MIXED MEDIA
Get in a rage, batter bad guys with 'Hulk'
By William Schiffmann
Associated Press
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Maybe that's not much of a surprise. Would it stun you to learn that it's an excellent game?
That is a surprise, given the record set by a legion of clunkers based on superhero films.
So give Radical Entertainment and Universal Interactive a round of applause for "Hulk," now stomping around on the Xbox and other platforms.
The Hulk, as comic book fans everywhere know, is the star of the touching story of mild-mannered Dr. Bruce Banner and his mean, green alter ego.
The game doesn't follow the movie. Instead, it's sort of a sequel, with Banner-Hulk taking on The Leader, a major villain who wants to unleash an army of Hulk-like creatures on an unsuspecting world.
There are some links between the two; watch the movie closely and you will find clues to things you can open while playing the game.
While the game does have a semblance of a plot, you will soon discover that its main reason for being is to allow you to turn the Hulk loose on hordes of The Leader's minions.
And what fun that turns out to be. The Hulk is super strong, of course, so you can punch your foes into oblivion and also smash through walls and doors and bust up pretty much everything on the screen. With Dolby 5.1 available, sound effects and music make the game fun and exciting to listen to. Actor Eric Bana lends his voice when Banner is on the screen.
The big green guy also has some cool special moves, including a sonic blast from clapping his hands. You can grab your foes and fling them around, and you can also grab barrels, boxes and other inanimate objects and use them as weapons or missiles.
The more damage he does, the faster Hulk's "rage" meter fills. Fill it up and his attacks will do even more damage.
It doesn't really matter, though, because The Leader has a seemingly endless supply of flunkies, from soldiers to slavering dogs to robots, and you can never wipe all of them out. Instead, kill a bunch and move to the next scene as quickly as possible.
When playing as Banner, you spend a lot of time sneaking around, trying to avoid confrontations. Banner can fight, but he pales in comparison to The Hulk. If he's taking a major beatdown, however, he can switch to Hulk before he dies.
He also must solve what passes for puzzles, matching a string of numbers and letters in little boxes with a line above. Not much fun and not much of a challenge either, despite having just 20 seconds to make the lines agree.
Unless you're really out for blood, bashing enemies eventually loses its fascination, which is fortunate since "Hulk" isn't the longest game ever made.
The Hulkster follows commands easily, the camera gives you an excellent view of the action and you don't need to mash 20 buttons for every combat move you make. But graphics get a B. The drawing style has created graphics that appear to have been torn from the pages of a Hulk comic book. The characters and their environments are nicely detailed, although the locations do tend to look similar after a while.
Overall, I'd give "Hulk" a B. It's one of the better efforts at translating a comic book to a video game, and it gives Hulk fans something to do until they can see the movie. "Hulk" is rated T, for ages 13 and up.
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