Radical has certainly taken the time to make sure that the Hulk is armed to the teeth with as many moves as possible without the combat system breaking down into a series of over complicated button sequences, something this is tremendously aided by one of the most solid camera targeting systems in a videogame, which manages to successfully keep both the Hulk and the target on screen at the same time regardless of the amount of moving around by either.

Besides the ability to cause as much wanton destruction as possible, players are also given the choice to put down a clutched civilian, prompting the Hulk to then pat them on the head as they cower in the green tinged shadow. Whilst this feature has no real use in gameplay, it does add some personality to the Hulk as well as causing many a chuckle when the civilian (who'd been put back onto the roof of the one of the many skyscrapers dotted around the anonymous city) promptly runs of the edge to their death. The Hulkâs destructive nature does come at a price however â“ if the âEnemy Response Systemâ fills up the right side of the HUD, Blonsky sends in a strike team of missiles, attack helicopters and later in the game, Hulkbusters, to bring the beast down.

Moving the Hulk across the City and the deserts of the Badlands would be quite a plodding affair if it wasnât for his ability to jump across whole city blocks at a time, or run up the sides of buildings. It may not be quite as elegant as web-swinging, but the smooth and fluid movement of the Hulk as he leaps from building to building or the way that he continues to slide down the side of a steel and glass structure trying to get a grip manages to capture the power of Bannerâs alter-ago. As with the combat system, the general movement of the Hulk is intuitive and solid, although first attempts at changing direction whilst running up the side of a build can sometimes confuse, but this is quickly overcome.

Visually the game is every bit a comic book title and is stylised as such. The environments (both the City and the Badlands) are obviously different from each other. Skyscrapers and shorter buildings flow as they would in a real city, and bridges helps to link up to more town-like structures. The effects of the Hulk stomping all over the concrete and tarmac and the impact craters left behind a special move are there to see, and even piles of rubble where demolished buildings fell give a strange satisfaction to it all. The deserts of the Badlands as youâd expect, offer quite a contrast to the urban jungle thanks to the military base and Monument Valley homage of rocky pillars and outcrops.

For the voice acting, Radical brought on board Hulk alumni Neal McDonough who voiced Bruce Banner in the mid-1990s cartoon version of the Hulk reprises his old role, and Hellboy actor Ron Perlman appears as the voice of Emil Blonsky/Abomination. Both actors suit their respective roles well even though players only hear Banner (except for the odd brief cinematic) through the course of the game. Elsewhere the audio of Ultimate Destruction is solid from the rumbling of Hulkâs footsteps to the screaming citizens of the city as they try to escape the clutches of Hulk. The sound effects of the special moves making contact with a tank or concrete is full and intense, again accentuating the power of the Hulk.