Hulk is a game that I played as a kid before I knew the lore, universe and context behind Marvel and his superheroes. For me, it was a completely original game in which a guy gets mixed with some sort of serum, turns into a big great tank and starts to smash stuff. It was an epic game back then and I still think it is an epic game today.

The game follows the original story of the Hulk, although set a few years after the original movie. You play as Bruce Banner, the original scientist and Hulk we know and love. In a freak accident in the lab, your DNA is altered in a way that you transform in a great green beast of a man whenever you are agitated. You are contacted by some guy called Doctor Crawford, who offers a cure to your condition by channeling your Hulk genes into a device called the Gamma Orb. You are guided towards Crawfords location, while avoiding the forces of John Ryker, a military commander who also seeks the orb. When arriving to Crawford’s lab, he betrays you and steals some of your green guy DNA and transforms himself into another Hulk like creature called Ravage.

You learn that your Arch Nemesis, “The Leader” is building an army of gamma-powered soldiers on the prison island of Alcatraz, aided by Ravage and the Orb he just filled up with your DNA. You need to infiltrate the island and locate the Orb. You also need to disable the gamma infiltration system, a device in place to detect spikes in gamma energy, something that will happen if you transform into the Hulk. If you trigger the system, a hostage will be killed. For this reason, you need to play as your fragile alter ego Bruce Banner. You successfully disable the gamma detection system, go full Hulk Smash again, whoop Leader’s brother, Madman and rescue the princ….. I mean hostage. You are captured, rescued by your buddy Ross and escape Alcatraz. You drop off Ross and the hostage, return to Alcatraz, confront Ravage, beat his ass, he becomes the good guy, helps you reach the Leader, you fight Madman once more and then confront Leader. Your powers are taken away, but you refuse to let the Leader abuse the Orb and its power, take it back, go full smash smash again, beat Leader and escape the facility.

The game is a mix between stealth sections, in which your goal is to silently reach your goal, while avoiding combat, and Hulk smash sections in which you progress to your goal by pure force and strength. The principle is much the same for every level, making it somewhat repetitive.

You got a variety of combos and attacks, that where impressive and fun to look at back then and are still today. You collect red orbs to increase your rage meter and when full, you enter Hulk apesh!t mode, in which you deal a lot more damage, are much faster and simply destroy everything around you. So epic. Meanwhile, while playing as Bruce, you can really feel the helplessness, and caution is the only way to go. The controls for the combo’s are easy to understand and work fluently. I actually discovered all the stuff Hulk could do by accident and was surprised when I saw him made an O with his arms and released a massive ground pound when pressing some buttons.

The game looks beautiful. The art style, the details on the characters, the environment, the animations and shiny effects, it is all very good. Back then, I thought this was one of the best-looking games that I played.

In terms of sound, the sound effect of the punches, gunshots from enemies, explosions and grunts are perfect. Hulk is a game with excellent sound design overall that really impressed me to this day.

Hulk is also a very hard game. It got no mercy and especially in your human form, you feel fragile and vulnerable. Combine this with the shooting and smashing super soldiers later in the game, and you are going to have a bad time. In the last stages, hordes of enemies come at you and although you are very good at smashing stuff, the combined forces of the normal soldiers and the mutants can be a real pain in the butt sometimes. The bosses are also very hard (and well designed) and as a kid, beating them felt like the greatest achievement of my life. Especially Ravage. His stage was hard because of the constant aid from super soldiers that stabbed me in the back while fighting.

In the end, Hulk is an excellent game with great combat mechanics, fluent controls, gorgeous graphics, perfect sound design and a solid story. It is one of the classics from my youth and I can pop this bad boy into my Retro Windows XP computer anytime.

Definitely recommend this underrated classic.