The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction Updated Hands-on

Not long ago, we took a brief look at a playable demo version of The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, the new action game from Radical and Vivendi Universal starring Marvel Comics' testy green dude. That demo's stringent time limit was severely disappointing to us, considering how entertaining we've found the game's free-range, smash-happy action so far. So needless to say, we're pleased to have gotten our hands on a full version of the game, and we put it through its paces to see how all that destruction has been extended out to full length.

Ang Lee's The Hulk is a couple of years gone at this point, so Radical didn't necessarily have the film's voice talent to rely on in bringing the new game's characters to life. Thus, Vivendi has kept the wraps on Ultimate Destruction's voice cast--until now. The company has just announced that Neal McDonough, seen in Star Trek: First Contact, Minority Report, and even the Hulk animated series, will play Bruce Banner. Meanwhile, the Hulk's nemesis, Emil Blonsky (aka Abomination), will be voiced by none other than Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman. Comic fans should be pleased at the inclusion of Blonsky, who's attempting to capture Banner and use his powers for nefarious ends.

It's interesting to see just how pervasive Grand Theft Auto's influence has been on Hulk and innumerable other recent and upcoming action titles. Like Rockstar's seminal crime drama series, the bulk of Ultimate Destruction doesn't have discrete levels, per se--just a giant city for you to roam around, terrorize, and demolish. You've got a minimap that guides you to your next mission, which you can pick up basically whenever you feel like it. Story missions are related to Banner's attempt to rid himself of his gamma-ray mutation, and these missions advance the plot and open up new areas each time they're completed. There are also a bunch of side missions available in which you can compete for a best time or high scores. These missions range from arbitrary challenges, such as requiring you to navigate a preset course in a specific time, to contextual fare like having the Hulk rescue people from a burning building. When successfully finished, these missions will yield a big bonus to your smash points, which are useful for unlocking new moves.

There are a ton of those moves, too. You start out the game with only a few basic combo attacks, but as you rack up the damage points you can purchase new combo strings, as well as special moves like area-of-effect attacks that allow the Hulk to destroy all opposition with even greater efficiency. There are even some passive abilities on offer, such as the "air recovery," which lets you land and immediately recover when you're attacked in the air.

Of course, you'll want to do the story missions to progress the plot, but luckily the simple act of roaming through (and smashing) the city is great fun in itself. We were frankly a little shocked at just how much there is to do when you've taken control of the Hulk. For starters, practically everything in the urban environment is destructible--phone booths, cars and buses, even many buildings. You can use your punch-and-kick combos and dash ability to just smash through everything in sight, but it's even more fun to pick up large objects and hurl them at cops, tanks, and even helicopters. The game has a useful auto-targeting system that makes it easy to aim your massive projectiles at whatever you want to take down, and we've found this to be among the most entertaining elements in the game so far. It's truly exhilarating the first time you pick up a bus, leap into the air, and launch it directly into an attacking chopper.

For that matter, even getting from place to place in Ultimate Destruction is a thrilling affair. Like in the comics, the Hulk travels in style--by leaping hundreds of feet through the air. Your regular jump is pretty weak, but you can hold down the jump button to charge up your power and release it to literally bound right over smaller buildings. Bigger high rises are no problem, though, because once you hit the building face you can actually run right up it or jump off toward another nearby building. The sense of high-flying speed is palpable as you travel around, and it is somewhat reminiscent of Treyarch's most recent Spider-Man title.

Then there's the weaponization. The what? You can "weaponize" a number of objects in the Hulk's environment, turning everyday elements of the city into deadly armaments that will enhance your destructive capabilities. For instance, grab a taxi off the curb, rip it in half, and fashion the remnants into massive steel gauntlets that will let you punch your way through the toughest armor. These steel gauntlets come in awfully handy, in fact, considering your bare fists can't damage the armor of certain enemies, like heavier tanks. We also managed to get our hands on a truck-mounted rocket launcher, which let us launch missiles at anything we could put a target lock on. Another favorite had us grabbing the barrel of a tank's cannon, ripping off the turret, and using it sort of like a giant baseball bat. The weaponization adds an extra level of depth to the gameplay, and we're looking forward to seeing how many other available makeshift weapons there are throughout the game.

For a game with "Ultimate Destruction" in the title, The Incredible Hulk seems to do a bang-up job of depicting stuff breaking, shattering, exploding...you know, getting destroyed. Just punching your way through a car will yield a big fireball, along with a chaotic explosion of glass and scrap metal flying in every direction. Every extra car and tank, or whatever other object that you add to the fray, just compounds the amount of pyrotechnics and debris that will fly every which way. As mentioned, you can even destroy a lot of buildings by throwing enough large objects at them, and it's great to see an entire skyscraper crumbling to the ground like in the old arcade game Rampage. You get a good sense of the Hulk's destructive capability from the overall presentation. The green one even leaves massive craters in the ground whenever he lands from a giant leap.

After 2003's middling action film and the similarly average tie-in game, we were surprised to see a new Hulk game at all. And now we're even more surprised, because so far it's pretty darn good. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is due out in August, so look for more in the coming weeks.