The “Break it Down” Blog

Summary [6.5 out of 10]

The Incredible Hulk is a mindless bash-um-up that provided hours of fun for me. Basic attack combos, medium difficulty level and a Crackdown-esque sense of flying through the city smashing things up lent itself well to a “sit down and relax” title.

The Incredible Hulk is not a AAA title, but it was a good bit of fun.

Introduction

With Gears of War 2 coming up next week and Rock Band 2 taking a lot of my gaming time I recently found myself wanting a mindless beat-em-up kind of game to play when I just want to relax.

I saw this Incredible Hulk trailer over on GameTrailers.com and thought it looked like it would fit what I was looking for.

The game has you play through the story from the recent Hulk movie with Edward Norton.  I was presently surprised that in addition to the main plot from the movie there are a lot of optional side missions and mini-games.

I was expecting another poorly made game base on a movie, but thankfully didn’t find it.  The whole game after the prologue takes place in New York City.  You’re free to run around, smash whatever you feel like, and pretty much destroy New York.  All of the missions and mini-games show up in New York as little icons.  When you want to play one you just walk up and hit X to do the mission.

The Good

• The open environment for you to destroy and the option to play missions as you want to.
• Mindless smashing fun.
• The Achievements – they are a nicely mixed between earned for completing missions and performing specific feats in the open world.  My favorite probably was for climbing to the top of the five tallest building.
• They used the actual likeness of the characters from the movie in the game.  It was cool to be playing as Edward Norton the few times I was not the Hulk.

The Bad

• The graphics are very repetitive.  I recognize it is hard to fill a whole city without repeating any textures, but this game has a lot of the same looking buildings.
• Plus, the graphics are glitchy. There is a lot of pop-in when you’re sprinting around the city of jumping off tall building to the ground.  Trees should not just suddenly appear when you’re a block away from them.
• Repetitive enemies.  I’m fine with army soldiers all looking the same, but don’t have me fight the same mini-boss 4 or 5 times.  Once I kill him he should not just magically be back later to fight me again.

The Ugly

• Load times.  When you’re running around New York there are no load times. You can run from the north end to the south end and it never pauses to load.  But, when you start a mission or a cut scene comes up at the end of a mission there is a pretty lengthy load time.  Frustratingly long.
• Game “lag” issues. Lag is probably not the right word, but that is what it seems like. Whenever you finish off one of the achievements right before the achievement indicator pops up the whole game freezes for a second.  Then, once the indicator pops up the game starts running again. More than once I thought the game had frozen on me and then my frustration turned to relief as the achievement popped and the game started moving again.

Conclusion [6.5 out of 10]

Overall, The Incredible Hulk was just what I was hoping for.

I had a lot of fun running around New York smashing buildings and jumping from rooftop to rooftop.  The Incredible Hulk actually reminds me of why I loved Crackdown.  I could run around and do whatever I feel like.  If I want to play a mission I can.  If I want to run around and look for hidden loot I can. The game is not really very hard and it is pretty mindless since there are only a few attack combos, but for me it never got old to send enemies flying over and over.

I’m not saying this is a great game and everyone should buy it,  but if you’re looking for some mindless destruction The Incredible Hulk is probably just what you need.