GameCube Review: Incredible Hulk - Ultimate Destruction

If the engine used in Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is never used again, it's a crime against the gaming community. Here's game specifically created for Marvel's green angry monstrosity, but would work so well for something like King Kong. It needs to be used in other titles, though it's hard to imagine how much better this can get.

This is one of those rare games to truly showcase a comic book heroes best assets, without falling into the basic video game design traps. It moves itself away from general restrictions, letting the player loose in various environments to do one thing the Hulk can do: destroy everything. It's not important if the game is easy and the title character can take an incredible amount of punishment. It's about being that character, and the developers have done that better than anyone before them.

In fact, Ultimate Destruction becomes one of the best pure, non-stop action titles ever. It's barely even relevant that the character is the Hulk. Once you've begun decimating a city with your bare hands, you're lost in almost flawless design. In a minimal set of controls, players can perform a wide variety of attacks and combos, all set on power.

Even if the alter-version of Bruce Banner had a single button to press the entire game, this would still be incredible. The variety (expanded further by the ability to use about everything except buildings as a weapon) is just another positive piece to a monumental title. It's fair to compare this to Criterion's Burnout series in multiple ways since both center their gameplay around explosions and intense action. The Hulk can run down anything, ramming into it when he speeds up, tearing apart everything. It's a blast to just run and pick off helpless civilians or authorities.

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Article Author: Matt Paprocki

Matt Paprocki is a 12-year movie and game critic. He currently freelances for Blu-ray review site DoBlu.com and video game site MultiPlayerGames.com.

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