For Christmas last year, my son was brought the Incredible Hulk Smash board game. For months it lay under his bed un-played, but recently we got it out to play for the first time.

The initial set up for the game takes a little while, but once you have done this, set up for future games takes just a couple of minutes at most. The reason the initial set up is a bit fiddly is because there are nine cardboard buildings that need assembling. They are relatively easy as it's just a case of folding corners and putting flaps through holes to secure the buildings, but as there are 9 of them, it does take around 15 minutes just to complete.

Within the game you get the board itself, two dice, a set of hulk cards, a hulk 'smasher hand', a playing piece mould and four tubs of play doh. My first thought was why do you need play doh for a board game? After reading the instructions, the reason became obvious and it was quite a genius idea in my opinion.

You can have a maximum of four players in the game, but we played it with two and it was fine. Each player has two counters. Within the playing piece mould, there are four small moulds of an aeroplane, bus, tank and car. You choose which vehicle you want your playing pieces to be, what colour you want to be and place some play doh of that colour into the moulds to make your playing pieces. Just this bit alone was great fun and we hadn't even got to the game yet. I would recommend that an adult does this bit though, especially if you have carpet as we all know what can happen if you leave a child unattended with play doh on carpet, you will be picking bits of play doh out forever!

Anyway, onto the game. You set both your pieces up at the starting point, using one at a time. The idea is simple. The winner will be the one who gets both their pieces from the start to finish, moving along the coloured squares to do so. Once you have your first piece there, you start on your second piece. Hulk will do his best to stop you though! You roll the two dices which reveal either numbers which mean you move that amount of spaces on the board, or a hulk picture or both. If you get a number and a hulk, you choose one card from the pack or if you get two hulks, you choose two cards from the pack. The cards can reveal a colour or a hulk. A colour means you can use the big Hulk hand to smash up any players pieces which are on that colour, squashing them to oblivion. A hulk card means that you can choose a building on the board and smash any pieces in direct contact with that building. This is where the game gets really fun.

As you can imagine, an 8 year old child loves nothing more than battering my playing pieces if he gets the opportunity, leaving my once lovely vehicles a play doh mess! He does get a bit carried away when smashing my pieces up, but that is part of the fun of the game. No damage can be caused to anything, just make sure your child knows that's not what you do in real ife! If your pieces do get smashed up, you simply mould it again and go back to the start.

There is no real time frame for this game as it is based on luck. Sometimes you can fly through the game in around 15 minutes (depending on how many players you have) if you get more numbers than hulks on the dice. On the other hand, the game can take forever if you get a lot of cards and each player's counters get smashed up a lot and have to start again. The longest a game has taken us so far is around 25-30 minutes, but as said, that is with only two players so if you have four players, it could take a while longer to complete the game.

The box states that this game is for children aged 6+, but to me children younger than this could really enjoy this game with supervision. I wouldn't trust a younger child to make the moulds due to the mess they would create, and obviously you have to watch with younger children that play doh doesn't end up in their mouths so leaving them to their own devices with this game wouldn't be advisable. Although probably aimed more at boys, this game is great for the whole family no matter what age or gender.

For me, I was really surprised at how much enjoyment we got out of the game. At certain points of the game my son was in hysterics at the destruction he had caused to my pieces. It is a really fun, easy to play game which both adults and children can enjoy. Price wise, the game tends to cost around £15 depending on where you purchase it from, which isn't cheap, but it provides many laughs and a lot of fun which for me, you can't really put a price on.

If you are a parent that likes your child's games to have an educational twist to them, then this one probably isn't for you. The only education they will get from the game is learning some colours and adding together the numbers on the dice. This game is purely about fun and nothing more.

Overall, my son and I love playing this game together and have lots of laughs along the way. The idea is simple, it takes no time to set up and put away after the initial constructing of buildings and isn't a game that tends to go on forever. This game is purely about fun and for that reason, comes with a high recommendation from me.