Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Just in time for the summer movie, the Incredible Hulk smashes his way back unto home consoles. The eagerly awaited follow-up to Radical Entertainment's excellent Hulk: Ultimate Destruction proved you could make a free roaming incredible Hulk game that is also fun to play. This time, Hulk gets to apply his awesome strength to New York City as he battles the mysterious Enclave and has a final showdown with the vicious Abomination.

What's Hot
If you were looking forward to seeing what a next-gen Hulk game could be like, this game delivers in a big way. Sega has managed to craft a worthy follow-up. Buildings crumple realistically, according to the damage Hulk dishes out. Hulk himself acts like a walking disaster area, complete with subtle touches you wouldn't expect. Jumping through the city creates shock-waves that flip cars over, smash windows, and tip carts. Throw an enemy into a building and its windows shatter. Reinforced metal bends and eventually crumples under Hulk's mighty weight. Ordinary people are flung out of the way as Hulk jogs by, and army tanks become mere playthings as Hulk dispatches them. You can truly feel the amazing power contained within Bruce Banner's alter ego.


This is only bolstered by several gamma powers based on Hulk's rage. Why grab and throw an enemy into a tank when you can easily eliminate them both with a mighty Hulk Thunderclap? Why worry about tiny bullets when you can stop almost at any time and heal? The shear amount of destruction that you can unleash makes you feel like you really are Hulk. Couple all of this with amazing graphics that realistically depict the damage you've done, and you have yourself one of the better movie tie-in games in recent years.

What's Not
However, there are a lot of flaws here. On no less than three occasions during my playthrough, Hulk was locked into a throwing animation despite the fact his hands were empty. When I accidentally steered Hulk into water, he suddenly became uncontrollable and leapt back onto land. Then he kept leaping until he ran face first into a wall. He still jumped as if he was over the water, despite the fact he had crumpled three cars on dry land and caused enough damage to call in a military strike team. A terrible bug that should have been fixed before release.

Also a lot of the fun weapons that Hulk: Ultimate Destruction had are nowhere to be found. There are no car gauntlets, no helicopter grab and rides, no cracking open the case from a missile launcher and throwing the missiles at targets. Hulk doesn't grab tanks by their main gun and spin them around for a fun attack. He doesn't smash a bus and use it like a surfboard, nor does he run up the sides of buildings. A lot of the more comic like maneuvers seen in the previous game are simply missing. Also, Hulk's sprinting needs to be unlocked, which makes crossing the city early in the game boring. In short, while there is some weaponry here, there is far less than there should be. This makes the game feel like a step backwards.


Also, some enemies Hulk faces have odd strengths that don't make sense for the character. Sure a 50-foot robot should be harder to damage, but to have a weak spot only in the center of its head? Against HULK? Hulk can bend adamantium with his bare hands when he is only slightly miffed. A supersized robot should be a punching bag to Hulk. Also, ordinary Humvees should crumple under a single punch, but the ones Hulk faces take far more damage than they should. The healing factor is another major error. While it takes rage to heal, what should be an instant thing for Hulk turns into a useless five to seven second animation that drags you out of the action. While it's nice to have the voice cast from the movie doing the lines for the characters, all of them basically sleepwalk through their parts.In short, this game has numerous flaws -- from conceptual to bad testing -- that should have been corrected before street date.

Final Word
So while Incredible Hulk isn't a bad game, it's actually several steps backward from the last Hulk title. If you are a Hulk fan, this is a definite rental. But if you want the true Hulk experience, stick with Ultimate Destruction.