The Incredible Hulk (Wii) Review
The Incredible Hulk on Wii is a poor attempt at an open-world game that features bad graphics, a sub-par presentation, uninspired sound and broken gameplay. It does nothing to enhance the great movie experience, and in fact does more to harm the reputation of the Hulk franchise. This is even more disappointing when considering the previous Incredible Hulk game, Ultimate Destruction, which did a fantastic job of recreating the Hulk experience for the player.
The problems with the Incredible Hulk start with its graphics and sound. In an effort to give Wii owners the same experience as those playing on other consoles, the developers have attempted to shoehorn the PS3/360 game into the far less powerful Wii. This has led to incredibly short draw distances and textures that look like they are being viewed through a thick pane of dirty glass. It is something that directly affects the gameplay as well, with the streets appearing empty and the fog obscuring the landscape to a point where it is hard to see where to go next or judge the massive jumps Hulk is capable of performing. The sound feels like an afterthought, with flat voice overs by the film cast and standard sound effects that don’t ever go past the bare minimum of what should be expected. It is all very average stuff and very disappointing.
The gameplay is another area that falls well short of expectations with confusing controls mapped to the buttons of the Wii remote and nunchuk without any thought for usability. The wonderful thing about the Wii is the opportunity for motion to be incorporated into games. As proven by many other games, motion can turn a video game from a passive experience into an immersive engagement. When players feel engaged, they feel a part of the action, which should be the goal of any game developer. The problem for the Wii is that motion control is an all or nothing kind of thing. In the case of The Incredible Hulk, the unique Wii controls feel like an afterthought, as if it was decided that some form of movement was required and the developers just slapped it into the game at the last minute. If developers are going to persist in making these quick and dirty Wii ports, something they should consider is allowing players to select a direct port of the controls as well. The classic and Gamecube controllers should have been made available as options and could have made the game somewhat less frustrating for the player. In the case of The Incredible Hulk, controls have been simply mapped to whatever button was available and some waggle thrown in to make it a Wii game.
The gameplay features very little variety in its missions, mainly consisting of fetch-quests and protection tasks. These tasks are carried out in a virtual New York where all of the buildings and environments are destructible. In true open world fashion, the player is free to concentrate on completing the available missions however they choose, or to ignore the missions and just cause mayhem and destruction. This is where one of the game’s more interesting features comes in, with a threat level that measures the level of destruction the player is wreaking and scales the city’s defense to deal with the threat. By creating a little havoc, soldiers will be sent to deal with the Hulk’s menace to society. Creating full scale mayhem will see tanks, helicopter gunships and even men wearing Hulkbuster suits arrive. It’s a great concept, but one that is badly implemented as the enemies are nowhere near dangerous enough to threaten the Hulk, especially if the player has developed a good grasp of the special moves. The enemy AI is just not smart enough to make the player feel like they are in any real danger.
That lack of danger is something that really detracts from the overall experience. Without any real threat to the player, all that is left is to finish the lacklustre 10 hour story mode and track down the various collectibles that litter the city. Destroying the scenery is fun for a bit, but without a real threat to the Hulk it becomes somewhat tedious. There is some value for money deep down within the package, but whether most players will be bothered to stick with the game long enough to take advantage is doubtful. There needs to be some consequences for the Hulk’s destructive actions, but unfortunately this isn’t the case here. There is no point creating multiple hours of gameplay and extra content if the game is not good enough to keep a player’s interest. The Incredible Hulk would have been a far better package if less time was devoted to developing content and more time devoted to developing the core gameplay. A bad game is bad, no matter how much content is packed into it, while a good game is good, even if it is a short experience.
One of the most disappointing things about The Incredible Hulk is that the previous console Hulk game, Ultimate Destruction, has shown how much fun can be had as the great big, angry, green monster. When making a sequel, the minimum standard should be to exceed the experience of the previous game. It should be an achievable goal too, especially considering the benchmark has already been set and the core ideas for how to make the game fun are already there. It is therefore unforgivable that The Incredible Hulk is such a bad game in comparison.
There is a misconception that third party games don’t sell on the Wii. This kind of misconception is only ingrained and multiplied when games this obviously inferior are shoveled on to the system with such minimal effort. It should come as no surprise to anyone if sales of The Incredible Hulk on Wii fall well behind the sales of those on other consoles. That is not to say sales of this sub-par effort should be at all great on the PS3 or Xbox 360, but at least there seems to have been a modicum of effort going into those versions. The Wii version of The Incredible Hulk is a poor effort, of that there is no doubt. The decision to make it was obviously an afterthought that was made in response to the fantastic popularity of the little white box from Nintendo. When compared to other games on the system, there is very little reason to recommend it to anyone. Even fans of the Hulk character have a viable alternative in the form of the sadly unappreciated The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on Gamecube.
