
It can't be easy creating games featuring characters who sometimes possess the powers of gods, and fly at supersonic speed, and can do - y'know - more or less anything.
But still... it's remarkable just how wrong some games have been over the years. Suffice to say, the default position of most super-hero games is "beat 'em up".
Appropriately, this tawdry selection looks as if it's been beaten up with the ugly stick.
What made it so wrong, apart from the appalling visuals, and the complete disconnect from the character's comic book adventures, is how underpowered The Hulk felt - lightly tapping his enemies multiple times, rather than punching them into outer space, or into clouds of red mist, as he should be.
You have the opportunity there to make something that's a commentary on super-hero video games, in the same way that Watchmen was originally a commentary on super-hero comics - a political and artistic satire that may have been translated semi-successfully into a movie in a literal sense, but lost much of its deeper meaning in the process. Here was a chance to readdress that balance, and create the definitive super-hero video game.
So, you could do that. Or you could just make a really average beat 'em up that's not about anything in particular other than punching thugs in the face, in a succession of rain-slicked alleyways. Guess what they went for?
More awful still was this sort of Tomb Raider-esque beat 'em up - coming at a time when the creators' imaginations were some leagues ahead of where video game visuals were at. Given that it was based upon such a stylised comic book aesthetic, there's a certain irony in this being one of the worst-looking games of all time. Ghastly.
The flat, texture-less visuals were presumably intended to reflect the art deco look of the show, but just ended up looking unfinished - a fact not helped by excessive use of the N64's fogging feature to disguise a lack of draw distance. Given that the title character has supervision, this was more like playing a game starring someone with severe cataracts.
Crippled by appalling controls and a camera system that seemed to do whatever it wanted (and what it mostly wanted was to frustrate and irrigate the player). Interestingly, while Halle Berry may have wanted nothing to do with it, various thug and cop voices were provided by Hank "Chief Wiggum" Azaria and Jeremy "Hawkeye" Renner. Fact!