What this review is going to focus on are a few questions that need to be answered by software companies in the near future, and point out why The Incredible Hulk is the perfect game example of how these questions arise.

Question One -- Why can I always tell when a movie tie-in game strays from the filmic thread?

The Incredible Hulk, the film, was written by Ed Norton, actor and sometime screenwriter. So, it's safe to say that he knows his way around the typewriter and how to turn a phrase. Pacing, characters, you can tell that he has strong chops when the 'movie scenes' come into play in this title.

But, when you start on your first Enclave mission with Rick Jones (spectacular idea, adding Jones, I might add), you see how paper thin both the design of the enemies and the premise of the story are. The Enclave are a group of super-geniuses who use 'New York as their private testing ground'...So, they send costumed villains out to muck about on the streets along with their mutated freak friends at a pretty constant rate, doing little experiments on the good people of the Big Apple.

And no one seems to give a damn but Rick Jones and the Hulk.

Oh, and the military attacks you whenever you try to thwart them. Giving the designers the benefit of the doubt, I think they were trying to make the player feel constantly enraged by frustrating things like that (more on that later) to get them in a 'Hulk' mood.

So, the story is paper thin, and when you're not getting a scene pretty much verbatim from the flick, you're getting this tin-eared dialogue that comes off as cartoony, even for a game based on a comic book and cartoons!

And the Enclave look like Master Chief. And their armor is constantly bump mapped with a Gears of War - type grunginess that shows another flaw in this title, the design team's reliance on middleware to create a title.

Question Two -- Why do you abuse the design tools?

By that, I mean, why is it that people create games with a near-perfect physics engine, and the physics in the game are so wonky that it's glaring?

The first level will stun you with just how wonky the physics are. In a game with a superhero who is massive, and massively strong, you want to feel like everything has weight. However, if your character brushes up against a propane tank (Which Brazil has like a million of in their factories--Hank Hill would be proud) it will explode in a spectacular blaze, hurting you a little, and disorienting you a little more. Even running near the human enemies will probably kill them, or send them ping-ponging across the level in a hilarious fashion.

When this is a good thing is when you snatch up a puny human, and see just how far you can toss him. (Note: you're the Hulk, so you can literally toss a guy like five city blocks. I spent about fifteen minutes just trying to launch guys over the Empire State Building.)

Nothing seems to have weight, nothing seems to be substantive, and when you have super-tweaked out physics mixed with shady collision detection--WHEE!! Let the glitches begin! This becomes a truly brutal exercise when you're faced with the U-Foes. A crappy, second-rate villain team from the comics, who become a monumental problem when playing the game.

Also, it's clear the buildings and the landscape are generated by a random surfacing tool, which is evinced by gargoyles perching on every corner of every building, even when there are four buildings whose sides touch. the gargoyles are sitting in the center of the roof. So, not good.

Question Three -- Is it just about money? Really?

I understand these movie tie-in titles are just a grab for cash most times, but when a company like SEGA puts out something so buggy, I have to wonder why they got involved at all? Based on the time spent with Incredible Hulk, and noting the pattern of the missions and side games, it seems like they tried to mix the GTA III model with the Spider-Man model of gaming, and came up with something that falls short of both. Spidey comes out ahead, even with his ugly and shameful third movie outing game, it was still more fun to move around as Spidey than it is as the Hulk.

When it comes to a title like this, much of the problem comes from ridiculous slowdown when lots of things are on the screen at once (had a freeze-up during a mission breaking into military safes that was particularly annoying). Or, that Hulk, upon entering water, gets flung in a random direction and keeps jumping regardless of your input (or maybe in SPITE of your attempts to control him). This is easily explained, they didn't have resources to either A: animate swimming frames or B: Create water models for walking through the water.

These questions need to be answered before we continue making games like Iron Man, Spider-Man 3, and sadly, the Incredible Hulk game.

And it boils down to this; SEGA should have taken a few more months to polish this title. None of the problems here have to do with bad programming, per se. It has to do with the money-grab this title was designed to be, and if it weren't so obvious, this game would be less offensive on that level. Only the things that directly tie into the film look great, and the rest looks passable for a last-gen title. Hulk as a character deserves better, and we as consumers should demand better from the game designers.

The writing in the game was lacking in polish, which isn't surprising. Not many games have a focus of storytelling, and the ones that do, take a while to make. BioShock or Mass Effect both have some quirks, Mass Effect especially has visual bugs and flaws that are reduced by the effect the story has on you as a player. The Hulk has no depth, and the story falls flat, being about as generic as it can get, when you're not seeing something from the film.