Taking superheroes and putting them into video games has always been a popular past time to get some sales. But most super hero games had nowhere near the same charm as their comic book or movie based counterparts. After the success of Spiderman in the theaters, the rush to make new superhero licensed games was on. Today’s game was one of the early superhero games to get open world gameplay right.
Hulk Ultimate Destruction :
It may come as a surprise to most of you but I’m not a huge comic book fan. My own understanding of comic book characters comes from cartoons, TV and any movies.
There have been a few games based on the Hulk, including one based on the first movie directed by Ang Lee. However none of the games really succeeded as platformers or beat-em-ups.
After the success of the Spiderman games, both original and on the licensed movies, Radical Entertainment was the next studio to attempt to create a Hulk game, and it worked.
Radical wisely choose not to follow in the same shoes as the previous Hulk game and set Hulk Ultimate Destruction in its own unique story with the voice actor from the Hulk cartoon of the 90s. Players had free reign to run, leap and smash things as Hulk.
Similar to Spiderman 2, the moment to moment gameplay was far more than just running towards objectives and one button combat. Hulk had a full list of special moves, finishers and ways to leap around town. The game space was mostly horizontal with very few buildings for the player to climb.
The enemies were varied for an open world game with police and soldiers replaced by tanks, copters and mechs to take down the player. Hulk was mostly story based, with some side missions that opened up here and there along with a basic collectible hunt of finding comics.
Expanding the basic moveset compared to other open world games was a smart move by the developers as it made combat interesting and gave the game some personality. In the end, what keeps Ultimate Destruction from being # 1 is that while the game’s moment to moment gameplay was great, the developers really didn’t make full use of the open world.
The gamespace as mentioned was mostly flat and once you upgraded Hulk’s super jump enough, you could just keep hopping from building to building without touching the ground. The side quests weren’t that interesting and with the only reward being experience, eventually you would run out of things to upgrade and have no reason to do them.
Hulk Ultimate Destruction could have really used a collectible hunt like Crackdown, hell; every open world game could use a collectible hunt like Crackdown. The lowest point for the game would have to be the boss fights that were basic pattern fights in constrained areas.
Because the game was an open world title, the camera was not designed that well and would get caught on objects or when you were close to buildings. Having boss fights in tight areas made them all the more frustrating to deal with.
A second Hulk game loosely based on the second movie was eventually released but it didn’t do as well compared to Hulk Ultimate Destruction. Incidentally, Radical did take what they learned and went on to create the Prototype series.
While they did refine the game mechanics, the series lacked the charm of Hulk Ultimate Destruction and the developers still had trouble making a setting that you really wanted to explore.
With that, we come to #1 tomorrow, a game that managed great moment to moment gameplay and as a coincidence, was another superhero game.
Up Next: Only the second open world game to have Bruce Campbell
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