(Originally published to Glitchwave on 7/10/2024)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Publisher: Sierra Entertainment
Genre(s): Open-World
Platforms: PS2, GCN, Xbox
Release Date: August 23, 2005
While the titular green giant is the central focus of Ultimate Destruction, its narrative is still centered around the trials and tribulations of the man behind the mask, or behind the mammoth-sized pituitary gland in this case. As enticing as it is to get a vicarious glimpse of how this freak of nature operates via the gaming medium, one can surely sympathize with poor Bruce and his involuntary transformations that paint him as public enemy #1. Because Bruce isn’t content with his unceremonious circumstances, he’s using the divided time in his standard status as a lucid, rational genius to devise a cure for his affliction. Or, at least something that will grant him more cognitive control over his tempestuous double persona that won’t result in a hazy, blank comedown like a bad hangover whenever he reverts back. With the aid of his psycho-analytical specialist companion, Leonard Samson, Bruce almost finishes a device that would’ve helped him achieve that desired mental stability. However, military commander Emil Blonsky puts the kibosh on Banner’s balancing act when he destroys the forested space he was using to construct the machine. Hulk and his friend take the remains of the device in the refuge of a remote church as they scour the surrounding urban and rural areas finding the missing pieces. Meanwhile, Blonsky begins to learn what happens when you fuck with The Hulk in ways that he never anticipated.
Other than hearing his voice during the mission preparations and seeing him during a few cutscenes, Ultimate Destruction relegates Bruce Banner to the background in favor of placing his angry alter ego front and center in the action. Solely playing as the superhero is a point of common sense that most if not all video game adaptations of these comic book characters abide by, but that’s not inherently what makes them so alluring. It's not as if Superman 64 bombed as badly as it did because the game was nothing but scenes of Clark Kent sitting idly in his Daily Planet cubicle mentally undressing Lois Lane out of sheer boredom. The key to immersion in any effective video game adaptation of a superhero property is honing the connection between the hero’s positive qualities and the player’s kinetic control over their particular traits that make them extraordinary. Figuring out what The Hulk offers as a distinctive superhero should’ve been an easy consensus in the Radical Entertainment studios, for he's the comic book hero arguably the most synonymous with brute, titanic strength to the extent where his might verges into the absurd. The Hulk can lift an SUV with one hand and spiral it like a football, tear a twenty-story building off the ground from underneath its bearings as if he were lifting the trunk of a car open, and bust through solid concrete as if the usually impenetrable material were made of tissue paper. He’s the epitome of the strength superpower associated with the common tropes of the superhero genre of fiction, even among so many others who possess this ability.
The Hulk’s distinctive explosive demeanor is also comparable to a bull running amok in a china shop, so his aerobic prowess and agility equally match his herculean physicality. Ultimate Destruction expertly taps into the ravaging potential of this big green beast by making it seem like no obstacle is too obstructive enough to hinder his unbounded rage. The Hulk can simply scale a skyscraper no matter the height by jogging vertically up its sides and leaping to meet an attacking military chopper at eye level to swat it out of the skies. The same adrenalized velocity that allows him to perform these amazing feats of athleticism also grants him a seemingly inexhaustible rate of endurance and endlessly sprinting around the field will leave a trail of wreckage like a tornado. “Smash points” are a currency in Ultimate Destruction earned by…well, smashing things like tanks, helicopters, and whatever else will attempt to resolutely subdue The Hulk. They can be used to purchase upgrades and unlock new abilities, turning an already formidable force of nature into an invincible A-bomb made flesh. Perusing through this scrolling laundry list of additional maneuvers will give The Hulk the potential to conduct illegal wrestling stunts on the cyborg enemies, swing light poles and tree trunks like golf clubs, and perform a combination of punches, uppercuts, and punt kicks in thunderous succession. A personal highlight from this move menu mostly used purely for merriment is riding around the field in a vehicle that The Hulk has crushed and fashioned like a skateboard, even though I question how the apparatus is accelerating. Is The Hulk peddling it with his feet like a car from The Flintstones? Anyways, regardless if The Hulk needs the added physical acuity or if the move is strictly for pleasure, every augmentation to The Hulk’s innate superhuman skill set is both thrillingly entertaining and greatly cathartic.
What better way to foster the extensive dexterity of The Hulk than crafting his game in the open-world genre? Game developers had recently discovered with the (loose) video game adaptation of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 that the non-linear, playground schematics associated with the genre’s core design philosophy worked wonders with letting a superhero flourish in an interactive medium. The player is given free rein to eagerly test the extent of each hero’s distinctive abilities like they’ve always pretended to do in the confined reality of their living spaces. Ultimate Destruction’s maps facilitate the same exciting prospect as Treyarch did for Marvel’s most popular superhero, but you’ll notice how the plural form I used alludes to how the game slightly differentiates in its direction. Between the tranquil, outlying hub of the church somehow situated on a quaint little islet are two fully-fledged areas that deviate dramatically in setting. In fact, the bustling, nightscape of the “city” and the unoccupied, arid canyon of the “badlands” presents such a dramatic and clear-cut contrast that I’d use them as examples in teaching grade school students the difference between urban and rural areas. Also, I’d like to point out that neither of these areas has distinct names attached, as they are referred to by their general topographical makeup. The city is congested with vehicles and offers wall-to-wall man-made architecture, and The Hulk can grab a large, inflatable corporate mascot in the shape of a silly-looking blue gorilla wearing swim trunks and use it as a parachute to glide from rooftop to rooftop. The badlands are conversely an organic foreground formed from years of erosion and tectonic activity, with a heavily guarded military base on one side of the canyon with a podunk, desert town alongside an array of oil refineries on the other. Fun fact: the cows that surround the marginally populated part of the badlands do not die regardless of how vigorously The Hulk throws them or uses them as a punching bag. While I can’t deny how generic both areas are, offering two open playgrounds with completely different terrains ensures that if the player grows bored of thrashing throughout one of them, jumping to the other from the church should reinvigorate them once again.
The player ideally shouldn’t tire of either area because they’ll consistently have a story mission to complete, hopping from the strikingly different settings depending on where the plot is being furthered. It’s only a matter of time before the malevolent branch of Banner’s infected cognition seduces him further to the darkness of mindless, disastrous destruction, a concept of mental deterioration that he personifies as “devil hulk.” Time is of the essence in gathering the remaining components needed for Bruce to literally face his demons, so many of the missions involve retrieving a piece of industrial equipment and carrying it back to the church through the initial launch point. As abundant as this type of mission is due to its relevance to Ultimate Destruction’s plot, they are not a favorable recurring task. The Hulk cannot attack the onslaught of enemies that chase him down like a swarm of pissed-off hornets when one of the machine’s parts is strapped under his right arm, so his vulnerability increases the likelihood of him collapsing. A logical solution would be to place the piece in a spot when the opposition becomes too overwhelming, but the CPU AI is astutely aware that the part is vital to successfully completing the mission and will attack it instead. The more combat-oriented missions should be vastly more pleasurable, but they expose the fact that Ultimate Destruction is tough as nails. Because The Hulk seems like the most insurmountable opponent on the planet, Ross and Blonsky’s military forces fire at will as if they are blindly expending all of their ammunition to quash the snarling titan. Their overly aggressive efforts seem to be effective, however, as The Hulk’s life force will deplete at an exceeding rate if he humors clapping back at his bushwhackers. Ultimate Destruction offers a few implementations that stave off The Hulk’s demise if the player actively engages with them in dire circumstances. For one, Hulk’s health bar features insurance whenever he collects more health than his initial gauge would allow, and the energy from this extra safeguard can be channeled into a screen-clearing sonic boom attack that impacts all enemies in the vicinity. On the other end of the spectrum, an infinitesimal sliver of Hulk’s health appears whenever his health bar has been exhausted by enemy fire, giving the player some opportunity to increase their health while The Hulk is still hanging on by a thread. When the player gets into the habit of smashing up shit to revitalize The Hulk as Jason Statham did in Crank, the combat-oriented missions become more manageable. However, the player will have to say a prayer to succeed in any mission involving defending a structure from the military. The event when The Hulk must perform this task for three-and-a-half minutes is the hardest mission in the game, and it's only the third one.
While the game’s missions were either vexing or failed to leave a lasting impression, I was far more impressed by the boss battles that Ultimate Destruction displayed. After completing a number of missions, a branching jump position will appear at the church hub that will transport The Hulk to the boss arena. Whether it be their layered health bars, gargantuan mass, or devastating damage output, every single boss that serves as the game’s pinnacle progress points are all immensely enervating foes. The cybernetic Hulkbuster Destroyer can only be damaged by hurling boulders at its dome, and this method of dispatching Ross’ classified, government-grade technology is escalated when he mans the Hulkbuster Titan and only the swinging of tanks in its direction is the only means of denting this colossus. Blonsky’s bodyguard and fellow gamma ray victim Mercy attempts to divert from the savagery of brute force with her teleportation-like agility, and Banner’s psychological descent into his own cognition where he fights the nightmare fuel that is “Devil Hulk” has the triumphant feeling of whenever an Elm Street protagonist prepares to fight Freddy Krueger by the end. The recurring boss that appears thrice throughout the game is The Abomination, aka Emil Blonsky’s mutant form that is Hulk-like only scalier and more intelligible. The main antagonist doesn’t really provide a challenge until he decides to bust open the dam as the climactic final act of the game, which will cast a flood of biblical proportions over the unnamed city if left unchecked by his mortal nemesis. I suppose The Abomination, or at least his unchanged human form, compensates for his fairly lackluster boss encounters by how prevalent he is throughout the entire story to the point where it seems to instead revolve around his journey into madness. More context to his grudge against Banner and all of his mutant ilk even leads him to be a sympathetic antagonist after all. However, the smack talk he dishes out during his fights is so lame that I want to beat him into submission regardless.
For being the unstable wildcard in the Avengers roster, The Incredible Hulk towers far above the higher esteem of all his peers at Marvel with this exemplary superhero video game alone. Ultimate Destruction’s handling of a few open-world aspects is admittedly middling, as its environments exist only for the purpose of giving The Hulk somewhere to run through and cause chaos and its missions are in one ear and out the other, provided the player is capable enough to complete them in the first place. Despite these discrepancies, it's rare to see a video game so enriched with pure, ID-driven destruction that the player can commit much less than in a licensed superhero game. Freely decimating all that stands before The Hulk is so satisfying that one has to experience it to really understand why it pumps my blood to the extent that it does. “Ultimate Destruction” couldn’t have been a more apt subtitle. It’s clobberin' time, bitches, and if The Thing wants to reclaim his catchphrase from his Marvel colleague, then he and his rubber-wearing quartet should make a Marvel game of this marvelous calibur. I doubt they ever will, though.
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