The Incredible Hulk

"Grrr! Hulk have bad game! Hulk smash!"

The Incredible Hulk is here in his first video game appearance. And unfortunately, It's not a very good start in the video game world for the green machine. Marvel Comics was punching successful video games out left and right. Between their Spider-man, X-men, Captain America, and Avengers games, they figured why not put another trade mark character in a video game. Well I'm a huge hulk fan, and as much of a fan that I am, this is just not a good transition from comic to video game.

Story - 4/10
The story is, in short, quite poor. It's another run of the mill story about beating the bad evil naughty aliens and saving the world. The Leader (Quite possibly the only recognizable villain in the Hulk series) is of course the main villain. A generic idea at best, but it does make a video game. Unfortunately, it was implemented in a very boring way.

Graphics - 4/10
Blah. And let me tell you this, blah is a generous remark for what could really be said about it. The backgrounds look very choppy and unclean. Hulk himself doesn't look very good at all. Aside from the fact he's wearing his classic purple shorts (why don't the shorts break off like the rest of his clothing when he turns into the hulk anyway? I got to get me a pair of those.) You'll notice as you go through the levels that you fight pretty much the same exact enemy. It's a little white machine (or possibly an alien, i couldn't really tell) that hurts you if you touch it, and shoots a little bullet at you. The movements and effects aren't too smooth, and you may notice that you can't attack an enemy while you standing too close to him, or the attack will go right through him, and ironically, not hurt him at all. Perhaps a rather humorous gesture, but while humorous, it hurts the graphics appeal, as well as gameplay.

Sound - 4/10
Let's just say you may soon find yourself reaching for the mute button. The music is very bland. The songs consists of little techno beats and randomly placed beeping noises. Occasionally the Hulk may grumble something, such as "Hulk smash", and a couple other phrases. The effects sound fine. The punching noises and explosions sound good, considering it's coming from a mediocre SNES game.

Gameplay - 5/10
The gameplay is not very addicting at all. Between the levels that get boring after 5 minutes, and fighting the same exact looking enemy over and over, it loses interest quickly. You will encounter some bosses along the way. The most popular of these bosses probably being the Rhino (from the Spider-man series) You will have to keep your health high (which can be hard to do at times). If your health falls to the red, you will transform back into the mild mannered Bruce Banner. And the only attacks our pal Bruce can do is....nothing. The one and only thing he can do,if you can find one, is he can use a measly little pistol that fires two shots, and does minuscule damage. So in other words, if you turn into Banner, your most likely screwed. Overall they had some good ideas to implement in the game, but yet again, carried out in a poor poor fashion.

Controls - 6/10
The only flaw with the controls is completing a special. They can be quite tedious meneuvors and are almost worth not bothering with since they tend to be hard to do on the controller. Other than that, it's a fairly standard control setup.

Replay Value - 1/10
When, or if, you beat the game, there is absolutely no reason to go back and play it again. Obviously, there is no unlockables. And you wouldn't have a good enough time playing it the first time through to go back and play it for fun, unless you get yourself a hankering to play it, which may happen from time to time. But it hasn't happened for me in a while, and it probably won't anytime soon.

Buy or Rent
After reading this review, should you still feel some inclination to play this game, then for god's sake, rent, rent, RENT! If you buy it you will probably wish you had spent your money on somewhere else.

Final Thoughts
This game could have had potential if it had been more thoroughly thought about, and a little more effort had been put into it. I wish Hulk's first video game appearance could have been a memorable one, as opposed to a notorious one, but unfortunately it isn't. I would recommend you look elsewhere for a super hero thriller.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/04