Smash And Grab

Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction came from GameFly while The Girl and I were out for Labor Day weekend. When we finally got a chance to crash on the couch it seemed time for some mindless, wanton, devastation ... so we gave the green man a go.

Largely the game is a total blast. Radical was clearly looking over Treyarch's shoulder when they developed the game as it feels a lot like the free-roaming action of their Spider-Man game. A very tight control mechanic helps Hulk jump, run (even on walls), and smash around his environment. Rooftop hopping, Hulk's favorite form of mass transit, is fairly easily learned but does take a few tricks to really get down. Fighting is all done via a fairly simple combo setup with a much needed focus/lock function to help Hulk keep track of the particularly nasty enemies. Hulk moves like a very fast truck and while trying to evade enemy fire, it's easy to get the camera turned around ... so the focus key allows the player to regain control just about as quick.

The game also sports a fairly well-designed upgrade system. You earn Smash Points by, well, smashing things, and you can spend them on new combos, power updates, etc. Unlike a lot of superhero games, it's not hard to pick and choose from upgrades which will really benefit versus ones that might not have much value later on.

The story seems pretty well done. The cutscenes are nothing to write home about, but the "Blanksky Files" give an interesting kind of narration to how elements of the plot are evolving.

The only minus so far has been the first boss battle. First, it all takes place in a relatively small circular room - completely antagonistic to Hulk's style of running and jumping. Second, Radical introduced what could have been an interesting "learn" feature from the boss. Use the same combo too many times and the boss will learn how to counter it. Unfortunately what this means is that even Hulk's basic moves quickly become bizarrely useless and a mechanism clearly designed to force the user to try different things goes to far and becomes a "gee, what combo haven't I used yet?" game.

Definately recommend though. We're considering purchasing the game, but I might just wait to see how many hours of gameplay we get. The side missions are largely well done, but I'm not sure they warrant a keeper on their own.