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I love superheroes. The mountains of comic books I owned when I was younger are a testament to that my passion. One of my all time favorite Pen and Paper games ia a superhero RPG entitles Champions. As technology changed and my ability to sit around a table with my friends diminished, I've turned to electronic sources of entertainment. What do I get to play? None other than the strongest superhero ever as he romps through New York City literally stomping the bad guy into the dirt. The video game is far more visually stimulating than looking at your geek friends over a table top.

The Incredible Hulk by Sega is inspired by the new movie released a few weeks ago. Having not seen the movie yet (yeah, I know, how can I possibly be a superhero nut if I haven't seen the movie yet), I can't really speak to whether it follows that storyline or not. What I can tell you, though, is that The Incredible Hulk is a nonstop romp of epic proportions. As a completely open world, you can choose where you go and what you do, and if you want to just cause random destruction, go right ahead. If you want to follow the storyline, do it.

The game has a number of options that allow nearly any play you are in the mood for. There is a storyline that revolves around the military and its desire to capture you and presumably turn you into a lab rat. There also is another storyline occurring concurrently that revolves around a secret society known as the Enclave. The Enclave is a group of evil scientists who desire what all evil scientists desire — world domination! They are using the city of New York as their own private lab to experiment with all their cool goodies. The Hulk — being the kind and lovable beastie that he is — is working with an investigator to thwart the Enclave.

As you travel around the city, you will encounter a number of waypoints; each will give you access to a different part of the storyline. So if you are in the mood to stomp Army behind, just go to the appropriate storyline waypoint and voila, there you have it. There are numerous waypoints active at any one time so that you have your choice of which direction you want to head with the story.

There also are a series of mini-games within the main game. These mini-games consist of various challenges to let you test your Hulkiness mettle. They deal with things like destroying a number of vehicles within a certain timeframe, running an obstacle course, etc. Each game will give you a rating of bronze, silver or gold and can be repeated for a better rating. This, of course, means that if you get bored with destroying evil, or the city, you can pop immediately to a mini-game without having to travel to its location first.

One of the features I enjoyed the most is the way you develop your personal powers and abilities. The ability to convert a parked car into boxing gloves, or launch a thunderclap attack, or even simple things like being able to jump farther with each hop. The development of your powers is done through completing "feats," and when you have completed the appropriate feats for that improvement, you get it. How simple is that? Well, actually, some of them aren't that simple to accomplish.

Some of the feats include things like knocking down 25 buildings, or throwing a certain number of cars into buildings so that they stick. Or climbing the five tallest buildings or destroying a specified number of military vehicles. And here is where I have the most fun — I scroll through the feats, seeing which are incomplete and then go out and do them. Sometimes that means causing random havoc to attract the attention of the military just so I can beat up on armored vehicles.

Another aspect of the game I particularly enjoy is the fact that it is a completely free-roaming game. I get to choose where I go and what I do; the game doesn't force me to make decisions about such things. If I want to move forward on different paths of the story and complete missions, I can. If not, I can just roam or work on finishing feats to get more powers. Sometimes it's fun just to climb buildings to see what the city looks like.

Speaking of how the city looks, it looks amazing. It probably helps that I'm using an HDTV with the composite cables. The graphics are fantastic, and there is an amazing amount of variation to the cityscape so that it doesn't look like you're running past panels that are simply repeating over and over like when the Flintstones are running from a saber-toothed tiger. The Hulk is quite impressive as well with all his rippling green musculature.

The enemies can be quite entertaining as well. As the Hulk walks down the street, the general populous reacts to him, running and screaming; cars will hit their brakes and back up with a squeal of rubber. Civilians who find themselves in the middle of a fight will run around screaming or vacate the area. I saw one guy limping away from the Hulk as fast as he could hobble, holding his leg like it was broken. There was another who put up his hands in fear toward the Hulk and backed away, right into the path of a moving vehicle. Of course, he got hit by the car, knocked down, then got up holding his arm and ran in fear. There is an amazing amount of polish in this game that brings the city to life and gives the game a very real feel.

The basic controls are easy to use, simple things like pummeling and jumping and grabbing, etc. There is also an extensive list of combo moves that you can use - some of them are unlocked through accomplishing feats. As the list of available moves gets longer I was starting to have trouble keeping track of them all so tended to focus on just a few favorites - moves like the thunder clap and ground shaking quake.

There is one point in the game where I got a bit stuck keeping track of an artifact. Of course you can't fight and carry fragile equipment at the same time so the Hulk has to drop the item, which of course the bad guys immediately move to steal. The amount of random detritus that is created from crushing everything in site made it a bit of a challenge to keep track of the item and/or pick it back up. Overall the game is not difficult, but some of the individual missions are very challenging and you may find yourself repeating them till you get it right. For the most part I've found that once I fail in a mission its fairly easy to beat it the second time around.

The UI for the game is very simple and easy to keep track of. A small circular map is encircled with the health and rage meters. As long as you keep your eye on those and make sure your not about to be overwhelmed during a deficit of health your good to go on smashing all around you.

The Incredible Hulk has hours entertainment as well as excellent replayability. The game is also good for the kids, well at least my kids; they love any game that allows you to knock down buildings. Some of the mission objectives may be beyond a younger child's ability to understand - that and if you cause too much damage to the city the army comes to convince you that that's a "bad move". Theres no "blood and guts" even with people being thrown 20 city blocks across town to splat against a building. It's just good fun.