Hulk Review (Xbox)
A divisive game for a divisive comic book film. What a perfect match.
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Publisher: Universal Interactive
Release Date: 28th May 2003 (NA), 13th June 2003 (EU), 26th June 2003 (AU)
Platforms: Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, PC
Ang Lee’s Hulk was seen as a little bit divisive at the time. We already had Blade, X-Men, Spider-Man, Daredevil, all action packed films with fantastical shots. But Hulk was the complete opposite of that. Even as a child I remember watching it thinking “Huh… This is different” and being a bit disappointed in it. I liked the hulking out scenes, the desert scene, and even the final confrontation between Bruce and David Banner was interesting as well as seeing how the film was made. The gamma dog fight scene was very odd to me and so was how the film was edited to look more comic book-like. There was no Abomination, no Leader, and David Banner I thought was an odd choice for a villain. It had nothing I knew of the Hulk at that time, and I also thought it moved rather slowly. Despite how odd it was I still relished the video (which I still own as well as the DVD). It was Hulk, it was special and I loved the 90’s animated series. It hasn’t been until in recent years where my brain made me remember the film and re-evaluate it and you know, it’s actually really good. It’s more comic accurate than I thought in how it deals with Hulk in a more psychological way, particularly in David’s (Brian in the comics) abuse of Bruce as a child and how that trauma manifested itself as the Hulk. It all feels like a Marvel Knights comic. It also was bold enough to do what a lot of comic book films fail to do today and because of that I’m always gonna defend Lee’s Hulk film.
But this isn’t a film review, this is a video game review. Hulk is another film tie-in that makes you go beyond the film taking place either around, during, before or after the film. This takes place years after the film and serves more as a sequel. Banner is still on the hunt for a cure and gets an intriguing lead from a former mentor Geoffrey Crawford, who sends Banner down a path thinking he’ll get a cure. Only Crawford decieves him to duplicate Hulk’s power and turn Crawford into Ravage to cure his own neurodegenerative disease. Now with another gamma powered monster on the loose, Banner fights to stop him. On his quest he comes across other gamma powered enemies Half-Life, Madman, General Ryker and his gamma soldier Flux, and eventually the big bad behind all this madness, the Leader, who having been aided by Ravage plans to create more gamma monsters and unleash them upon the world. It’s all very comic booky and it’s servicably good and quite fun. However looking into it a bit deeper and according to one of the game’s designers Eric Holmes, there was some, naturally, cut content which condensed the plot more than they would have liked. Still, there is a good variety of enemies drawn from the comics as well as the gamma dogs from the film, one other element carried over from it as well as the gamma orb, so it feels more comic book accurate than the film could be percieved as.
Hulk is a linear beat ‘em up and the game is balanced out by playing as both Hulk and Banner. Hulk levels you naturally go around smashing goons and everything around you. Banner levels have you sneaking around and solving puzzles all while avoiding becoming the Hulk, or else plans go horribly wrong. There is one cool level as Banner where you’re sneaking around gamma base—which has now been overtaken by General Ryker in Ross’s absence— but you’ve been sedated, preventing you from becoming the Hulk no matter what. Sure, you can throw punches as Banner but that’s only as a last last resort. He’s not made for fighting off 5 guys at a time. But at this point Banner’s really stuck. You can’t fight off anyone, you can’t turn into the Hulk at all, the effects get worse and worse causing a hazy effect on the screen so you best get around the base collecting the ingredients you need for an antidote quick. And once you do you’re all sorted and you Hulk out and smash gamma base up. It’s great. However, some areas as Banner are a bit iffy in navigating because of the camera not always cooperating with you, making you play guesswork on where a guard is coming from off screen. The computer puzzles, while simple, can sometimes be needlessly tricky and if you fail you gotta hear Banner explain the puzzle all over again. These puzzles are on a time limit as well so it all gradually becomes quite tedious. Early ones aren’t so bad but the later ones you gotta move quick and that’s when they become quite annoying.
Hulk Smash! Hulk smash puny soldiers. Hulk smash stupid army toys. Hulk grab gamma monsters and Hulk throw them at puny soldiers. Hulk smash environment and Hulk throw big rocks at bad guys holding shields. Hulk grab poles from walls and swing like big club. Hulk like watching puny soldiers spin away. Make Hulk laugh. But Hulk gets hurt. Puny bullets chip Hulk’s health away a little, but stupid gamma monsters hurt Hulk more. The more Hulk hurt, the angrier Hulk get. Hulk smash enemies harder and get health and rage orbs. Hulk go into rage mode and the angrier Hulk get the stronger Hulk get. Hulk uses stronger ground pound in rage mode. Hulk smash everything in sight. Bigger monsters like Madman hurt Hulk even more. Make Hulk mad. Hulk smash stupid red man. Hulk squash mean Half-Life. Hulk bash stupid Ravage. Hulk trash big headed Leader and stupid plans. Hulk destroy enemies. Hulk is strongest one there is!
Yeah, playing as Hulk is pretty fun. He gets a pretty decent amount of moves, combos and powers. You get your sonic clap which helps stun enemies. You can ground pound and have air attacks too. You can smash up your environment giving you more toys to grab and throw and make as weapons, especially useful against shielded enemies. You can get a little overwhelmed at times by enemies but more often than not you should be ok, especially with rage mode, which increases each time you get hit as well as orbs you can pick up. You can also lock onto enemies and objects and use further combat moves there but it doesn’t always work how you want it to, and more often than not I hardly used it aside from boss fights and specific things that needed destroying. There is a first person camera view to look around but I never found too much use in that either.
Sadly gameplay can get a little bit repetitve at times going down sometimes bland levels and Banner levels can overstay their welcome, as good as it is anyway for them to break up the pacing of smashing. I would have liked for there to be a variety of puzzles to solve as Banner. It feels like you could and should get more out of the game but like all film tie-in games they were always done on a tight schedule so that meant not enough time to polish the game and often too much gets cut out to give it a bit more substance. There’s no hidden items for unlocks to find tucked in levels, most levels can be done a little too fast and the longevity of the game is quite short and the whole game can be beaten in about 6 or so hours. It can be all done in a weekend afternoon. What’s more obvious in missed opportunities is in its boss fights. It feels like you’re intended to fight them in a certain way but as was revealed by Holmes a lot of it was stripped back which makes certain boss fights rather imbalanced and harder than they ought to be or rather too easy and short. You do get additional goodies however. Challenge modes where you must survive against wave after wave of enemies for as long as possible or beat a number of enemies within a set amount of time or smash everything. Of course there are cheats for infinite health and rage, more damage, more health, less health for enemies, and grey Hulk too, complete with his own unique voicelines. Inputting these codes are odd as they’re done through a console in Banner’s levels, I’ve never seen cheats done that way before. To make that more confusing there is still a code input screen in the options menu.
Aside from the logo and promo art by Dale McKeown, visually this game doesn’t much represent the Hulk film at all. Well, Banner does rather resembles Eric Bana and there’s the gamma dogs of course, and the gamma orb does play into the plot briefly. It’s much more comic inspired and original, trying to add on further from what could happen after the end of the film. It has a very lovely comic cel-shaded and illustrative look which really sets for a unique Hulk depiction and I think it looks great. The villains look superb with Half-Life and Leader getting more unique interpretations from their comic looks. The animation in cutscenes and during gameplay is fluid and vibrant with some exaggerated movements. The Hulk transformations look painful and agonising yet have a cool Kirby crackle glow to him adding a more cartoony and illustrative look to it all. Some enemy types, while alright, do become a bit samey after a time but there is still frequent changeups of enemy types the deeper you get into the game. But overall it’s a great game to look at with a strong art direction despite some levels looking a bit disinteresting.
The music works but it’s otherwise a bit basic. It ain’t on the same level as Danny Elfman’s film score. It sets the mood and tone well enough but there’s nothing spectacular about it. The sound effects are quite strong. The punches hit hard, everything cracks and breaks nicely, there’s a good destructive soundscape going on. The voice cast is mostly great. Eric Bana is the only returning actor from the film as Banner— Betty does show up but she’s voiced by Katie Bennison— and he does very well. He did his lines while he was still shooting the film, so being Banner was still very fresh and easy for him to get into the role and seeing his continuation is great. He easily brings a lot of weight and responsibility to shouldering the curse of being the Hulk. I quite like his performance as Banner. Graig Robertson voices the Hulk and nothing really interesting comes from him past a few typically warranted angry growls, which is a shame. Two thirds of the Dobson brothers, Michael and Paul, voice Leader and Madman respectively. Michael does pretty well as Leader, a very egomanical one at that. The only downside is Leader only shows up for maybe 5 minutes at the end of the game with nothing more going on for him other than showing up saying “Hi! I’m here! It’s me! I’m the main villain of this whole game! I wanna make a gamma army! Thanks Brucie!” And then gets beaten before he disappears. Madman doesn’t really stick out to me much other than wanting to fight Hulk a lot. Half-Life was voice by Lee Tockar who also voices Flux in the game. When I heard Half-Life I was sure it was Mark Hamill as he sounds so much like him but I guess not. Ravage reminded me of Azimuth from Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time but him I did like anyhow. In addition to grey Hulk, he was voiced by Michael Donovan, who voiced him in the 90’s animated series. He gets unique voicelines mocking the enemies and even during boss fights he gets specific voicelines there. It does add another layer to your imagination playing this game on what it would be like if the sequel focused on grey Hulk and how that would feel. After all, with how Crawford turns into Ravage I would argue it would warrant Banner turning into grey Hulk there. And it does make for a fun further playthrough.
Much like the film, it’s not a perfect game, but it is a film tie-in so it is mired with the usual time constraints and cut content etcetera, it’s not an excuse but a valid explanation to its faults. It is quite short, some levels are much shorter than others, Banner’s stealth levels don’t always work well and they become like Mary Jane’s levels in Insomniac’s Spider-Man, it can be hard to break out of a bombardment of attacks as you can’t block attacks, some boss fights can be janky, moving about as Hulk can be a bit stiff, combos don’t always land as you want them to, locking on doesn’t always work, the story gets hastened and a lot of characters get drastically underused because of it which results in forgetting certain characters were even in the game to begin with as time goes on. At times it also felt like and made me think of X-2: Wolverine’s Revenge, for better or worse. They were all released about the same time and made in the same vein.
However, it is quite possibly the first good Hulk game despite its flaws. Radical very much tried their best to do what they could to make a fun game within the time and constraints they had to make it. They introduced destructible environments for Hulk to interact with which is a fantastic development to have for a Hulk game, it can feel good smashing as the Hulk, they were ambitious with Banner’s levels, and there’s a lot of reward for your time with the game. You get further unlockable modes, incentive to replay the game with grey Hulk, cheats making things easier, and additional material from the film. You get behind the scenes looks and details on Hulk’s transformation, vs the gamma dogs, and the desert battle. You get a making of the game to watch, trailer and teaser trailer for the film, movie f/x, and being able to rewatch films from the game.
It’s not all bad. It’s a fun smashing time. The experience is more short and sweet serving as an addition to the film and something I feel to get you more curious and interested in the comics, to find out more about these characters used in the game. Half-Life was prominent in an issue of Peter David’s run when Joe Fixit came about. Ravage, Flux and Ryker were rather newer faces at the time having appeared 3-5 years prior in Paul Jenkins’ run and Ravage in Glenn Greenberg’s Rampaging Hulk. Madman is another character that has closer ties to Banner than this game shows as well as being Leader’s brother, and Leader of course is a classic Hulk villain. It’s just a shame that there wasn’t more time to flesh out these characters and do more with them, as well as more that you could do in the game. But, such is the curse of a tie-in game. Despite that, it would later be followed up with The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Not a sequel but a whole new game that managed to build on from a lot of what was established here and give a truly remarkable Hulk experience. So all was not lost here after all.
Where to Purchase:
eBay: £1.17 - £70 / $10 - $500
Amazon: £4 - £35 / $10-$15
CeX: 50p - £4
Also available on PC here