It's quite sad, but Hellboy had the potential to be one of the most bad-ass beat-'em-up titles that the genre has seen in a long time. The title's subject matter is drawn from the well of Hellboy comics, in lieu of the movieverse, but even drinking from this large pool of characters and storyline wasn't enough to give the developers a clue. The character of Hellboy himself is so well liked, well crafted amongst the comic book fraternity that Big Red had the potential to be a breakout star for the flailing superhero video game genre. Instead, players are left with a title that has so many flaws that it's hard to pick out any speck of enjoyment from the title.
Hellboy scours the desert in search of fun, something that was hugely lacking from this game.
From the beginning players are treated to a half-hearted affair as you are plonked into a gameworld with appalling last-gen graphics that you wonder how on earth it isn't a crime to be selling this title at full price. If the graphics don't give you a 'what the?' moment, then the convoluted plot that sees you chasing a flying witch through a Romanian city - without actually giving you a reason for chasing her - which, we're guessing is because she is evil, but without any exposition whatsoever its unclear as to why we are chasing said witch. While all of this is going on there is apparently a group of undead Nazis engaged in fisticuffs with a race of frog men under the city. You might be thinking it, but no, the reviewer wasn't under the influence of any substances while writing up this review, but the compelling evidence provided suggests that the development team was either really drunk or pulling random thoughts on paper out of a hat to compose this trite story. The plot only gets even more bewildering as you'll find Hellboy taking on a cachophany of random enemies: robotic Nazis, aliens, talking skeletons, zombies, giant plants and the most random of them all: the giant-gorilla-octopus-Nazi.
While the plot is more disjointed than a contortionist in a box, the gameplay is boringly straightforward. Essentially the man objective of the game is to punch everything with Hellboy's giant fist, and if you feel like mixing it up a bit, you can try shooting a few enemies with Hellboy's slow firing pistol - at which time you'll realise just how crap it is and go back to pummeling everything with Hellboy's giant fist.
Is fist, is good.
Hellboy can also find variety of weapons scattered throughout the game - such as sticks, wheelbarrows and alien swords - but the fun you'll have walloping the enemy with these is quite short-lived as the weapons break after a couple of swings, but at the end of the day you aren't really missing out on much as these weapons aren't much more powerful than pummelling the enemy with Hellboy's giant fist.
Hellboy also steals a page from many recent beat-'em-up titles with the inclusion of quick-time events which are used to strike the killer blow to a downed opponent. While these button-matching events usually make for some challenging moments in titles such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and God of War, there is no challenge whatsoever in Hellboy as the game gets you to push the same two buttons each time, making it pretty easy to finish off your enemies.
Easy, really is the keyword in describing Science of Evil as Hellboy's powerful combos make light work of his enemies until the final stages of the game where they take hit after hit, soaking up so much damage that it would make Rocky Balboa proud.
Repeat after me: punch, punch, punch.
Aside from the 'damage sponges' towards the end of the game, the most difficult part of Science of Evil is finding out how to progress: finally spotting that hidden hallway after running past it for the last hour, finding the decaying wall with a miniscule crack that you can punch through and scratching your head over some of the dreadful puzzles that you need to solve. If that isn't bad enough, then having to sit through unskippable cut-scenes when you die during a boss level feel like a proverbial kick in the guts.
If you squint really hard, you'll find that underneath all of the lameness there is some good to be had in Hellboy. For one, they have captured the essence of the comic book character to the letter. And they have brought that to life thanks to the voice acting of Ron Perlman - the man who dons the makeup to become the grumpy, wise-cracking Hellboy in the feature film series. Perlman performs his deadpan lines to perfection, giving some credibility to the title. Also joining Perlman in the voice acting credits are his two film co-stars Selma Blair and Doug Jones who reprise their roles of Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman for the game. Unfortunately, unless you play the game in co-op mode (which screams 'tacked on') you'll miss out on the limited lines provided by the duo.
Hellboy: The Science of Evil is a game that had the potential to be a Devil May Cry-esque beat-'em-up title that should have been fun to play for those both familiar and not familiar with the comic book series. Instead players are treated to ugly graphics, button mashing gameplay and a fixed camera that makes you want to throw your controller at the TV set in frustration. In all honesty, you're better off walking up to a random stranger and handing over all of your money rather than shelling out your hard earned dosh on this title.
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