Hulk Smash! Lacks Subtlety

Joshuah Bearman's, over at the LA Weekly, continues to impress with his 'Pass the Paddles' column. This week he offers up an analysis of why 'Hulk Smash' needs a little more thought put into it. From the article: "If superhero games are so often terrible, it's because they're saddled with the flattening reductionism of superhero film adaptations. But superheroes aren't so simple. The principal disappointment with the film version of The Hulk was that it lacked the mythical gravitas, graceful action and ultimate spiritual reward of Ang Lee's previous masterpiece, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film Hulk's oedipal and rage complexes were ham-fisted, and the action boringly brutish. In other words: Crouching Tiger was a better superhero story. (And should have made a better video game; sadly, that title was a disaster.)"

Comments

Should've gone back to the comics

[tepples]

Many players would call GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64 the Best Movie To Game Conversion Evar(tm). It was greatly improved by the fact that the level designers took a lot of their cues from John Gardner's novelization, filling out details that were only implied in the movie. Likewise, the developers of Hulk video games could have referred to the comics.

Re:Should've gone back to the comics

[Intellectual Elitist]

> Likewise, the developers of Hulk video games could have referred to the comics.

Yeah, really. They could have maybe gotten someone like Paul Jenkins, who'd actually written the Hulk comic before, to work on the game with them. And maybe even base the game off of one of his comic book storylines. And they could have even gone the extra mile and done a comic book miniseries based on the game. Oh, wait -- they already did.

Granted, Jenkins was hardly the best writer the Hulk had ever seen, and the translation of the story to the game wasn't the best, either -- but the game itself was extremely solid and enjoyable, and immensely replayable.