Sometimes, at night, I sit and wonder why people can't understand the good fun in mindless, amoral destruction. Admit it, dear reader-have you never had the urge to pummel the bricks off the side of your house, or possibly jimmy open the side of a truck with a lamppost? I know I have. Luckily, my quasi-homicidal tendencies can now be unleashed, legally, upon the fictitious world of The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, where nobody is safe from the jade-bodied mutant of impending doom.

Casually flipping a bird to the industry's obsession with creating innovative, expensive ways to waste our money, The Incredible Hulk takes its roots from arcade smash 'em up Rampage World Tour, and combines them with Spiderman 2's free-roaming environs. Unlike the webhead's past ventures, however, the Hulk laughs at the prospect of actually having to climb buildings at the speed of a spider, opting rather to hoof up them moodily and leave a trail of huge footprints as he goes. It's very difficult to find a recent game that has provided such a satisfying fix for one's appetite for destruction.

Control-wise, the Hulk plays very much like the aforementioned movie tie-in, swapping out the web-slinging with the ability to jump ludicrously high. This is no understatement-you can literally jump from building to building, and there's no damage when you come crashing to the ground from the highest peak in the city, beyond that which the pavement takes. Added to this freedom of movement, the Hulk has the ability to use most vehicles as weapons, shields, and at times projectiles-for example, a battered tank can make a wonderful parasol against those ghastly showers of missiles the spring can bring. Instead of artificially limiting the Hulk with a bizarre plot device, Sierra has decided to give the gamer the full barbaric strength of the mutated Bruce Banner, letting him tear down the streets at full speed, knocking over cars, crushing soldiers, and playing missile-tennis with marauding helicopters. To put it bluntly, whether you're working your way through the missions (which are simple cases of "smash this, protect this, or get this object to this point by this time"), you're in for a surprisingly good time.

Ultimate Destruction's storyline follows Banner on his everlasting quest to rid himself of his very own Mr. Hyde, and the creation of a machine to somehow get into his mind and find a way to contain it. This leads him head to head with the military, smashing the sweet fiery mush out of anything that comes in his way, ranging from your common or garden police cars to your classic tanks to the gigantic hulk busters that eventually make Banner's life rather hard. Using the Hulk's series of moves, however, ranging from the occasional air combo to full on, ground-splitting atomic slams, Banner is more than up for the job.

Sadly, the game's engine isn't. While at first you can very easily deal with the enemy forces, there eventually comes a time when the developers have wanted so much to happen onscreen that you can't easily deal with it without senseless button-bashing, taking away the one great joy of a game like this: control. While you escape and fight a few things at once, you can target, jetting swiftly around your enemies. When you have three gigantic hulk-busting robots and two helicopters-all of which are shooting multiple missiles at you-the game becomes dicey and boring. It's a case of hoping that one of your jumps lands you on a powerup. This doesn't always happen and usually limits itself to the harder parts of the game, but it can be really disheartening when you die after a half hour of running and dodging, only to start those 30 minutes back again because you couldn't see more than a gigantic yellow splodge on your screen.

This isn't quite the end of the criticism either. While the cities are reasonably bustling and colorful, and the battles a veritable fireworks display, at times there can be embarrassingly bad choices for textures and animations. When you knock the abomination into a wall, you'll see a mystical pile of dirt RISE UP FROM THE GROUND TO ENVELOP HIM. Not in a "oh, the ground is alive" manner, but in a "we only had 50 bucks left to pay the interns" manner. These are numerous and disappointing, considering how fun the game can be.

While this may be the limitation of this generation of consoles, it may also be the limitation of a company who realized they were onto a winning formula, and that people would forgive Ultimate Destruction for these transgressions.

And in a way, it's very easy to do. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is an enduring, stupidly fun, and pleasingly original game that is full of things to see and do, ranging from the quick and dirty painting the town red to mini-games to the ridiculous fun of playing the Hulk off against the idiot generals who think they can stop him. But at times, you can't help but think effort WAS spared, and can't help but ask whether or not it had to be so rough around the edges. With the archaic formula of if-you-die-you-go-from-the-beginning plus the inability at times to see what the heck is going on, you can find what should have been a perfect comic experience to be ridiculously frustrating, with a blinding death setting you back 20 minutes of repetitive gameplay that you quite honestly didn't enjoy the first time.

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, while full of merits and a breath of fresh air in a land of supposed "innovation", falls short of being a must-buy purely due to certain laziness. What should have been the quintessential Hulk experience is marred by shoddily worked graphics and overbearing action that makes it fall just below the line of excellence. It's an excellent attempt, though, and one that definitely should be picked up by those of you less inclined to viciously criticize a game until it bleeds green blood.

Oh, Dr. Banner. If only you'd tried a little harder.

Sep 19, 2005 | 0 comments
Ed Zitron