Video games based on comic books turned into movies have been quite the fad for the past few years now. So its no wonder when it was announced that The Hulk would be getting his very own movie, that a video game would also follow. It’s a shame though that The Hulk video game follows the same route of quality that the not so good X-Men games do rather then the enjoyable Spider-Man game.

Graphics
The Hulk features an artistic style of graphics. It’s a whole new style cell shading that gives off a distinct comic book feel. Whenever Hulk bangs the ground, smashes the walls, or causes something to explode he shall leave behind some mark in the environment, which looks cool. However the games environments are plagued by repetitive level design. At least the levels look very sharp and clean.
But while on the subject of repetitiveness, lets talk about the enemies. In the game you will fight hoards after hoards of enemies, which remarkably all look exactly the same. The characters that do look different, like The Hulk and bosses, tend to look very nice and pleasing to the eyes. Another nice thing about the games visuals is the frame rate that is able to maintain its 60 frames per second most of the time with very few slow down times.
Gameplay
The Hulk has you play through the game switching between The Hulk and his alter ego Bruce Banner. Both feature their own gameplay style different from the other. Unfortunately Bruce Banners levels are really what bring this game down. As Bruce Banner you must use stealth to beat his levels. That may sound all good and fun to you but when you start to play it you will notice that these stealth missions are really simplistic and overall just a waste of your time. Most of the time you have to infiltrate some facility. You get to do all sorts of stealthy things like pushing crates, getting on top of crates, hiding behind crates, oh yeah and there’s crates in the game. Even though the stealth missions may sound easy, they do get quite tedious later on. Also in these Bruce Banner stages you have this health meter that acts somewhat like a sanity meter. When the meter goes all the way down, it goes down when you get hit is a no no, you will transform into Hulk and essentially fail your mission. Now this is made all the more difficult with its fixed camera which can have you walking then switch the camera switches automatically to reveal that you are in the sights of a enemy guard. Another thing that wastes your time in the Bruce Banner missions is the hacking mini game. Which has you switching around numbers and letters in less than 20 seconds to unlock doors. Why you have to do it less than 20 seconds, and why these bad guys of today don’t use keys blows my mind.
The other half of the game has you playing as The Hulk. Playing as Hulk has you mainly just running from one end of the stage to the other. This is where the fun is. The Hulk has a wide range of movies and ability so to make beating up the bad guys a little more fun then just smashing one button down continuously. Another thing that you can do while playing as Hulk is basically rip apart and destroy everything within your reach. Basically everything except the walls and floor can be picked up and tossed at your enemies, including your enemies. Vivendi does a wonderful job of making it feel like you’re The Hulk with a lot of power to just massacre enemies are tear apart your surroundings. There are mainly three drawbacks to Hulks missions. First one is that they are short and you’ll end up beating this game quickly. The second is that you’ll soon find out that you can just run through most of Hulks missions bypassing all the endless hoards of enemies and completing the mission. Third thing is that the gameplay of hulk is simple and can get a little boring.
Sound
The games sound doesn’t really impress you, nor does it detract from the experience of the game. It’s just average, from its average sound effects to its average soundtrack. The Hulk does however feature voice acting from the movies actors, but yet again nothing ground breaking.
Replayability
You should be able to complete the story mode in less than 10 hours. And the horrible Bruce Banner missions may scare you away from coming back, but Vivendi was sure to pack in a bunch of unlock able goodies ranging from unlock able movies from the making of the movie, new difficulties, movie trailers, and of course a large amount of cheats. Maybe it won’t bring the casual gamer back to play it again but it should bring back Hulk fanatics for another spin.
Overall
Hulk could have been much better then what it was. Harmed by horrible Bruce Banner stealth missions that you just aren’t expecting in a game featuring this powerful character Hulk. With a game featuring the hulk you just want to go through the game and smash things, and you when you get to do that it’s really fun. But it seems that Vivendi added the Bruce Banner missions to try to spice up the gameplay and not have you get sick of the Hulk missions, but they just weren’t able to pull it off right. So as it is, Hulk is not what you would call a good game. If you’re a big fan of the hulk or think this game sounds fun, I say go and rent it. For everyone else, stay away from this game.