The Hulk

A hulking great beauty of an action game, or a sluggish old Sloth? The verdict.

It seems there has been no shortage of Marvel Comic movies since the vast success of X-Men a few years ago. We have seen Daredevil, Spiderman, X-men 2, the possibility of a new Superman film and now the arrival of the long awaited Hulk movie. With all these blockbusters come the inevitable franchise machines and the bane of the computer gaming world; games based on films. Will The Hulk break the trend of these games and be an interesting and worthwhile game? Probably not, but lets have a closer look.

The game follows the story of the movie in its simplest form. You play Dr Bruce Banner who is caught in a gamma radiation explosion, which unleashes a somewhat aggressive streak in him so that whenever he gets mad he turns into the Hulk. The game pits you against the US army, some elite troops working for the mysterious 'Leader', as well as some similar creatures to the Hulk himself.

The game essentially requires you to smash everything as it affronts you, with a couple of stealth missions thrown in for good measure. To begin with you are in the desert on a training mission that teaches you the ten or so different moves at your disposal, which although they are quite aesthetically pleasing are very limited and can become repetitive.

Once you have mastered these easy controls however, the game quickly loses its interest. Luckily the game has such a short amount of playing time that you will have completed the game long before you lose this interest, however. This sounds pretty bad but unfortunately it is true of many film games and this game does have a few good special features such as a few movie spoilers and a couple of fun challenge modes which involve endurances where you face wave upon wave of opponents. This unfortunately does not give it much of an edge over any other games in its genre.

In terms of graphics this game is adequate. In some of the scenes with only a few opponents the game is smooth and the graphics look quite impressive but in the later stages of the game when you get multiple enemies attacking, you find the camera angle getting in the way and the frame rate reducing inducing a lot of jerky movement.

This game lacks any form of multiplayer option, which would really aid the lack lustre longevity. What's more, the sound is often uninspiring and I frequently found myself reaching for the stereo to listen to something more interesting.

What are this game's good points then? Well it is always good to smash the hell out of everything in sight and the endurance challenge offers that. The story, although vastly simplified, is actually all right and the stylised cut scenes are really nice to look at. In terms of true substance this game is once again found seriously lacking sadly. Pick this game up if you're a die-hard fan by all means but I'd suggest you get it out from the video shop before you spend your hard earned cash on it. It's a bit of a laugh but with no real substance.

55%

By Chris Monk