PS2 Game Review - The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

A PS2 Game Review
By Le Chupacabra

There’s a reason why games never let you start off with the coolest weapons or the most powerful attacks: it defeats the purpose of actually playing through it for the challenge, innit? It’d still be nice to be able to wreak utter havoc from the get go, though!

Take the ‘Incredible’ Hulk: he’s big, green and very mean (you would be too if you were that green). He’s also incredibly (pun intended) powerful. While it would be interesting to play as a semi-weakling who goes about earning his special moves, it makes no sense. Why? Because, if you want to play as the Hulk, the fun lies in being able to ‘HULK SMASH!!!’ from the second the game begins.

If being able to run amuck and just bash things up in the most outrageous of ways is what you want, this game is there to serve it up on a silver platter. With mashed-potatoes-and-gravy on the side, bless it.

The game boasts fairly nice graphics, rudimentary physics and some rather pleasing explosions. The aural aspect is also very good. The music is apt, voice-overs are suitably hammy and the sound effects just explode (pun intended, again) from your speakers. As you can see, this game isn’t about looking amazing or about having an Oscar-calibre soundtrack. The visuals and sound effects are geared towards a single purpose: to make you feel, nay… to make you become the Hulk.

The game is set across two main areas: your basic city with all manner of bridges, tall buildings, screaming pedestrians and lots of traffic and an expansive desert which teems with rocky outcrops and ‘secret’ military bases, naturally. Your objectives will have you flitting between the two to accomplish various missions with some rather tough boss battles to cull the monotony. Of course, the Hulk is anything but monotonous. The whole mission structure is simply one large euphemism for giving you the ability to just… go… wild! From the beginning, you can jump miles into the air only to come crashing down with a devastating shockwave. You can let your fists fly and turn cars, trucks and tanks into scrap metal. You can even go into a charging run that’s sure to clear your path – buildings and all. If you time it right you can even run across the side of buildings whilst charging a jump, then just power off like a bullet only to ram headfirst into the military chopper that was about to shoot you down. Combinations like running headlong into everything whilst simultaneously charging a jump and an attack are all very possible. What you can and can’t do easily depends on your imagination here! Very soon you can turn small cars into gigantic steel boxing-gloves (known in D&D circles as ‘gauntlets’) and soon after, use flattened buses as skateboards. With the former, you can proceed to mash everything with greater ease while the skateboard is just plain sadistic: think Tony Hawk’s meets Burnout! Of course it’s not only vehicles you can torture! Pick up that attacking sentry, smack him a few times around the face and then politely place him down again… only to flick him a few miles away with your gigantic green fingers. Fancy a game of golf? Use a nearby telephone pole and turn it into a DIY golf club. You don’t need to worry about losing the ball here: what do you think those scampering citizens are for, eh? Just proceed to mash Square and watch them fly away while screaming at the top of their lungs. If you maintain your streak of wreaking absolute mayhem, the police and National Security will soon begin to appear. Dispatch them as you see fit! Of course, they do start sending some rather powerful ‘Anti-Hulk’ robots after a while. Regardless of how much the game gives you for free, it’s then time to sit back and earn a few worthwhile upgrades or else you’ll be defeated all too easily. If you can’t face them, pull a Spider-Man and run up the side of the skyscrapers, keep linking your jumps and you’ll be able to clear whole city blocks without breaking sweat. Once you’ve carried out the necessary preparations needed to take them on, proceed to bash them till they’re just so many nuts and bolts! When a game is able to have cackling maniacally within a few minutes of playing, you know it’s gone and done something right!

The Hulk isn’t about considering moral ethics nor is it about solving brain-taxing puzzles. The Hulk’s graphics are nothing to write home about and its soundtrack is just okay. However, the Hulk is about being able to feel empowered with the ability to cause total chaos and destruction in the most creative ways imaginable; this game is simply about having fun. It indeed deserves the subtitle Ultimate Destruction.