You may recall that the last Incredible Hulk game was a button-mashing suckfest. So it was with guarded hopes that I rented Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (Xbox, PS2, GC). But this game more than makes up for the sins of its forerunner and, even better, totally lives up to its name.

Obviously, smashing things is still the main objective of the game. But this time around, you’re given a lot more things to pound and a litany of moves (a few you start off with, and then you earn smash points to buy increasingly powerful and kick-ass moves). They’ve put the Hulk in a free-roaming environment, kind of like they did for the Spider-Man 2 game (OK, and GTA and practically every other freakin’ game out now). That means if you’re in a hurry, you can just go from mission to mission and progress the story (which was written by a Marvel guy and is pretty interesting). You can also participate in a variety of challenges around the levels. These are as varied as smashing lots of things, kicking cars between field goal posts, saving people from a burning building or using a giant bar to hit a giant golf ball into a “hole.” This is where it definitely beats Spider-Man, where you would have to save the same frickin’ balloons 50 times. Each of the challenges are different. Bless you, gamemakers.

But the best part of the free-roaming environment is that you can also just wander around the city wreaking wanton destruction—and most of the environment is destructible. Want a club? Just yank a tree or a lightpole out of the ground. Once you buy the right weaponizations, a car can be ripped in half and turned into a pair of metal boxing gloves. Trucks can be flattened and used as shields or—get this—giant skateboards for Hulk to get his grind on. And you see that giant hamburger atop the sign for the fast-food joint? You can turn it into a giant bowling ball. That’s awesome. Oh, and did I mention that you can catch missiles and hurl them back at your attackers?

Hell. Yeah.

Even skyscrapers can tumble to the ground with enough pounding. Such is the power of the Hulk.

And there’s also a pretty diverse menu of enemies to face, unlike the last Hulk game. They start out with a lot of foot soldiers and wussy tanks. But before you know it, you’ll be facing mechs, bigger tanks, helicopters, missile launchers, fighter jets and gigantic mechs—all at once. Now that is some crazy shit. There are also some pretty formidable bosses throughout the story.

Gameplay is pretty easy to get a handle on. Sometimes, when you’re running around, jumping to great heights, sprinting up the side of a building, you can kind of lose control and miss your mark, and the ability to change targets can be a little cumbersome, but for the most part, it’s pretty intuitive. And while some of the fighting combos can be difficult, most aren’t too crazy, and they’re all a hell of a lot easier than anything you’d have to pull off to play Street Fighter when you were a kid. And you’d better learn some of these moves, because button-mashing ain’t gonna cut it later on.

The graphics look good for the most part. There were some obvious slowdowns in the final battle and a few glitches elsewhere, but nothing major. And the game does a good job of making Hulk feel powerful.

There are a litany of unlockables in the game to keep you playing. They include making-of movies, lots of design sketches, comic book covers, cheat codes and a harder difficulty setting. The cheat codes largely unlock different outifts for the Hulk (you can even get him dressed up in a suit for a nice night out on the town). But they also allow you to play through the game as Abomination (your main foe in the game) or the possibility to play as Bruce Banner with all of Hulk’s power. There’s also a code to change all the missiles that get fired at you into cows. Because seeing a helicopter launch cows at you from midair is kinda funny. And for the die-hard completionists, there are things to collect, of course.

I actually liked the game so much, I decided to buy it. Ultimate Destruction is a great cathartic release and a smashing (HA!) success. It does more than redeem that last Hulk video game—I think it may even make up for the crap movie.