Hellboy's combat is lackluster and its story is forgettable.
This game does come out about 2 weeks before the movie, which is peculiar. That is, until, you learn it has nothing to do with the movie's story. You can still call this game a movie-game, but it doesn't really try to. It just happens to stumble upon that curse.
Pros
- The graphics and artistic direction is mostly original.
- Hellboy has a pretty nice model.
Cons
- Simple combat gets boring fast.
- Online co-op is boring and the controls lag behind.
- Story is directed in an uninteresting way.
- Puzzle elements are a useless addition.
Gameplay
You can rest assured Hellboy is a game that takes the easy route; frantic beat'em-up. As far as the story goes, it apparently follows the comics book but the cut-scenes are so bad I didn't bother to pay attention. They aren't good in any way. The basic meat of your combat is mashing X and Y in simplistic combos. You can also grab enemies and go in different ways, the most interesting being a finisher. With these you can take enemies' weapons, or kill them in a unique way. The enemies themselves seem mostly original, with the scale ranging from froglike creatures to german soldiers that act like puppets (as such, since they are reanimated). Now the combat wouldn't be so bad if it was fun, but you usually have to beat on enemies way too long so you can see the basic problem.
Boss fights are few, and they usually just involve you doing the usual "weak point" which nowadays is just bad design. Puzzles are also scattered among action sequences (and minor platforming) which would ordinarily give you a breather, but I don't want to carry a torch to some new location to burn a blockade. Sorry but give me a God of War puzzle anyday, especially over this filler. The game spans 6 chapters, each chapter takes about an hour and each chapter long overstays itself. You get far too bored of the current enemies and environment that you end up having to trudge through it.
Graphics/Sound
The graphics are fairly good. That's for a movie-game point of view. Hellboy looks nicely done, but Abe and Liz are forgettable as well as any other character skins in the game. The environments are destructible but you could care less in this game, especially since objects don't destroy as they would in a good game that time was spent on. The sound, well the acting is voice acting, and a fist is a fist, a gun is a gun. Nothing special.
Value
Not worth $60, a rental, or a buy. The game is just way too bad. So it'll take about 6-7 hours to complete, but they add in terrible collectibles along with questionable online co-op. One person gets all the fun (Hellboy) while the guest gets the boring character (Abe/Liz). Add in control lag on online and unstable servers, and you have a mode that feels tacked-on. Don't forget a couple bugs and glitches to spice up the fun.
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