Hellboy The Science of Evil review (Xbox 360)

So, there's a new Hellboy movie out at the moment but there's no direct tie-in game. Instead there's a game from within the Hellboy universe that handily co-insides with the release of the film. Now, I usually expect film tie-ins to be a bit rubbish and am only occasionally pleasantly surprised. Hellboy The Science of Evil isn't a tie-in to the film or to anything specific in the Hellboy story. It's a stand-alone tale so I approached this trying not to lower my expectations to movie tie-in levels. That's made slightly more difficult because the voice acting for the lead characters is all done by the movie actors – Ron Perlman voices Hellboy, Doug Jones as Abe Sapien and Selma Blair as Liz Sherman. I put that behind me though and sat through the opening cut-scene and started my quest as the worlds greatest paranormal investigator.

Tell me a story

I didn't really get the story to start with, I seemed to be chasing a witch of some description through a cemetery and the cut-scene suggested that I would have to try and shoot her with the Good Samaritan gun. So I set off into the first level. The instructions suggest that there are a lot combat combinations that can be used to battle through the hordes of imps that stand in your way. By the time you face the third or fourth wave of imps you discover that you actually only need the weak punch button. Rapidly tapping that is basically the combat system. It's all you need to see you through the game really. You can vary things by using a heavy punch which you can charge up to make your heavy right hand glow but it doesn't seem to do all that much damage. When you stun your opponent you can grapple them and perform some sort of finishing move but it's pretty unnecessary. The enemies you face just won't put up much of a fight. You don't even have any defensive capabilities like block. That's probably because the developer understood that you wouldn't need it. Anyway, I finally caught up with the witch and it turned out that shooting her didn't work as the cut-scene had suggested. Instead I had to throw the grenades she was throwing at me back at her.

Something's been puzzling me

If we disregard the combat system then, it just isn't up to much, what does that leave? Well there's still the puzzle element and the adventure. It doesn't matter if the combat is a bit rubbish if there are some good puzzles and an engaging story. Things don't start out well on that front. Along the bottom of the screen you get prompts for what you need to do. This includes combat hints as well as hints for what you need to do to solve the current puzzle. I use the word puzzle quite liberally here because the extent of the puzzles are “Find the exit” and “Kill all of the enemies to unlock the gate”. There are occasionally more complicated puzzles like opening a tomb by shooting special ammunition to free a soul and get a password to open a gate. Now a good mixture of simple and complex puzzles is fine but I found the simple ones too frustrating and annoying and the more complicated ones too infrequent and still too simple. I particularly disliked the ghost barriers. These block your progress until you have defeated all of the waves of enemies. This seems like a means of artificially prolonging the game as you can't make progress at your own pace. I suspect that without these artificial feeling impediments the game would be over far too quickly. I said that things don't start off well with the puzzles so you might be thinking that you can persevere until they improve. Unfortunately you might be waiting until the next game in the series for that.

Grab your popcorn

If you're a fan of the films and comics you might still be excited to play through the game and see the cut-scenes to watch a new episode in the Hellboy story. I might be reaching a bit there but it doesn't matter because the cut-scenes don't make much sense and can't really be called a story as such. I started off this review saying that I didn't understand the story to begin with. Well at the end of the first chapter I found myself none the wiser as to what was going on and I then found myself in a new scene from several years earlier in the time line. Apparently there is a storyline running through this game centring around Herman von Klempt and his Nazi killer gorillas. Whatever, the in-game cut-scenes don't really do much either. It seems that every skeleton you meet wants to tell you their life story. It doesn't seem to do much for the story though. Fortunately the voice acting for the main characters is pretty good , they just aren't given very good dialogue.

Look at me when I'm talking to you

When you're wandering around the environments sending the demons back to hell, you'll notice that the camera angle is fixed. This can work as long as it gives you a good view of the area you're exploring. As you move around the different areas, the camera moves around to give you a reasonable view of where you are. It's often not quite good enough to let you see the detail and hidden areas where you are. This just means that it can be a bit tricky to find your way around and you probably wont explore all of the more secret parts of the environment because you either wont see the areas or won't be able to get to them. Still it doesn't matter because it just means you can try and get to the next ghost barrier a bit sooner and get to the end of this game. Of course, if you find you're getting a bit bored you could always invite a friend to come and play. They can play the game as either Liz or Abe either over Live or split-screen on a single console. The extra characters won't appear in any of the cut-scenes or make much impact on the game-play but it shares some of the pain and makes it a bit more fun.

Back to the pits of hell with you

You might get the impression from this review that I wasn't hugely impressed with this game. That's probably a fair assessment. There isn't much to recommend in Hellboy The Science of Evil. The combat system is very basic and rather repetitive. The cut-scenes and story don't make a great deal of sense. The puzzle and adventure parts of the game aren't very well designed or thought through. The navigation system is a bit annoying. The graphics are also rather last gen. There's little to make you realise that you're playing a next gen game. The textures and details are all rather lacking and when you've got it connected to your HDTV you won't know it's in HD. The sound is also rather lacklustre. The voice acting for the main characters is good given the dialogue they're given but the voice acting for other characters is a bit weak and the sound effects and music are rather generic and not very memorable. All in all it's difficult to recommend this title to anyone. If you're a hard-core fan of the comics and films you might find something to enjoy here. I'd suggest you rent it or pick it up from the bargain bin though rather than paying full price for this. I'd guess that there will be plenty of second hand copies before too long.