Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

Stupidly entertaining. Similar set-up to the Spider-Man 2 game - free roaming map with challenge missions and story missions dotted around, and you cash in your points to upgrade your moves - but it's yet to hit that bump in the road where you run out of things to do.

For one thing, smashing shit up has a much longer amusement factor than swinging around. For another, the challenges are varied and really good fun. None of this "catch a kids balloon" crap here. There are checkpoint races, of course, but you can also try to kick field goals with cars, play baseball with soldiers dropping from a helicopter or play crosstown golf with a giant golf ball.

Hulk moves just like he should. The animation is great - they've lifted little mannerisms from the film, such as the way he jumps and lands, and he's got a real sense of weight and power to him. Seeing the ground crack and crumble every time you land is just great.

The first boss battle - against Ron Perlman as The Abomination - is pretty nifty. Nothing innovative, it's a straight slugfest, but it really feels like a super-powered punch-up. Lots of hammering each other across the arena and demolishing scenery.

I was worried that the game might be too easy, but they've pitched it just about right. You can take out one tank, or one helicopter, without breaking a sweat - but they gang up on you if you stay in one place too long, so you're forced to fight them on the run or you just get pummeled with rockets and missiles.

There's nothing to it that you won't have seen in other games - lots of pick ups and secrets, funny cheat codes, etc - but I'm having a blast with it all the same. It's a real Hulk game. Very cathartic.

Too early to say. I'm digging it a bunch, but haven't really played it long enough to definitely say "purchase" with any authority. Based on the fun I've had so far, I wouldn't be pissed to have paid full price for it. But on the other hand, there may yet be a momentum-killing mission (like the Statue of Liberty one in Spider-Man 2) that stops it dead.

I love how you can grab a lamppost, and use it to club soldiers into the distance - with their little vapour trails marking their trajectory over the city.

It's a bit weird that Hulk can run up skyscrapers (like, all the way up) but that's just me being fussy. I do like the way he grabs buildings as he falls, gouging chunks out of the wall until he comes to a stop.

When do you get to unlock those? I've got the missile punch-back move, so I'm guessing these are from Chapter 3?

This thread has reached its pique.

Harvey Pekar.

He's a bit like Godzilla. Sometimes he's good, if there's a bigger, meaner monster to fight. But by virtue of his condition, he's also responsible for traditional bad guy destruction.

It's way better than Spidey 2. There are more moves to unlock, and the moves are actually useful and easy to pull off. The challenge missions are more varied, and there are more of them. As you unlock new powers, new challenge missions open up for you to try them in. And more than that, the simple fact is that rampaging around a city, or the desert, smashing things, grabbing things, leaping 100 feet in the air, coming back to Earth with an almighty crunch while pedestrians scream and cars veer out of your path is all more fun than webslinging.

Handy hint: If you start one of the challenge missions where the clock counts up rather than down, take advantage of it and smash as much stuff as you can find. The Strike Teams don't get called out during challenges, so it's a useful way of adding to your Smash Points total without risk. Not the fastest way of doing it, but certainly the safest.

Of course, once you've got the various tank/chopper/Hulkbuster grapple moves, you can go nuts - and get loads of Smash Points for each team you wipe out. Tackle them one enemy at a time, and use the power-ups dropped after they explode to push you into Critical Mass mode before taking on the next enemy.