Over the years, the Incredible Hulk has only been the central star of one good game, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. With the Hulk film series being rebooted with the recently released flick starring Ed Norton, it's no surprise that developer Edge of Reality would attempt to incorporate elements of the successful game into the successful move. You'd think that's the perfect mix, but like Banner's own lab experiments, something has gone horribly wrong.

Like pretty much every other game based on a movie based on a comic, The Incredible Hulk combines the story of the film with a subplot from the comic to fill out the time. The main plot deals with Bruce Banner's quest to find a cure for the Hulk, a beast created from a gamma radiation test gone awry which is unleashed whenever Banner gets angry. Banner teams up with the somewhat eccentric Dr. Sterns, and must fetch various pieces of equipment the doctor needs, while eluding the vicious General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross and his crack team of soldiers, including the super soldier Emil Blonsky. The secondary plot deals with a group called the Enclave that wishes to take over the world, but need to dispose of the Hulk before commencing their plans. Other villains such as the Bi-Beast and U-Foes make an appearance. The game's story is presumably based on an earlier version of the movie script, as the character Rick Jones features prominently, despite having been written out in later revisions.

The most jarring thing about The Incredible Hulk is the quality of its presentation. The Hulk looks particularly unnatural, seemingly having a rock-like skin rather than flesh due to the unnecessary overabundance of normal mapping on the model, and to make matters worse, he's actually the only thing in the game that doesn't look like it was spat out of the previous generation. It's nice that Edge of Reality went to the effort of recreating Manhattan, even including a bunch of famous buildings, both from the real world and the Marvel world, but what's the point of doing all of this work if players aren't going to be able to see it? The Incredible Hulk's Manhattan has a serious case of fogging and texture pop in – you can't see more than a few buildings ahead, and once you reach a certain altitude, everything around you and below you gets engulfed in a lovely blue-grey colour.

Perhaps the only thing worse than The Incredible Hulk's in-game graphics are its CG cinematics and the vocal performances within. The actors in the cut-scenes are meant to resemble the cast of the film, but do so only vaguely. Their motion is utterly robotic, and the quality of the models used in the scenes is atrocious; they could have easily done these scenes in real time. The awful visual quality of these scenes is matched by the lack of enthusiasm in the voice acting; Ed Norton and the cast of the film do provide their voices, but the dry, dull delivery gives one the feeling that they had other places to be. Norton's performance is particularly disappointing; given his talents as an actor and the amount of involvement he had in the film's production, you'd think he'd have put a bit of effort in.

All of the above grievances seem forgivable when you first get control of the Hulk. The first hour or two of the game is an absolute blast as you get to take Hulk through the rather large city, smash, crushing and tearing apart anything that comes in your way. The beast is frighteningly fast and has terrific agility, allowing you to scale the tallest buildings New York City has to offer. You've got a decent selection of moves at your disposal – not quite as many as Ultimate Destruction had to offer, but certainly plenty to choose from. Tearing a car in half to use as gauntlets, pulling the top off a tank to use as a club and launching cars into the sides of buildings are just some of the fun things you're able to do. You've got to be careful, as causing too much damage will trigger an alert status, and troops and vehicles will be sent to your area. It's possible to get up to a Level 9 alert status, where Stark Industries Hulkbuster units will be dispatched, and they're rather tricky to take out. A simple trip across town will get the heat off your back, which seems a bit cheap.

The cracks in The Incredible Hulk's design begin to show up after the second hour, and turn into massive gaping holes before the story has ended. Mission variety is hopelessly limited, with most of the Hulk's tasks revolving around getting a specific object for Dr. Sterns, defending a certain person/object from incoming enemies, or going to a specific location to destroy some enemies or a building. Controlling the Hulk is not as easy as it was in Ultimate Destruction, due largely to some unresponsive controls and a hopeless camera. On top of that, Hulk's Rage Powers totally unbalance the game – one such power allows you to heal the Hulk with only four bars on the meter, which is ridiculously easy to accumulate. Apart from the Hulkbusters, Bi-Beast and Abomination, no other enemy represents the slightest threat to the Hulk, even when in far greater numbers. The main storyline is pretty straightforward, but the side plot involving the Hulk shutting down the Enclave's four labs is a laborious task, requiring the player to wait around for lengthy periods while the Enclave reaches the research level necessary for them to have a new lab for the Hulk to destroy.

If one decides to venture away from The Incredible Hulk's story mode, they'll be met with a plethora of bog-standard race and collection side missions. It's amazing how little games have progressed this generation when the best side quest a developer can come up with is collecting hundreds of little orbs or completing some tedious mini-games. Players get the choice of collecting gamma canisters, rage canisters and landmark orbs, finding jump challenges or completing 23 different medal mini-games. Completing some of these challenges will help to boost the Hulk's abilities, but seeing as how he's already overpowered it seems kind of pointless to go to the effort.

Knocking over the story side of The Incredible Hulk is likely to take the requisite 8-10 hours, with an additional 6-8 hours to accomplish all of the game's side quests and conquer the achievement list. To their credit, developer Edge of Reality did manage to make the game's achievement list somewhat interesting; sure, there are the usual boring ones for collecting orbs and beating bosses, but others require you to punch a soldier over 430 feet, make the U-Foes accidentally destroy each other, and have the Hulk sprint across the flags outside the UN building. Some players may take offence at the fact that players need to have a save from Sega's Iron Man game to complete the achievement list, however.

Realistically, The Incredible Hulk has the necessary ingredients to make a good game, but it has been taken out of the oven too early, a problem of the film tie-in development cycle. Perhaps if Edge of Reality had more time, they could have polished the visuals and controls, balanced the difficulty level, designed more than four mission types, and given players more side quests than simple orb hunts and races. As it is, The Incredible Hulk provides about two hours' worth of entertainment before descending into six hours of eye-stabbing visuals and insomnia-inducing gameplay.