When I originally started this ongoing series of my favorite adaptations, I stated that this wouldn’t just be about movies, but so far, the list has read something like 8 movies and 1 television series. For that, I apologize. It was always my intention to write about a variety of different types of adaptation and so… I bring you, the first videogame on this list. That game? Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

You see, it’s not often that a video game that’s based off a comic is so great that a person would put it in a list of their favorite games. Especially if you’re talking about games that were created after the decline of the American Arcade scene. For example, every 20-something or 30-something that I talk to about comic book games tends to bring up how awesome the X-Men arcade game was. I actually wrote a blog about it back in February, if you were looking for more information on that one… People say that all the games that feature Superman are crap as well, I’d like to think that to be false. The Superman Arcade game was awesome, and so was The Death and Return of Superman for the SNES. Then there were the Spider-Man games on the original PlayStation…. But I’m not here to talk about those… I’m here to talk about the Hulk game that could.

So what do you get, when you put the Hulk in an open environment that is filled with destructible objects? You get fun. That’s what. Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is essentially about Bruce Banner running from General Ross and Emil Blonsky. Blonsky becomes the Abomination during the course of the game, and proceeds to make life hard for the Gamma Green Giant. But that isn’t the fun of the game. In the previous Hulk game (Based off of Ang Lee’s movie), you were required to play as human Bruce Banner. This meant that you had to sneak around and do boring things. However, in this game, you were Hulk, and only Hulk. You could super jump across buildings, rip cars in half and wear them as gloves, you could pick up folks and chuck them across the map. You could be whatever kind of Hulk that you wanted to be. But what made the game even cooler was, like the PlayStation Spider-Man games, you could unlock “skins” that would allow you to play as a different version of the Hulk. Some of which had different dialogue. Fun stuff. And let’s not forget the Devil Hulk. That guy featured in the game a a villain that you had to face within the Hulk’s subconscious. And let me tell you. That was fun.

Anyway, we had a game that was designed with the basics of a Grand Theft Auto, but with the Hulk. So no hookers or cocaine packages or gun violence… All that was replaced with Teen approved Marvel violence, but it was ok, because sometimes its fun to do bad things. And it’s even better when you’re in control of a misunderstood beast. Trust me when I say I did the Hulk’s reputation no good. But what else was fun about the game? For one thing, the guy who voiced Bruce Banner (Neal McDonough) in the 90’s cartoon returned for the game. Ron Perlman also did some voice work in the game, but it’s pretty sweet when he does the voice of anything. But yeah, the game was developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Sierra Entertainment for release in August of 2005. You had a choice of playing the game on any of the main consoles at that time, which were the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. When I worked at certain videogame retail store (that is now out of business), Hulk: Ultimate Destruction was one of the easiest games to sell, when one was asked for a quality game with a reasonable (cheap) price.

In 2008, a game based off of The Incredible Hulk (The Ed Norton movie) was released. It featured the same style of gameplay, however, it just wasn’t the same. The magic was missing in this one. And that just really comes down to the original developers not being the ones to create the game. While the game sure did look prettier than its predecessor, shiny graphics are not a replacement for solid gameplay… or fun for that matter. So if you’re out looking for a fun Hulk game, be sure to look for the one with “Ultimate Destruction” in the title. You might cry if you play the other one…

So that concludes this edition of this favorites list of mine. I’ll see you next time, hopefully with something that isn’t a movie… Or at least, not just a movie. I might even double it up. Who knows? I do. But there is one thing that I’ll let you in on. Once I get to Part 12, I’m done. This was never going to be an indefinite thing. It was originally designed to help me have a topic to write about to meet deadlines. But now, I’m finding that there are things that I’d like to write about that are more current, so this kind of blog eats up my options. So… 2 more to go, then I’m done. See ya next time.

-Fleet

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