Over the years, I've written so many reviews for movie-to-game tie-ins that I can write this introduction in my sleep. Usually I'll start with some less than flattering comments about the calibre of past releases, and then I'll reference the few success stories we have to cling on to hopefully. But this time I don't think I need to do those things, because the chances are you, gentle reader, have played a crappy movie tie-in game before, and so you know what to expect. Put simply, The Incredible Hulk is another one of those lacklustre games designed to coincide with the release of a blockbuster film, and while it has its good points, they aren't really enough to elevate it beyond mediocrity.

But let's rewind if we can, right back to the Ang Lee directed film Hulk and its videogame spinoff. The film was meant to be a more cerebral, emotional look at a character who has all the subtlety of a Mack truck, and the slow pace and navel gazing led to a film that never really resonated with what should have been its target audience: fans of the comic. The game was a bit better, giving you the chance to smash things good, but the increased emphasis placed on Bruce Banner himself meant that they had to throw in some pretty god-awful stealth sections that really dragged the game down.

Fast forward a bit and you have The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, a game whose subtitle is really more informative than most. No longer tethered to a film from the guy who brought us Brokeback Mountain, Hulk is free to really just focus on destroying absolutely anything and everything, and the sandbox-style gameplay Radical created resulted in pretty much the best Hulk game ever made. This new Incredible Hulk game has nothing to do with Ultimate Destruction, rather it is based on Marvel's bold reinvention of the Hulk's film career, starring Edward Norton, Tim Roth and Liv Tyler.

So why the long preamble about the two previous games, you ask? It's because the new Incredible Hulk game is sort of stuck between these two previous attempts. On the one hand it gives you a big, fully destructible New York sandbox in which to unleash your inner beast, but then on the other hand it constrains you with dull, uninspired missions with some tenuous connection to the film, or even more insipid interludes involving other villains that never really amount to anything. That, combined with a sandbox where not much ever happens means Incredible Hulk is sort of like having an imaginary friend over for a tea-party; you're really making your own fun, and everyone probably thinks you're a little bit crazy.

For those of you who have played Spider-Man 3 you'll be familiar with having a fairly accurately rendered New York City as your virtual playground, and you'll be well aware of just how much fun jumping, swinging, leaping and running through it could be. It's pretty hard to screw that up, and thankfully this is the one thing that the Incredible Hulk manages to get right. Gone are Spidey's graceful dives and web-swings, replaced with the Hulk's trademark bounding and penchant for unintentional carnage. It's not as quick or classy as Spider-Man 3's, but it's still a helluva lot of fun, and it makes the vast distances between mission locations and objectives somewhat bearable. Hulk can also climb buildings by jamming his giant mitts right into the structure for handholds, or tear about on foot tramping cars and sliding around corners like his in the Fast and the Furious.

Or...you can just take the subway if you want. Kind of defeats the purpose I guess, but once you play The Incredible Hulk for an hour you'll notice that even moving the angry green giant from one location to another is prone to bring out the worst in the game. Sadly, the definition of "worst” here includes horrendous pop-in, jarring level-of-detail adjustments and a permanent miasma of fog that makes Beijing look like the poster child of clean air. And that's just the minor stuff. None of these things is necessarily game breaking, but once you start ticking boxes like massive slowdown, graphical glitches, busted physics, and game-ending crashes that require a hard reset of the console, you're not exactly in Game of the Year territory.

The ugly truth is that The Incredible Hulk is based on a game engine that simply cannot keep up with what it is trying to portray on the screen, and having seen GTA 4 in action, we all know that the 360 is capable of pumping out a damn sight more detail in a much more stable manner than this game does. Hell, let's not even shoot for the moon; games like Saint's Row or the aforementioned Spider-Man 3 both manage to keep up better, even Superman Returns did! This is what happens when games are rushed to ship alongside a blockbuster cinema release, and I think gamers the world over are sick of it frankly.

Despite these pretty horrific problems, the Incredible Hulk plays pretty well, because when it comes to a big monster beating the crap out of things, it's a feat to manage to do that wrong. The combat is fairly simple, using the tried and true X for light attack, Y for heavy attack formula, with A handling jump duties and B being used in unison with Y to activate one of 4 special abilities. As Hulk smashes things or takes damage, he will slowly build up his Rage meter, which is the key ingredient for any self-respecting irradiated monster looking to activate some powerful moves. Hulk can regenerate his health, for example, or unleash a ground pound to damage everything around him. Perhaps most interestingly, holding down Y at the end of an attack combination will use up a single bar of Rage power to boost the damage output of that combination, allowing you to chain together a number of less powerful moves quickly, thus denying your foes the chance to interrupt your onslaught.

Speaking of foes, Hulk is in a similar boat to Superman in that there's really not that much that poses a challenge to him. Bullets bounce right off him, he can break puny humans with a flick of his pinkie, and even rockets don't seem to bother him too much. Yet the game revels in sending the regular army to harass you if you knock over a few bins – or buildings – in downtown Manhattan or Queens, and infuriatingly, their lame little bullets can actually hurt the Hulkster. Other enemies include the U-Foes, and the Enclave, a scientific collaboration of four rival factions who will happily use Hulk and New Yorkers as test subjects for things like tornado guns, mind control devices and of course some giant robots of death. The variety of enemies isn't the issue though, it's more the formula used to defeat them, namely, punch them a lot. Sure, some of them require Hulk to use a weapon or throw objects at them, but at the end of the day it's mindless and repetitive, and given how glitch the physics are, coupled with an iffy targeting system, the end result is a mix of occasional fun and frequent frustration.

This is really exacerbated by the missions, which put simply, suck. There's nothing at all redeeming here, just the same three objectives – smash things, protect things, or move things – on an endless loop of inanity that will make you wish you could Hulk out yourself. It's also worth mentioning at this juncture that the Incredible Hulk has got without a doubt the worst voice acting ever in a licensed videogame, and possibly the worst I have ever encountered in my entire gaming career.

This wouldn't surprise anyone if the dialogue was recorded by D-grade sound-a-likes they found by advertising at the local Starbucks, except the Incredible Hulk has all the principal actors from the film. Think Edward Norton is a pretty good actor? Wait until you hear his bored, monotone drone in this game with about as much emotional depth as a dead trout! Clearly the voice talent wasn't at all interested in this game, and by now you should probably be questioning whether you are yourself.

If for some reason you haven't shuffled off to do something else, there's really not much else to say about the Incredible Hulk. Not only does the voice acting suck, but apparently they paid them so much they couldn't afford anyone to compose music for the game, so it's virtually silent throughout. If the game's "story” missions aren't to your taste there's a whole bunch of mini-games that are actually surprisingly fun – things like footraces through Central Park or picking up taxi cabs and delivering them to their destination. Of course there's also a bunch of collectibles to find in the game which make for a nice distraction while free-roaming, but sadly there isn't much else to do. Occasionally the Enclave will send a strike-team into the city which you can defeat, but otherwise it's business as usual for the Big Apple.

The real shame is that all of this overshadows the solid core mechanics, particularly the great upgrade system that rewards Hulk for doing specific things as he wreaks havoc around the city. All your moves can be enhanced, as can your jump height and distance, and there's a host of unlockable characters you can play as too if you can be bothered. But ultimately, if the game is broken, it doesn't matter how great things like the upgrades are; most people will just stop playing well before they can see the silver lining. And with no multiplayer or Live Leaderboards or any of those things that encourage the die-hard to persist, the Incredible Hulk is the weakest there is.