To begin with, I finished reading Doctor Faustus, and I have to say I feel a little robbed. First, I got it off a list of the 100 scariest books, and it's not even a damned book. It's a play. Okay, fine. Whatever. I've read plays, and what with Marlowe being a contemporary of Shakespeare, it's not like I'll just blow through it. I'm sure some of you had to read Hamlet or Macbeth in school and know what I'm talking about. Well, guess what - I blew through it. I will say this - I think that if it was properly staged, it could be scary as hell. So, no review for that.
So, onto the actual topic - Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. First, I would say this is one of the most open games I've played. Yes there are a sequence of events that you have to follow to finish the game (which I didn't do - more on that later), but if you want, you can just run around smashing stuff up and collection points and comic book covers while irritating the armed forces into attacking you.
So, the gist of the game should be familiar to any Marvel fan (and now a lot of movie fans). You're Bruce Banner. When you get mad, you turn into a big green guy that has anger issues. He smashes stuff. The game arc is that your doctor friend found a way for you to exercise some self control while you're the Hulk, using his strength for your own purpose, that purpose, as usual, being to find a cure.
At first, it's a great setup. As the Hulk, you can interact with nearly everything in your environment. Sure, that interaction usually results in something getting destroyed, but it's entertaining anyway. Nearly everything is a weapon. See a light post? Break it off and use it as a bat. Pick up a car, split it in half, and now you have a pair of righteous boxing gloves. And while throwing a cow was fun, throwing a tank was so much more satisfying.
The catch is the sheer number of things you can do. As you destroy stuff and accomplish missions, you earn point you can use to buy new moves. While this is cool, you eventually hit the point of having all of these moves that you really don't use. In fact, I managed to get by with only two or three of the moves for most of the major battles. Add to that the fact the moves become fighting game style button combos, and I would have to have dedicated hours to just learning how to pull them off. As a "casual gamer", I'm not really a fan of spending more time learning a game rather than playing a game.
The other issue was that the missions themselves get repetitive really quickly. The whole game boils down to "Destroy X", "Retrieve X", or "Defend X", all while being attacked by military personnel. The first few times it was amusing, and the big boss battles were interesting, but a lot of the stuff in between was a lot less fun than free roaming.
I will point out that the game has a ton of mini games that kind of make up for the lack of interesting missions. The mini games are hot spots in the areas you roam where you can take on challenges for points to earn new moves. They range from Golf (with a boulder as a ball) to races to kicking cars through a goal post. The mini games ended up being a lot more fun than the actual game.
In the end, I lost interest in the missions to the point where I didn't finish the game. Because all of the missions have to be performed in a linear order, it started to become a chore to try and progress. Each time I played, I had to seriously consider whether I wanted to try and make any progress, or if I'd just smash stuff until the tanks showed up to try and stop me. As often as not, I chose the latter.
So, overall, the game was amusing, but not anything I would highly recommend. If you're big into fighting games you might get more out of it. I just couldn't make myself care anymore about retrieving one more part for one more machine.
Oh, and they put in an escort mission (you know - protect this doof driving a Pinto through a military zone). I've said it before and I'll say it until they learn. No one likes *$&%ing escort missions. No one. Stop putting them into games. Seriously.
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