"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Obviously this isn't a phrase the Hulk is all too familiar with. If anything, the Hulk's mantra is probably more along the lines of "save a few, smash everything else", or indeed just "Hulk smash". And smash everything is what you will be doing in SEGA's The Incredible Hulk; released in timely fashion to coincide with the new rebooted big screen outing for everyone's favourite green skinned goliath.

Although Edge of Reality have taken over development duties for The Incredible Hulk, the influence of Radical Entertainment's 2005 release, the surprisingly good and surprisingly popular Ultimate Destruction can be seen and felt at every turn. In fact, with the exception of a few obligatory nods and story strands from the movie, this is all but a sequel to Vivendi's open world destruct-a-thon.

The link between movie and videogame may certainly be strained thanks to Edge of Reality's decision to follow the open-ended path laid out by any number of superhero videogames before it, but this choice has turned out to be the game's strongest selling point, because, with the possible exception of Spider-Man, there has never been so much fun to be had from simply traversing a city landscape at your own leisure; be it charging your jumps in midair to bound gracefully from street to street or climbing the sides of a skyscraper in true King Kong style, getting the Hulk from point A to point B is rarely any less than incredible fun.

While the choice of an open world environment certainly brings the best out of the character, it must be said that the story, as is the case with so many open world superhero videogames, really fails to impress. While the connection to the movie's plot was always going to be hazy, the ability to bring in an array of fringe characters from the Incredible Hulk's lengthy history should have at least allowed for a few creative story strands. Sadly, as I'm sure fans of the genre have become all too accustomed to, this potential fails to materialize and the story reveals itself as a disjointed mess that fails to capitalize on either the movie's plot or the character's vast back catalogue of villains and allies.

The game actually starts off in a similar vein to the movie, with Bruce Banner, voiced with little more than contempt by Edward Norton, attempting to escape the clutches of General 'Thunderbolt' Ross throughout a collection of abandoned warehouses in Rio de Janeiro. This serves as the obligatory introduction to the Hulk's basic move set before being placed rather randomly into the centre of New York City, filled with both real and Marvel-universe-specific landscapes, as you battle the surprisingly lifeless Enclave. The subsequent eight to ten hours of gameplay have little to no link with the movie's plot before being forcibly and rather jarringly dragged back to the fore for the final three missions of the game. While this goes some way to highlighting the disjointed storyline, the fact that the final three missions all but abandon the highlight of freeform gameplay in favour of tightly scripted and poorly realised set pieces provides an extremely disappointing end to a flawed yet ultimately fun experience.

Although the story is passable at best, the actual game mechanics prove to be The Incredible Hulk's greatest strength. Although ideas and gameplay have been 'borrowed' liberally from Ultimate Destruction, the chance to move around the city freely is still the most fun you will have while playing The Incredible Hulk and Edge of Reality have done a great job of making you feel like a rage-fuelled behemoth with almost unlimited strength. This fact is accentuated further by The Incredible Hulk's trump card: destruction. While its forbearer may have used the tag, it's actually Edge of Reality's release that lives up to the promise of 'ultimate destruction'. Whereas vehicles, trees, pedestrians and more could be picked up, manipulated and destroyed in the 2005 release, The Incredible Hulk has upped the ante by making an entire city that can literally smashed to the ground - yes, even skyscrapers.

This feature sets this new release apart from the pack and , especially in the case of larger battles, you can see the effect that the enemy, along with your own attacks, has on the surrounding city. The only problem with this is that it does raise the question of whether the Hulk is helping the city, or is in actual fact a huge hindrance; you may have saved your buddy Rick Jones but you destroyed three rather large buildings in the process - it doesn't quite weigh up. Luckily, New York seems to have a magical regeneration process that sees buildings back as they were if you return to the scene of the crime just moments later, so I guess all is forgiven.

Another new aspect of gameplay introduced for The Incredible Hulk is a Grand Theft Auto style threat meter. Destroy a few landmarks or throw around a few cars and a few troopers will show up - easy pickings. Keep at it though and you will find yourself dealing with tanks, helicopters and even troops in their snazzy Hulkbuster suits. This is all pretty good fun and would usually add a good smattering of risk versus reward to your destructive cravings. Sadly though, thanks to some bizarre choices on the part of the development team, these battles rarely feel like anything more than a slight nuisance.

The first and surely most bizarre problem is that you can escape your would-be attackers by simply entering any one of the many subway stations dotted around the city; nine foot tall, rage filled, green skinned monster strolls into subway, loses enemy and disappears amongst the crowd? Hmmm, going to put that in the 'stretch of the imagination' category. These subways may prove to be useful when wanting to get from one end of the city to the next, but honestly, used as an escape route that automatically reduces your threat level to zero? I'm not so convinced.

The other problem is that, along with a collection of super powerful Rage moves that can be unleashed whenever your anger level rises, including the always reliable hand clap and ground smash, you can also fully regenerate your health meter at the press of a button. This sadly reduces the risk of defeat to zero because your rage meter fills far too quickly, meaning that as long as you keep an eye on your health you will always have plenty of rage stored up to bring yourself straight back to full fitness - you honestly have no excuse to be dying for the entire duration of the game.

While upgrades are certainly nothing new to the sandbox superhero arena, Edge of Reality has at least given the process a more natural progression. New skills, moves and abilities are unlocked via 'feats' rather than simply purchasing them, which makes exploration and destruction a more purposeful venture. These feats or achievements mean that you unlock moves and abilities related more intrinsically to your actions throughout the city; i.e. jump so many meters and your jumping improves, destroy so many landscapes or enemies and your attack or health improves. It's a simple system but will nevertheless most likely keep you interested for the duration of the game.

These features might well point to a game that is far superior to that of Ultimate Destruction, but sadly that game's sense of humour seems to have been left at the door. Although the link to the movie was always going to make this game a little more grounded, a complete departure from the fun to be had in Radical's game makes the relation between the Hulk and the rest of the city a little harder to swallow. Whereas your undeniable power and destructive capability was offset by a sly sense of humour in UD that saw you taking balloon rides on giant gorillas amidst a script infused with a sneaky wit, this game instead decides to go straight faced, and in doing so, takes a lot of the potential fun with it.

While this lack of humour doesn't have a hugely detrimental effect on the gameplay, the huge amount of bugs certainly does. Beyond that fact that the city is extremely bland, there are a whole host of visual and technical glitches that can literally bring the game to a halt; from getting stuck in invisible barriers to extreme cases of slowdown, occasionally to the point of crashing the game when the action gets a little too hectic, the whole package is far from a finished product. It doesn't stop there either; jump into the water and you are treated to an impromptu break dance from the usually mean faced superhero - funny the first time, annoying every time after.

Beyond these glitches, the fact remains that The Incredible Hulk is an ugly game. The Hulk himself looks pretty good, with some nice, high def textures, but sadly the same cannot be said for the city, or the small collection of enemies you face. This is never more apparent than in the embarrassingly ugly and poorly scripted cut scenes; facial animations are sub-par, with most characters looking like they are suffering from a pretty serious case of facial inflammation. Although the city never looks all that great, climb up to the summit of the taller buildings and you are treated to some of the worst draw distances on this generation of consoles. Rather than being able to enjoy a bird's eye view of the sprawling city below, you are instead submitted to a hazy mist of blues and browns that have a pretty jarring effect on the overall sense of scale.

The audio also fails to impress with a poor collection of ambient noise and a soundtrack that loops all too often. What should have been a coup for the audio department has also turned into something of an embarrassment; all the main cast from the movie are on board to lend the voice talents to the game, but not one of them, especially the extremely bored sounding Edward Norton, seems like they want to be anywhere near the game's development process. These truly are the very definition of phoned in performances.

If you can get past the myriad deficiencies, The Incredible Hulk actually serves up a pretty solid serving of story mode gaming, along with a collection of mini-games and a whole host of collectable tokens and subsequent unlockable art. SEGA has also promised a free download for online multiplayer at the end of the month that will add even greater longevity to this already hefty little package. Funnily enough, they've also promised a patch to fix many of the game's more glaring faults to coincide with the multiplayer download release, but in all honesty, the game shouldn't have been shipped in this state in the first place - another clear sign of a game rushed onto shelves to coincide with a movie's release, probably the single greatest cause of games of movies being so poor and something that really needs to stop.

The Incredible Hulk isn't bad, but it's also far from incredible; the story is average at best, the presentation is poor and the game is rife with glitches. Despite these problems though, the fact remains that it's still an extremely fun game, largely thanks to Edge of Reality's skill at successfully putting you in the shoes of the destructive whirlwind that is the Incredible Hulk. If you are a fan of the Hulk, or the superhero sub-genre, this may well be worth a look, despite its rather glaring faults. Everyone else however is better off looking elsewhere to fulfil their penchant for destruction.

Reviewed by Liam Pritchard for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).