Left in an unfinished state and never officially released, Starcon represents the most recent, and most baffling, attempt to drag the Star Control universe into the console realm. It’d already been done spectacularly well on the 3DO with Star Control II, which actually managed to trump the original PC version in some respects. But while the Playstation should’ve been capable of an equally spectacular port of Starcon II, Accolade instead licensed the name, and some placenames and species, for a game that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the series.

Even that might’ve been okay, except that as first-person space shooters go, Starcon wasn’t bringing anything new to the table. (Indeed, one of the last peeps out of Accolade about Starcon’s status was that development was going into an indefinite limbo - a euphemism for quietly cancelling the project - because it wasn’t unique enough to make a dent in the then-competitive Playstation market.) Starcon had nothing on Colony Wars or other games of its ilk. It was barely a decent space shooter, and barely had anything to do with Star Control’s sprawling narrative. Not a great combination.

To add insult to injury, the next PC iteration of the franchise, Star Control 3, didn’t set the world on fire either, not offering any compelling improvements over Starcon II’s exploration/exploitation/expansion game play. Sadly, the Star Control universe faded quietly away at this point; its epitaph has turned out to be the fan-made Ur-Quan Masters, a remake of Starcon II using the 3DO graphics and sound sets, capable of running on newer versions of Windows. One would think that the Star Control universe practically screams “MMORPG,” but perhaps it’s best left alone - before it winds up with another misstep like Starcon for the Playstation.

(This game was reviewed, and the video and screenshots gathered, from an actual Accolade beta copy that was in my possession from 2005-2007; I sold the game at the Classic Gaming Expo 2007 auction, and I am unaware if the party who bought it has any plans to release or dump the game.)

This interactive DVD game contains the first new Red Dwarf footage shot since the BBC’s cult SF comedy series bowed out in the 1990s; that along is cause for some small celebration at the very least. Granted, it’s not a new episode or the delayed-until-it’s-vaporware feature film, but it’ll do. Norman Lovett and Hattie Hayridge reprise their roles as the two incarnations of Holly; that’s got to be worth the price of admission alone.

One of the problems any DVD-based game is going to run into is player compatibility; since I imported this title from the UK (for some reason, despite the excellent sales track record of the Red Dwarf DVDs to date, this is one title that hasn’t been made available in region 1 form), I’m sure those potential problems are compounded, so take my technical criticisms with a grain of salt, if not the whole shaker. Beat The Geek sometimes falls victim to the seek - i.e., the seek time to find the appropriate segment of the DVD to play next. Each question, right or wrong, is followed by a randomly selected pithy comment from one of the two versions of Holly; these gems from the peanut gallery aren’t question- or even round-specific, and sometimes repeat quite a bit. Some questions include video and music segments, and animated interludes between rounds. What all of this means is a lot of jumping around the disc, and with every jump, a pause in the game. (This is really down to the technology, not the authoring - when you boil it down to brass tacks, a DVD game isn’t that much more advanced than, say, an ’80s laserdisc arcade game like Dragon’s Lair.)

Fans will find the Red Dwarf-specific material tremendously challenging; I played my first round at Geek level and promptly humbled myself. Those expecting to effortlessly smoke their friends at straightforward trivia will get the same treatment: some questions challenge players’ power of observation, stuff like “what deck number was painted on the set in this scene?” This is a canny choice on the part of the DVD’s makers, and even makes use of the same video clips from the series for multiple questions.

It’s not perfect though. In the middle of a two player session, the game stopped accepting any input from the DVD remote control, and several questions went unanswered after time “ran out” alarmingly fast. The game eventually resumed normal function after that, but it certainly handicapped everyone for that round. (Again, in the interest of fairness, this may be a player/region compatibility issue, but everything ran smoothly the rest of the time, so this incident stuck out.) There are other times when the on-screen indicators for how much time you have left and what answer you’ve chosen disappear without warning.

If those can be overlooked, Beat The Geek is a ton of Red Dwarf fun, with just a few glitches in the mix. But hey, if Holly’s in charge of this ride, you should expect nothing less.

Some people claim the Dreamcast tanked due to the release of Sony’s Playstation 2. Others say the Dreamcast failed because of widespread piracy of the system’s games. My own personal theory is that the Dreamcast failed because Godzilla Generations sucked so badly.

Ruining a Godzilla game is like ruining a cake - you started with some pretty tasty ingredients, so what happened? Guys love tearing things up (have you ever been to a monster truck rally?), so it doesn’t seem possible that anyone could ruin a game that revolves around tearing things up! And yet, once again, game developers have done the seemingly impossible, and somehow made mass destruction boring.

The goal of Godzilla Generations is to pick one of multiple versions of the big green lug (Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, First Generation Godzilla, USA Godzilla) and work your way through levels by destroying cities and avoiding death. While playing you will notice Godzilla has the ability to roar and heal himself, which essentially means you can play forever without dying (unless it’s from boredom). Gameplay revolves around stomping on various cities while avoiding being killed by tiny army people, but there are multiple quirks (including control and camera issues) that keep this from being as fun as it might sound. First off, Godzilla should be renamed to Godmolasses as it takes him forever to perform such complicated maneuvers as turning around.

Just like the Christmas I was old enough to realize Santa wasn’t coming, I played Godzilla Generations for a couple of hours hoping it was going to get better, but sadly realizing it wasn’t going to happen. While some of the technical and graphical issues can probably be attributed to the fact that this was a launch title for the Dreamcast, even the world’s most advanced processor wouldn’t have the power to turn this into a good game.

Rating: One quarter. The only three bad things about Godzilla Generations are its looks, controls, and gameplay. Instead of buying this game, pick up a package of tiny plastic green army men, scatter them around your backyard and spend a few minutes stomping around on them while roaring. I promise, that’ll be more fun.

The 16-bit Super Nintendo (SNES) was light years ahead of its predecessor, the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The Super Nintendo boasted huge improvements in both graphics and sound, which games like Super Godzilla brilliantly demonstrated. Unfortunately all that newfound crunching power didn’t always guarantee better game play, to which Super Godzilla is also a testament. It’s a great looking game that wasn’t much fun to play.

Super Godzilla is presented in a split-screen fashion, with animations of Godzilla’s actions shown on the top half and a map of the city shown below. The map is a square grid that shows players the locations of water, buildings, tanks, and enemies. As Godzilla makes his way across the map, the top half of the screen shows colorful animations of the big green guy walking through the city. The animated sequences look very nice, which is fortunate as you’re forced to watch them for long stretches of time as Godzilla lumbers his way from one side of the map to the other.

It appears that great efforts were taken to ensure that anything remotely fun about videogames was removed before Super Godzilla hit store shelves. Compared to other fighting games of the era, Super Godzilla’s fighting engine is incredibly primitive. Godzilla only has four attacks, all of them made less-than-fun by the game’s awkward battle system.

The goal of each level is ultimately to defeat a boss while avoiding army attacks. There are six levels full of enemies, power-ups and bosses to work your way through, but chances are you’ll fall asleep long before you make it to the end. Super Godzilla isn’t as bad as it is boring, which is amazing for any game based on a giant, fire-breathing monster.

Rating: 1 1/2 quarters. Worth checking out for Godzilla fans, but those looking for the same levels of action found in the movies will be crushed.

There’s a fine line between adding to a genre and simply copying it, a line that Godzilla: Domination is never quite able to cross. The makings of a fun game are all here: giant monsters battling throughout multiple interactive playfields, but unfortunately the formula has been done before, better.

In story mode, players can choose one of six Godzilla-related monsters (King Ghidorah, Rodan, Mothra, Megalon, Mechagodzilla, or Godzilla himself). Each monster has different speed, power and special attack ratings along with unique special attacks. The thinly-draped plot explains that a mysterious meteor (Magnetic Meteor X) is causing every giant monster on Earth (except the one you’ve chosen) to go crazy. The goal of the game is to defeat every other monster in variations of one-on-one, two-on-two, and one-on-three matches. These matches take place in an assortment of locations, everywhere from Tokyo to the Moon. Each level has interactive (read: destroyable) buildings.

As fun as all this may sound, a complete lack of strategy pretty much sucks the fun out of the game’s battles. Godzilla: Domination quickly spirals into a stereotypical button-masher. A and B perform separate attacks, with other button combinations performing various character-specific special attacks. For the most part these special attacks are unnecessary; most enemies can be beaten simply by cornering them and punching them repeatedly in their monster faces. Power-ups that boost (or occasionally detract from) your abilities randomly appear in each arena, but again whatever competitive edge they give you are largely unneeded.

By simply pummeling opponents with repeated attacks, the game’s story mode can be plowed through in fifteen to twenty minutes. The same cannot be said for the game’s final battle against Mecha-King Ghidorah, a fight so frustratingly hard that I gave up on after the first hour.

Outside the story mode, Godzilla: Domination also includes two separate battle modes fighting against the either computer or your friends using a Gameboy link cable. One nice feature is that you can play head-to-head against your friends using only one copy of the game, however in this mode everybody has to be the same character, and after a few minutes you may find those same people are no longer your friends.

Rating: 1 ½ quarters. Godzilla: Domination is essentially a rebranded version of Neo Geo’s 1991 King of the Monsters or Epyx’s 1986 Movie Monster Game, both of which exhibited more depth and beat Atari to the punch by over a decade. This is a watered-down, overly-simplified and ultimately boring version of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee for the Gamecube; check that out instead.

Review: In the late 80’s, Interplay’s Battle Chess reinvented the computer chess genre. In Battle Chess, each chess piece was portrayed by a character on a three dimensional chessboard. The game followed the same rules as the classic board game – the only difference being when one piece captured another, it was visually portrayed on screen through light-hearted animations. Characters clobbered one another in humorous ways throughout the game, and the game’s sense of humor along with its stunning graphics and animation launched an entire wave of similarly styled chess games.

One such game was Star Wars Chess, by Software Toolworks. Like all the other Battle Chess clones (Terminator 2 Chess, Cyber Chess, Chess Maniac Five Billion and One, etc), Star Wars Chess replaced standard issue chess pieces with recognizable characters, this time from Lucas’ franchise. Each side (light and dark) has unique characters: Luke and the Emperor serve as kings, Princess Leia and Darth Vader act as queens, an army of R2 units and stormtroopers represent pawns, and so on. Although the game’s graphical mode is quite dated, the characters themselves are quite detailed and gamers should have no problem recognizing their favorite trilogy characters.

Most graphical chess games suffered from a few common problems, and Star Wars Chess is no exception. The first problem is that, while it is simple to tell what chess piece a character represents before the game starts, after pieces begin moving it becomes more difficult to remember. Is Chewbacca a rook or a knight? What about Boba Fett, or Tusken Raiders? Chess taxes your brain hard enough without having to constantly try and figure out which piece is what!

A second problem Star Wars Chess seems to have inherited from Battle Chess is painfully slow load times. When one piece takes another, first the animation of one piece walking is loaded and displayed, then the animated fight scene must be loaded and displayed, and finally the AI must make its next move. (Also worth noting is that each “capture” only has one animation, taking the cutesy animations from entertaining to boring in light speed.) Chess isn’t known for being a particularly fast-paced game, but Star Wars Chess moves like space-molasses, especially while waiting for the computer to move.

And speaking of the game’s AI, it’s not particularly good. Even moderately experienced players should have no problems making bantha poo-doo out of the computer’s defenses. Star Wars Chess does support two-player mode, but you’ll have to have to find another die-hard Star Wars fan with a lot of free time on his or her hands to complete even one full game.

Star Wars Chess is only recommended for die-hard Star Wars fans who are also computer literate. It’ll take some work to get this game to run on modern computers. The game refused to launch under Windows XP, and I had to install DOSBox (a DOS emulator) and spend several minutes configuring it to get Star Wars Chess to work. The game ran so slowly that I often thought it had locked up, and the game’s interface is so sparse that I had trouble figuring out what piece I had selected, or occasionally which side of the board I was playing.

The Force is not strong with this one. Not even a little bit.

Use the “order” button to play this game online.

Somewhere in London, an alien menace is in the early stages of hatching a plan for world domination, and since he’s dropped Rose off to take part in an important historical event (namely, the 1979 Abba concert at Wembley Stadium), the Doctor asks you to help him find it. After the Doctor ties into your remote control with his sonic screwdriver, your first task is to monitor a seemingly normal family at Christmastime for any hints of alien incursion. The Doctor suspects the alien is a Graske, who invades worlds by replacing people, one at a time, with duplicates that he controls. Once spotted, the Graske leads the TARDIS on a wild goose chase through the time vortex, and the Doctor relies on you to help him operate his timeship’s controls in rapid succession. The chase leads back to Earth, but in an earlier era, where the Graske decides to try launching his invasion at a more vulnerable point in Earth’s history. It’s up to you to spot the Graske and then to accompany the Doctor to the Graske’s home planet, where you have to crack the codes to break into the creature’s inner sanctum and then put an end to his invasion plans. (BBC Interactive, 2005)

Review: Available to viewers of the BBC’s Freeview and digital satellite services, Attack Of The Graske admittedly doesn’t have tremendous replay value. It’s the TV equivalent of a choose-your-own-adventure book, with only one right answer for each multiple-choice decision point. (I suppose that also makes it a latter-day descendant of Dragon’s Lair.) This was carried off on a real-time broadcast by having two program streams running simultaneously: one with scenes befitting the correct answers, and one with scenes that play out when the wrong answer is given (the two could be switched back and forth for the first challenge’s “multi-angle” feature as well). By giving the wrong answer, you would be switched to the “wrong answer” channel, and if you gave the right answer on the next challenge, you would be switched back to the “right answer” channel.

By its very nature, this also made Graske a shoo-in for a future DVD bonus feature, and it has also appeared on the BBC’s Doctor Who web site in Flash form, although available only to British internet users.

With fairly limited replay value, what makes Graske worth even a glance? Like the animation of the aforementioned Don Bluth laserdisc arcade games, the appeal is in the audiovisual portion of the program. David Tennant’s dynamic, almost-hyperactive tenth Doctor is in full swing here, and keeping in mind that this game was clearly aimed at a younger crowd, there’s got to be something completely thrilling about having the Doctor talk to you on TV. Tennant’s Doctor is gently chiding if a wrong answer is given, so as not to be discouraging, but has no end of ebullient praise for a correct response - and is nearly manic at all points in between.

Attack Of The Graske was written by Gareth Roberts, a Doctor Who novelist who got his start with Virgin Publishing’s New Adventures and Missing Adventures books (he wrote the final title in the latter range), and has remained a regular member of the Doctor Who authors’ stable ever since. Sadly, whether or not we’ll see a follow-up to Graske is as uncertain as any Doctor Who cliffhanger. Steve Absolum, the BBC Wales producer behind Graske and a number of other interactive programs produced by the BBC in recent years, drowned while swimming off the Caribbean coast on the day after his latest creation premiered in 2005.

written by Gareth Roberts
directed by Ashley Way
music by Murray Gold

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Lisa Palfrey (Mum), Nicholas Beveney (Dad), Mollie Kabia (Girl), James Harris (Boy), Robin Meredith (Grandad), Gwyneth Petty (Grandma), Jimmy Vee (Graske), Roger Nott (Older Man), Ben Oliver (Urchin), Catherine Olding (Young Woman)

Notes: Jimmy Vee featured in two roles during the first season of the new Doctor Who with Tennant’s predecessor, Christopher Eccleston; his first appearance was as the Moxx of Balhoon in The End Of The World, with an uncredited return as the “space pig” in Aliens Of London. Unusually, Graske was filmed in a full-frame 4:3 aspect ratio; the series itself is shot in 16:9 widescreen, and this was clearly evident when certain effects shots of the TARDIS and the main titles were seen to be “stretched out” to fill the screen.

Review: Like millions of kids, my life changed forever back in 1977 when my parents took me to go see Star Wars for the first time. I loved Star Wars, I lived Star Wars. I had Star Wars toys, Star Wars cereal, and Star Wars Underoos. And for the first time on television, the following year we got… Battlestar Galactica. Ok, so it wasn’t Star Wars, but if you squinted your eyes just right Vipers looked like X-Wing Fighters and Cylons resembled shiny Stormtroopers. Between that and the fact that my parents told me that Starbuck was Luke Skywalker’s cousin, Battlestar Galactica became my “bargain bin” version of Star Wars.

Likewise, Battlestar Galactica resembles other Star Wars brand shooters such as the Starfighter games and even the classic X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. Battlestar Galactica (the game) takes place 40 years before the television show, and in it you play Ensign Adama (a younger version of Commander Adama, played on the show by Lorne Green). The rest of the plot will seem familiar to fans of the original series; your job is to defend the battlestars from the Cylons and other attackers.

Presented from a third-person point of view, gamers have the typical on screen radar, damage sensors and targeting systems at their disposal. The third-person view of your ship makes the game seem more like an arcade game than a serious space shooter, but as the controls (especially yous ship’s energy system) become increasingly complex, the game begins to show its true colors. The controls begin simple enough - the triggers control your thrust/brake and two buttons fire different types of weapons, but as the game progresses you’ll need to choose your attacks more carefully. Depending on how long you hold down the fire buttons, your ship fires varying powers of lasers. Likewise, by holding down the missile button you can target incoming Cylons. Another weapon in your arsenal are your wingmen, which can be tasked via the d-pad to attack, defend, scatter and regroup.

Like the previously mentioned Star Wars games, Battlestar Galactica presents you with goals and objectives during each mission. How well you perform each one decides your rating and unlocks various game features, including concept art, movies, and clips of the Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar series.

Visually, the game is above average with effects that rival the original show’s! Unfortunately, the default third-person view makes your enemies often appear quite small and the camera tends to whip around in a nauseating fashion as you zip around the universe, but overall the view works and makes for some gorgeous visuals (not that you’ll have much time for sightseeing, mind you). Likewise, the audio seems to be (from what I can remember) faithful enough to the orignal show to spark a few memories, including the original theme song.

But even all of that isn’t enough to make Battlestar Galactica a winner. First off, it’s too hard. It took me several attempts just to get through the game’s initial training mission. Your ship’s fancier maneuvers are complicated to learn and pull off in battle, and the screen presentation suffers from “information overload” at times when your entire view is filled with alarms, sensors, missiles, ships, explosions, planets, and various other celestial anomalies. Worst of all, there’s no “in-game” saving ability, which means you’ll find yourself backtracking 10-15 minutes if you get blown up near the end of a level. And don’t plan on your buddies helping you either - there’s no multiplayer mode here, online or otherwise.

The cut scenes are nice and the opportunity to fly a Viper (and later a Cylon Raider!) is simply cool, but the game’s complex controls, aggressive AI and sparse save points make it too frustrating to start over every time you fail a mission. Fans of the series will get a kick out of the game, but only serious space shooters will be able to get very far.

Review: This sequel to last year’s Battlefront promised a lot of improvements over that first game and whole new elements. The game delivers admirably on both accounts.

Battlefront II retains the basic game play of the original. You fight as one of dozens of combatants in a variety of locations. Each side has different classes of combatants including a basic soldier class, sniper, anti-vehicle/assault, engineer, commander, and special units unique to each faction. Availability of vehicles varies according to the map, so while the Empire will have AT-STs on most maps, AT-ATs are only available on Hoth.

The biggest change from the original Battlefront is how starfighter combat is handled. A number of space maps are now available where all the combat occurs in orbit. Naturally, this necessitates combat focusing on starfighters and capital ships. There is a good variety of starfighters available, with each faction having a scout class (fast but fragile; the dogfighter), general purpose (jack of all trades, master of none), bomber (effective against capital ships), and assault (transport for boarding parties). Depending on the play mode, the objectives can be to simply rack up kills or to board the opposing faction’s ship and sabotage critical systems.

A point system has been implemented in the game. Point totals unlock the faction-unique character classes and hero characters. Certain accomplishments will also activate bonuses like a damage bonus, better weapons, or auto-heal. This adds some welcome depth to the game and encourages actions (fighting with only the wimpy pistol, for example) that otherwise wouldn’t be worth the effort.

The other big change is that the hero Jedi characters are now playable. Certain conditions and point totals must be met, of course, but characters like Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and even Boba Fett are available to wreak havoc on the battlefront. Heroes are overpowered, of course, but actually fairly easy to kill with the right tactics and weapons. Also, there is a time limit imposed on hero characters. A time bar slowly counts down. Damage will make it drop faster, but defeating enemies will fill it back up. All hero characters have special abilities. Jedi have various Force powers (usually push/pull, but also fun stuff like choke and lightning) while “regular” folk like Han, Leia, and Boba Fett wield powerful blasters (as a rule, one shot, one kill).

Game play modes have been revamped a bit, some more than others. Campaign mode, featuring the 501st Imperial Legion (a fan organization that’s managed to work itself into official continuity), includes a number of objective-based missions. For example, the mission on Felucia involves the recovery a power cell to power up a derelict AT-TE to facilitate the destruction of the enemy’s defensive turrets.

Galactic Conquest has been extensively changed, successfully incorporating the space-based fighter combat. Fleets are moved around a map of the galaxy. If a map point is simply out in space and the enemy’s fleet is there, space combat begins. If a map point has a planet, space combat will commence if the opposing fleet is present, otherwise it’s time for a ground battle.

Instant Action incorporates capture-the-flag, assault, objective-based, and team deathmatch modes. The variety is very welcome, as is the ability to play space battles as part of Instant Action.

Graphics in Battlefront II are great. The environments from the movies are beautifully rendered with a number of tweaks given to maps carried over from the original Battlefront. The Felucia map is rather murky, but I guess that’s consistent with what we saw of the planet in Episode III. No complaints with the eye candy.

Sound effects and music continue the established Star Wars tradition. Lifted straight from the movies, the elements make Battlefront II a very immersive Star Wars experience. The random voice bits are pretty amusing, too.

All those fine details are wonderful, but as Yoda might say, “Control, control. You must have control!” The vehicle controls in the original Battlefront left quite a bit to be desired. With the new emphasis on space combat, that aspect has been greatly improved. On the PC, at least, the combination of mouse/WASD was fine for on the ground but didn’t work too well in the air. In Battlefront II the controls have been tweaked to make the game very playable with the default control setup. Extra moves have been added to the piloting repertoire, too, making repeated assaults and missile avoidance a lot easier. Controls for ground action have been tweaked ever so slightly, mostly for turret control and weapon selection.

Overall, Battlefront II is a major improvement over the original game and a great game in general. The wide variety of maps, characters, vehicles, and missions give the game enough depth for enjoyable repeat playing. The graphics and sound design transport you to that galaxy far, far away better than almost any other Star Wars game. With the new space battles, playable hero characters, new character classes, and improved gameplay, Battlefront II delivers everything a Star Wars fan would want.

Review: Within five minutes of launching this game for the first time, I had destroyed a dozen tanks with my bare fists, knocked two helicopters out of the sky by throwing boulders at them, and killed an enemy soldier by beating him to death with a cow. If that’s not a recipe for fun, I don’t know what is.

Many superhero-based videogames are as predictable and linear as the films they’re based upon. In games like Spider-Man, Batman, X-Men and even The Incredibles, you’ll have to first learn how to harness all the powers your hero is capable of (usually by working your way through a tutorial level) before heading off into the big city to face your nemesis and his hoarde of evil henchmen. And in that respect, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction isn’t much different than its counterparts. Where Ultimate Destruction stands out is in the, well, ultimate destruction.

While The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is ultimately another level-based superhero game, Vivendi has gone out of their way to make the levels (which are large) as interactive as possible. If you see a rock, you can pick it up and throw it. If you see a vehicle, you can smash it. If you see a soldier, you have several options - punch him, attack him with a combo, pick him up with one hand and pummel him with the other, throw him as far as possible, or pick a target and use the poor screaming fellow as a projectile weapon. And yes, if you see a cow, you can even pick it up and use it as a weapon (melee or projectile - your choice). Once the action begins, the game plays like one big three-dimensional version of Rampage. And unlike the previous current-gen Hulk game, there are no wimpy Bruce Banner levels to be played here. This time around, it’s all about breaking stuff as the green guy.

A big plus for this game is the uncomplicated controls. While there are combos and other complicated moves which can be learned and mastered, my eight-year-old nephew did pretty well by simply button mashing his way through levels. The targeting system for throwing projectiles is simple to learn (pull the right trigger to cycle through targets) and easy to use when things get frantic. On more than one occasion my nephew would do something like pick up cars and use them as boxing gloves. When I would ask how he did that, he would just shrug his shoulders and say, “I have no idea.” The variety of moves and weapons is so great that I often found myself surprised at what the game would let me do (tree + Hulk = batter up!).

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is a blast to play - of course, with hundreds of tanks, army men, helicopters and other enemies closing in on you, you won’t have too much time to think about it until long after you’ve quit playing. Fans of the comic books will appreciate the in-game references to characters, while casual gamers won’t need a history lesson in order to enjoy the mayhem. Hulk smash, indeed.