Movie licenses are generally flawed, but the adaptation of the Incredible Hulk movie has a whole set of problems that go beyond the typical movie-to-game translation errors. To see a game so humbled by shoddy graphics, programming glitches and weak plot lines isn’t something we expect from modern consoles (well, maybe the plot lines thing) , but it would seem we have a game that was rushed to release simply to meet the film’s release schedule – incomplete and struggling to run.

On a plus point, it makes a wise move toward deviating from the rigidity of a film plot and adopts a more sandbox approach toward playing as the Hulk. With adequate development, it could have been a decent enough game. Nothing groundbreaking, of course, but a happy and enjoyable distraction.

Sega has essentially taken a very strong influence from the last two Spider-Man games from Activision – Spider-Man 2: The Movie on the PS2 and Spider-Man 3, which was really just a seventh gen update on The Movie and replaced Doc Ock with Venom. But it’s the free roaming crime fighting around New York City where the parallels are to be found. This was something of a surprise after the quick introductory tutorial, when the game allows you (the Hulk) to set off exploring New York as you please; finding the very occasional crime, side quest, race, challenge or various progressive storylines and deciding whether or not to take a shot at them.

In the Spider-Man games, this worked quite nicely, and really opened up Web Head’s world to that of a typical, superheroic lifestyle. You chose and prioritised the crimes as they happened in your vicinity, and only progressed the major storylines threaded throughout the Big Apple when you wanted. This meant that even after completion of the story modes there was still a city to patrol and protect as only a Web Slinger can.

The Hulk is a direct mimic of this gameplay style – though this is certainly no criticism. If only more comic adaptations were handled this way, allowing would-be crime fighters to enforce their own brand of vigilante justice as they saw fit and really exploring the life of a superhero. It’s not because of direct mimicry that the Hulk fails – it’s the shockingly dreadful quality of the development. Presumably due to being forced to get the game on the shelves the same day as the film is released, what we’re actually presented with is an alpha version of a reasonable game (or very early beta at best).

The Hulk himself appears to be one of the few completed elements of the development, and does look quite superb – better even than his CGI rendered self in the previous Hulk movie. Bounding around New York by jumping is fitting to the long established canon of the comic book, and climbing buildings is easy and adds scope to the environment. As does the destructible nature of… well, everything. The Hulk can naturally pick up, bash and thrown pretty much everything, and the city around him crumbles in response. This can make for quite an entertaining take on the classic coin-op game, Rampage, as buildings are decimated a section at a time until they ultimately collapse into rubble.

It’s here where the unfinished programming becomes acutely obvious, however. Despite objects thrown by the Hulk responding quite believably as they crash and smash through the cityscape, the buildings themselves are nothing short of a slapstick joke when they come tumbling down. Dropping vertically downwards into the exact same pile of rubble (regardless of the size of the building toppled), not so much as a crumb of debris lands outside the building’s footprint, which robs the game of so much wonderful collateral damage and spectacular effect.

Likewise, once the Hulk climbs to the loftier heights, where the winding streets no longer prohibit any kind of panoramic vista, a thickly dense fog effect is used so the game engine doesn’t have to render the sprawling city. Building only a few streets away become grey, unshaded polygons that the SNES would be embarrassed to display as a gaming environment, and all sense of occupying a “massive open world” (as the game box suggests) is lost completely. The PS2 version of Spider-Man 2: The Movie could manage to do this, and the X360 version made it a whole lot bigger, so there’s absolutely no technical excuse for the Incredible Hulk game to fail so badly in this respect.

On top of this dreadful graphical weakness, ghost images of destroyed buildings can also be seen flickering and struggling against the skyline, while the characters wander and crash in and out of supposedly solid objects as if the system can’t tell what’s tangible and what’s not. The camera flails wildly and randomly – pointing a blank walls or down at the ground whenever the character’s movements get up to speed, and the textures repeat themselves so often there feels little point in actually exploring the city.

Awful voice acting and stilted animation also smacks not of lackadaisical programming, but of an early and incomplete rendering that was never intended to be included in the finished product. Instead of animated cut scenes, we’re simply expected to listen in on bugged telephone conversations, with a matt painting of a listening post as the only visual element. Equally, the depth of gameplay is shallow – never delivering on the potential that the missions, or indeed the sandbox world of crime and adventure, promise.

In Spider-Man we had rife street crime and emergencies that only the hero could do something about, but the Hulk sees none of this in his course version of New York city. Saving people from a collapsing building or runaway train, lifting up a falling bridge or thwarting a stolen tank would have been perfect opportunities to live a day in the life of the Hulk’s shoes, yet this game contains none of them.

It also makes the fatal error that so many Hulk adaptations suffer from. It overlooks a vital aspect of the Hulk’s personality that Stan Lee was very careful to fully develop before the monster ever appeared in the comic – Bruce Banner. There’s a reason the Hulk’s alter-ego is a pacifistic, intelligent scientist, and that’s to fully round out the monster’s character and grant a believable purpose for his inclusion in specific, dangerous situations. This Sega game takes the obtuse and lazy angle for adding conflict to the Hulk’s life – being constantly chased by the army without rhyme or reason. The extra dimension of using Bruce Banner, his scientific expertise and the inherent tension that he might suddenly lose control is more valuable than 1000 collapsible buildings, yet he never appears in the game. Slack, and inexcusable.

With another two or three months of quality development, the Incredible Hulk adaptation could have been very enjoyable. It was never going to be amazing, but it could have provided the same superb escapist realisation of a beloved comic character as the Spider-Man games did, but clearly something went horribly wrong during the planning stages.