With The Incredible Hulk taking in $54 million in its first movie weekend, Sega opted to release a licensed video game of the same name. It allows players to smash through locales using the Marvel hero's insurmountable strength. Unfortunately, the game suffers from additional setbacks, almost to the point where you want to yell "HULK SMASH!" and throw it into a wall.

Hulk and Abomination's showdown isn't nearly as epic here. Note the lack of destroyed stuff. Click on image for more screenshots.

You'll find that the Hulk has plenty of moves in his arsenal as he battles against pseudo-military enemies, mutated members of the Enclave division and, eventually, a huge menace known as Abomination. Unfortunately, you'll struggle to pull most of them off. Punches are limited to pressing buttons on the Wii remote and Nunchuk, rather than performing physical punching motions. Throwing objects (such as cars and decimated tanks) and climbing up buildings are executed by holding the down key on the d-pad, which wears your thumb out over time. As for performing Thunderclaps and healing techniques, forget it. You select the necessary tool from the sub-menu, shake the Nunchuk in a confusing manner and then press the B button at the precise moment.

Even worse are the in-game camera controls. You need to point the controller at the TV screen while holding down a button to rotate it manually. What sounds like an acceptable function is anything but. The camera rotates slowly and haphazardly, leaving you to take damage from your enemies while you try and get them into view. The lock-on system is equally broken. What should automatically target your nearest foe only works when you're really close to them. By that point, you can just manually walk up and punch them into the next city block. It's useless.

"Hulk need to find suitable new apartment." Click on image for more screenshots.

As if the graphics don't have enough problems. The Wii version of Hulk runs into terrible fog. Draw-in distances are poor, resulting in a huge amount of the white stuff. Climb a skyscraper, look out into the city and it's about all you'll see. What's worse, a few buildings disappear entirely. There are also abundant in-game bugs, particularly when you throw an enemy around. Flinging one sometimes results in them flying off in a completely different direction, or, in some cases, disappearing altogether. At least the sound remains unscathed, with decent voice acting (some by the film's cast, including Edward Norton and William Hurt), background music and destructive sound effects.

This game isn't entirely without merit. There are multiple power-ups scattered throughout the city that slowly expand Hulk's list of moves. For instance, one gives him the ability to run, which lets him plow over cars in his way. You can also throw cars around and level buildings down to the ground with a few punches if you feel like relieving stress. Again, you'll have to overcome the game's multitude of problems to find that joy.

Out of all the versions of The Incredible Hulk on shelves right now, the Wii version is the weakest versus the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 editions. The graphics chug along without taking advantage of the hardware, the camera controls are beyond awful and the gameplay lacks fun with the motion controls. All this game will do is make you angry, and we won't like you when you're angry.

Related Links

The Incredible Hulk Game Guide

Sega

Our Final ScoreBad

What did you think of this game? Post Your Own Review