Hulk 2003 Game Review

This was a rather strange game for me to play. The game can be pretty good and it hardly feels like a movie tie in game at all and feels very disconnected from the movie it is based on.

This game feels like a cross between a 3D Streets of Rage and Final Fight with a mix of Metal Gear Solid. The brawling sections feels solid but basic and Ultimate Destruction would greatly improve the combat all though I prefer the level design, structure, art style and the fact that this game has more story. All though the story itself is your typical "Banner on the run" story and while I like they had a lot of Hulk villains many of them being obsucre where even I never heard about, I find it strange how Leader is hyped to be a big threat yet he appears so late in the game. Betty Ross only shows up once, and Eric Bana's performance I can't tell whether he is supposed to stoic or the voice directing but he seemed so uninterested in playing Banner in this game.

The stealth segments are okay and do their job even if I would prefer a traditional third person camera just to see behind corners better.

What does greatly lower the score is just how outrageous the difficulty gets later in the game. The game throws a lot of enemies and bosses at you later on and what makes this worse is that you have a limited continue system which I think is a bi product of game devs trying to take advantage of making as much money as they can through the rental system by making artifically challenging game design. The difficulty mainly comes from how many enemies and very tough enemies the game constantly throws at you. You will fight tanks, Hulk Busters(I think) and Hulk clones with guns a lot and the game will either throw them in heavy waves or have them respawn until you figure out how to open a locked part of the level. It also doesn't help that you have no reliable dodge roll button either making you easy to get hit by these guys especially when the Hulk Busters fire their "repulsor" blasts at you.

The bosses are decent but when they throw in the gun wielding Hulk clones, they become frustrating because these enemies have a knack for hitting you hard and possibly even stun locking you, potentially leading a game over, I am not going to lie and say the save states helped because the limited continue system would make these section even more grating.

Overall, the game is an interesting precursor to Ultimate Destruction and the Prototype series, and I like the more linear traditional game design but it is held back but so many things like difficulty spikes, a limited continue system and some really cheap enemies.