As a videogame tie-in to Ang Lee's sense-and-sensitivitised film of 2003, Radical Entertainment's 'The Hulk' turned out to be a fairly enjoyable brawler that stands a head taller than many film-inspired games. Despite having its share of issues, the game managed to make playing as the Hulk a satisfying experience as he rampages through each level, punching, kicking and smashing everything in sight. Two years later, Radical is back with a new Hulk title that makes its predecessor look like a warm-up act. Collaborating closely with Marvel, they have crammed just about all the devastation you've ever dreamed of unleashing as everyone's favourite green behemoth into a single game ' The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

The game kicks off as Bruce Banner nears completion on a machine intended to cure him of his rage-induced Hulk-outs, but time runs out as his hideout is raided by the US military and the device is destroyed. Aided by his friend, Doc Samson, Banner finds refuge in an abandoned church where they begin work on a new cure. With hypnotic suggestion, Samson enables Bruce to transform into the Incredible Hulk at will in a bid to 'acquire' vital components for the device from the very people bent on his capture. To make matters worse, a new disturbing persona is emerging from within Bruce, waiting for the right moment to take control!

For an action title, Ultimate Destruction maintains a simple comic book style plot that never resorts to cheap tricks like introducing a dozen random villains in order to keep things lively, instead, it centers on a small cast of characters and their escalating conflict. This is fitting as Hulk is ultimately about a hero struggling to save himself rather than the entire world. The result is that, by the end of the campaign, it feels like you've been through a memorable adventure as opposed to a few bouts of unrelated Street Fighter-style brawls.

Not that there's a lack of physical violence in Ultimate Destruction, in case the title failed to tip you off, for the game is first and foremost about beating the living excrement out of anything that come your way! Radical presents players with two large open areas to roam about in (smaller than Grand Theft Auto, bigger than Destroy All Humans) ' a coastal metropolis and a canyon-y rural township, and then proceeds to hand you at least 5 dozen different ways to break everything in them. The environments are littered with optional challenges, from the hilarious Hulk Golf (complete with Hulk Beret' and Hulk Trackpants') to Float, a game where you grab a giant man-shaped float and jump off a tall building to see how far you can glide, as well as hidden tokens to collect to unlock bonus material.

You can of course run around inflicting random acts of vandalism, but if you get too carried away, a strike team will be sent to take you down. If you tire of these distractions, you can pick up story missions at any time by activating specific markers to advance the plot.

Fresh out of the box, Hulk is already impressively powerful, but as you progress through the game you'll rack up Smash Points that you can splurge on even more gratifying means to beat stuff up with. Fancy punting annoying foot-soldiers into a wall or even one another? How about riding a helicopter until it plunges to a fiery death? The game also comes with a handful of 'weaponization moves' that allow Hulk to turn nearby objects into instruments of further mayhem. Cars can be molded into a pair of metal gloves that allow you to damage armored foes, and buses can be crushed to form shields or even a surfboard. There is an astonishing amount of moves you can pull off, and much of the fun of the game actually derives from discovering new abilities and then using them to make beating up your enemies even more of a spectacle.

Taking a cue from the latest Spiderman game, Hulk's amazing agility is realized properly for the first time ' and it's a sight to behold. What we get to control is the Incredible Hulk that can effortlessly leap vast distances from rooftop to rooftop and scale the height of entire skyscrapers in seconds. And if you are thinking that this makes for some finger-twisting controller nightmare, you could not be more wrong. Radical somehow found a way to map all of Hulk's moves into intuitive short button combinations that are easy to execute, one after another, as you gleefully grab that enemy Hulkbuster mech, run up the side of a building and leap off to slam its metal face into the pavement ' it's wonderfully balletic, with decidedly more broken bones.

The game features enemies of a mostly military flavour, from gun-wielding soldiers, helicopters, armored tanks and even jetfighters to the more troublesome Hulkbuster Mechs of various sizes. The smaller Hulkbusters jet around and work in groups to bring you down, and the larger ones can raze entire buildings in an instant. Several missions into the game, you will start having to contend with these adversaries in overwhelming numbers. Even with your immensely powerful abilities it's still easy to suffer defeat without a little brainwork to complement the brawny action. Certain maneuvers are especially effective against a particular enemy type and figuring that out early on can make your life as Hulk much easier.

Missions in the game come in a few different varieties, all of which are quite enjoyable. You may be called on to destroy specific targets, or protect them by destroying enemy offences, and you'll frequently have to retrieve objects while destroying enemies that try to stop you. So even though there are different mission types, you can be assured that none of them require you to tip-toe around as the comparatively diminutive Bruce Banner. The game also throws a handful of memorable boss battles at you that take place in separate, more confined arenas. While none of them are overly difficult, they are all suitably challenging, a fact I first realized when I tried to leap away from the earliest boss only to have him intercept me in midair and bodyslam me into the cement.

Visually, the game has a look consistent with its comic book origins. Our protagonist looks great and moves wonderfully within the sizeable environments, and the third-person camera does a phenomenal job of capturing the action considering how chaotic things can get at times. Even during some of the most insane firefights (probably only bested by the Otogi games) there's almost no noticeable slowdown. My only minor gripe is that the two free-roamable areas in Ultimate Destruction don't have as much personality as, say, the otherwise vastly inferior Spiderman 2, and it can be easy to become lost in the generic urban jungle without referring to the map from time to time.

The sense of power you get from playing as the Hulk is amplified further by the great sound design in Ultimate Destruction. It's extremely satisfying to hear the sounds of objects shattering, exploding and being crushed as you literally throw your weight around town. Just as worthy of praise are the quality orchestral score that compliments the action as well as some of the drama in between missions, and the voice acting provided by a handful of talented thespians, with Neal McDonough playing the part of Bruce Banner and Hellboy (Ron Perlman) himself as Emil Blonsky, Banner's arch-nemesis for this game.