*RROOAARR* *smash* *punch* *grab and leap into the air and then slam on the ground* *thunderclap buildings to death*
When your just running around and just trying to unlock "feats" and collect canisters the game never autosaves so if it locks up then, then you would lose progress. You shouldnt have to, but you can trigger autosaves by using the subway systems or just choosing to save&quit in the pause menu.
The rest of the time the game autosaves after you complete each and every mission or mini-game and if you lock up during a mission who cares you can just replay it.
The game freezing happens probably once every 4-6 hours maybe?? Its not super frequent but they are not rare either. This is something you will have to decide for yourself if you are willing to put up with it. The random battles and free roam are the BEST part of the game and its also the thing thats most effected by the game freezes.
Ok lets move on to the good news. It pains me to say this but I cant give you a comparison of this game to Ultimate Destruction because I havent got to play that game. So my opinions are totally derived from this game by itself.
This game is one of the best free roam super hero games I have ever played. It blows any of the spiderman games completely out of the water. It has just about infinite replay value. There are 3 types of random battles that can occur while your hopping through the city. The first is fights with the army. These occur when you smash to much stuff and raise the threat level. There are various threat levels and the higher it goes the bigger and nastier stuff they send at you. If you stand around your threat level slowly goes down but you can also catch a subway ride and ditch them.
The second type is random attacks by some bad guys called "the enclave". They send various troops to attack the city and they usually spawn within your mini-maps range. If you leave them alone they just keep blowing stuff up. These guys are kind of lame because they dont keep sending in more like the army, There is only a handful and once they are gone they are gone.
The third type of random battles I cant really go into because it would spoil things but there is another thing that random spawns near you and those battles have a set number of enemies to and do not escalate but those battles are more fun than the enclave.
Another killer thing about this game are the subways. You start with like 1-3 known subways around new york but as you play you will spot more on your minimap and if you walk up to it then it gets "unlocked" which will enable you to use it from then on. Subways let you warp around the map. The game also gets saved anytime you go for a ride. You can move the cursor to pick the subway you want to warp to or you can cycle through them. Its awesome if you dont want to bother hopping and jumping your way to a far away location. Just remember to watch out for subway symbols on your mini-map so you can unlock them all, there are 18 in all. Whenever I find a few canisters or unlock a feat I go for a ride to save the game.
Yet another killer option in this game is the ability to goto your map and scroll through past missions and then play them whenever the hell you feel like it. Your not stuck having to go back through the game in a linear fashion or even restart at all. You could have just crushed the hell out of the army and then decide to go do one of your favorite missions. Besides story missions you also unlock mini-games along the way and you can replay those to. Some of them are pretty fun. One in particular I really love called "12 days.......".
In this game you learn new combos and new moves and gain new abilities by completing goals or feats. Fake example: "Chuck 5 guys off a roof". Usually to unlock stuff requires you to complete a couple of different feats but once you do you become more powerful. You can view what you need to do to unlock stuff at any time and 99.9% of them are crystal clear on what your suppose to do.
There are also hidden canisters all over new york to let you expand your health and rage meters. 100 canisters for each. You get an extra box of either for every 30 canisters you collect. Collecting canisters is pretty fun. There is fog in this game because of graphics limitations but canisters glow green or red and are easy to spot in the distance. Half are not so easily spotted though and thats where your ears come in to play. The canisters give off noise the closer you are. Hunting down stuff by sound is fun and slightly frustrating hehe, but its better than nothing. Do youself a favor and mute the music when you play to help find them. I get so paranoid now, i swear I hear the canister sounds even when they arent around lol.
The controls are pretty good, you get a lock on button(although you have to point the camera at the thing you want to lock onto). I wish it was a proximity lock on but I guess people would complain about it locking onto the wrong stuff. You can easily switch targets while locked on just by using the right stick. Jumping isnvt very responsive. You have momentum so if your leaping forward its really hard to change directions. Using a weak punch works great though for both extending the distance you leap and for allowing you to make turns in the air. Almost a complete 180 if you want. You climb walls ala Venom from Ultimate Spidey.
You cant expect great looking graphics from a downgrade of a next gen system. They lower the resolution and make sure its not glitchy but they arent going to devote alot of time to tweaking it and working on it so it probably doesnt have as good of graphics as it could have. I would LOVE to see some cel-shaded graphics. The menu's, load screens and User Interface are pretty god awful. These movie-to-games are on a time line and you can really tell that one of the ways they try to save time is by not working on the User Interface lol. Iron Man was the same way.
The sound could be better. Cooler explosions, better roars. I cant really comment on the music cuz its been muted lol.
I've gotten pissed at this game once or twice for locking up one me and that IS a problem but dude I feel like the things they did to this game were freaking amazing and innovative and NEEDED for free roaming superhero games. They set the bar pretty freaking high. Atari(spiderman) and Whoever made superman, and..whoever made iron man lol better take some damn notes from Sega/Edge of Reality.
I cant say that this a must own game because its broken, BUT I think everyone should give it some serious freaking consideration and come to their own conclusion. For me I would love to own this game, and for 30$ brand new I freaking wish I could but I have other things to get.
This game is missing one VERY important thing though thats almost a deal breaker. They needed to have given you the ability to make Hulk roar whenever you feel like it (again ala Venom in Ultimate Spidey). He does it whenever you activate one of your rage moves but thats not the same.