The Hulk

According to Nathan Davis, the name of this game couldn't be more appropriate.

For some reason the colour green has the ability to conjure up images of the insane. In keeping with this, mean green guys appear in a large majority of Superhero games and movies as freaky dudes that perform evilly bizarre acts. Well here's another of these crazy green fellas, but finally coming in the shape of our favourite raging vehicle-throwing Superhero -- Bruce Banner's alter ego.

The Hulk is another addition to the rapidly growing collection of movie to game adaptations. Continuing on from the movie, after destroying San Francisco, Banner is now on a mission to find and retrieve a 'Gamma Orb' from an evil scientist who, when he uses it, can replicate Hulk's powers into his own wicked creations. That's the base story throughout the entire game.

Not surprisingly it tied in with the movie release, appearing on store shelves just prior to the movie screening so you can get all your Hulky juices ready and pumping. Publisher Vivendi Studios ensured there was a good dollop of hype surrounding this game. They even videoed the game developers excitedly ranting about the graphics and physics engine - from the way objects interact with each other to how no two breakages will ever look the same.

This of course means you have the ability to pick things up and hurtle them through the air or simply hold on and use as a melee weapon. Like the developers raved, moveable objects do have a degree of interaction with each other. For example, if you hurl one crate at another, chances are they will both explode and cause a reaction on any other object nearby. Realistically these are just very basic reactive measures. Tetris anyone?

This sets the scene for immense amounts of smashing, crashing and flinging  of objects around ubiquitously. Objects like chunks of electricity generators, guards and truck containers. This is absolute smash-up-shit heaven. . . for the first hour, with a doubling in percentage of blood-alcohol levels required every hour thereafter. Unfortunately the focus has been set far too high on the design elements and not on gameplay.

Enemies range from guards, gamma dogs (massive gamma-affected dog-like creatures) gun turrets and of course, the snarling big boss at the end of each level. The overall AI is somewhat lacking, but this was mostly foiled by having forever spawning enemies. Which would've worked out well had the Hulk's fighting lethality been a little higher than that needed for a butterfly kill.

In order to move between areas, the kicking of entire walls is almost always a requirement. That is except for when you are shrunken back to the usual Banner, in which there are some doors that are 'security locked' with a stupidly basic puzzle. These puzzles seriously lack any clever thought at all.

They've attempted to slip a bit of stealth into this game. On several levels you revert back to being your usual pathetically weak self who has to sneak around an entire level doing, well, sneaking. You're not allowed to be seen because any bad guys will instantly start attacking you (screw negotiation) causing your anger levels to soar, thus leading to the revealing of your inner green self. Doing so makes you fail that level. This is in all honesty boring and tedious -- why hide when you have so much power under your skin? Fortunately the larger portion of the game is played as the Hulk.

One major gripe was the tragic camera handling. You could be walking forward one minute, carefully avoiding a spotlight, then suddenly the camera will change and you lumber directly in full view of everyone because the controller's direction has changed with the camera. It hardly shows a good angle, making everything rather challenging, and unfortunately the camera can't be manually controlled.

Overall, The Hulk is another mediocre movie to game conversion to add to the collection that rapidly degrades into an extremely repetitive game with a linear storyline. Though fun for a quick smash period, smashing shit up doesn't exactly make for a deeply thrilling game. It tends to grow old rather fast, depleting into one especially tedious finger clicking session.