Written by Neilie Johnson, 8/7/2008
Played on:
PSP
I'm never excited to hear about a game tied into a movie. Aside from 2004's Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, I can't think of a good one. So when I heard about the Hellboy movie game I couldn't help but think, “Ah crap.”
After all, the movie business is bad these days and studios are relying on cheesy marketing tie-ins to make a profit. That means we're doomed to have one of two things foisted on us: (1) Old products wearing new labels (Spider-Man Corn Flakes anyone?) or (2) Shabbily-made new products—like video games. The marketing wizards at Universal must have thought that Hellboy II: The Golden Army wouldn't be a blockbuster without its own ancillary product—er...game, thus Hellboy: The Science of Evil was born.
The game shares nothing with the movie but Hellboy. It has its own plot involving a mad scientist hatching a Nazi plot and except for a co-op Multiplayer mode, totally excludes Hellboy's colorful cohorts, Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien. It also excludes good acting, amazing graphics and cohesive story progression.
As far as the mass market goes, the heavy-browed film actor Ron Perlman has become a big part of Hellboy's appeal. The Xbox and PS3 versions of the game both can boast the benefit of Ron Perlman's dryly humorous voice acting but unfortunately, the PSP version can't. It's a lack sorely felt.
The graphics aren't quite as ho-humy as the sound but what we get is definitely not up to cinematic snuff. The environments are classic Hellboy—graveyards, catacombs, Romanian castles—but they're generic. It's like the art team checked everything out of a ready-made library of stone walls, breakable crates and flickering torches. Likewise, the unmemorable visual effects and enemies.
The biggest departure from a cinematic approach is logical story progression. Throughout the game, Hellboy is thrown from one location, one scenario, or one time frame to another and the effect is extremely disjointed. Nothing links these varied scenarios but short, confusing cutscenes and most of the time the result is less “Wow!” and more “What?”
Maybe none of this matters, though. If most of us could be Hellboy for a day, we wouldn't want to sit around discussing plot points would we? We'd wanna smash things with the Right Hand of Doom! So does Hellboy: The Science of Evil deliver from that angle? Well...no.
The enemies aren't varied enough and present little reason to mix up your attacks. Goblins, demons and Nazis can all be disposed of in much the same way. As a result, the combat system of light attacks, strong attacks, grapples and lackluster combinations isn't very interesting either. Combos are earned by collecting shards but you probably won't use them. Hellboy moves like he's wearing lead boots and this will likely urge you to use only the most efficient attacks. Boss fights won't force you to get creative, either, since they jump from the too quick and easy to the too long and tedious.
Yup, the game is downright old school. Not that old school is bad; God of War uses many tried-and-true forms of gameplay but introduces an epic element that makes the old feel new.
Hellboy's design by contrast, feels lazy. The level design is far from epic—jumping and climbing is incidental rather than part of the level concept. The level props only break some of the time, which means to collect shards and extras, you waste a lot of time trying to bash things that won't break. As an added “bonus”, level props are also inconsistently interactive. If you've opened a doorway using a magic talisman, you'd expect to be able to do it again, right? In Hellboy that may not happen and it's confusing. And let's not get into how many times you'll fall suddenly to your death due to an inability to see the edge of the level. In light of that, I suppose we should give developer Krome props for having the sense to create frequent auto-save points.
The thing we can give Krome the main props for is not boring us too long. If you can stretch the game out to three hours, you're taking frequent bathroom breaks. And if you're interested in checking out the multiplayer element, best of luck finding someone else out there who owns the game.
The Good: Competently made, some authentic Hellboy feel
The Bad: Stock graphics, no voice acting, boring combat system, confusing storyline
Hellboy: The Science of Evil is exactly what you think when you hear the words “movie video game”. A hastily made, not much fun, not worth the money movie add-on. You're better off buying a box of Hellboy Cornflakes.
