The Incredible Hulk - Video Game Previews


	Platform 360, PS3, PS2, PC, Wii, DS Genre Action Publisher Sega Developer Edge of Reality / Amaze (DS) ETA June 2008
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The Incredible Hulk

It was one of my favorite games to come out of 2005 and Radical Entertainment’s The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction still holds up. Well, maybe not in the graphics department, but the raw feeling of power – hurling cars and smashing helicopters and robots with telephone poles – still draws me to take the game for a whirl every few months.

Timed to coincide with the release of the The Incredible Hulk movie, the game (of the same name) looks to feature similar action of Ultimate Destruction – the fact sheet reports, “Become the Incredible Hulk and experience unlimited destruction.”

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(Emphasis added.) It looks like the game will also echo Ultimate Destruction in its approach to weapons and interaction with the environment. “Demolish anything in their path and also use it as a weapon – pieces of a crumbling building…a passing car…a light standard.” And gamers will be able to “demolish buildings with their bare hands.” The difference

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here is that “damage is persistent, and gamers can use it to gain access to previously unreachable areas.” How persistent and how much damage can actually be done, has yet to be proven.

And in what is less and less like an echo and homage, and more and more like Edge of Reality stole Radical’s design document, The Incredible Hulk will also feature a Rage meter, ability upgrades, sub-quests and mini-games.

Actually, when you sit down and think about it, there’s not much difference – on paper – between The Incredible Hulk and Ultimate Destruction, aside from the plot. (The Incredible Hulk will spin on the movie plot but inject elements from Hulk lore.) But then you look at the graphics… that’s a whole different ball game.

Though I have yet to see The Incredible Hulk in motion, the screenshots are enough to perk my interest. Most of the media that has been released concentrates solely on how much detail has been packed into the Hulk character model, which is awesome. There’s not a lot going on in the backgrounds and there’s been nothing shown of actual in-game footage or screens of what kind of foes you’ll be facing off against. That’s a bit troubling considering the game is supposed to be out in a handful of months.

Edge of Reality’s credentials are mostly built upon titles like Over the Hedge, Shark Tale, and ports of the early Tony Hawk games to N64, but they also worked on the N64 port of Spider-Man, which gives them some credibility in the super-hero department.

The way I see it is that the only way The Incredible Hulk can screw up is presenting a choppy, bug-filled experience and somehow forget to convey a sense of Hulk’s raw power. It seems like they’ve taken heavy cues from Radical’s game and slathered a new coat of high-definition paint on it, so there’s not really any other way it can be screwed up. And that’s a good thing.

- Omni

(March 18, 2008)