There are a whole bunch of ways we could start this review. We could, for one, launch into the age-old rant about how movie games are generally awful and how this one is no different – sure, it’s closer to the comics than either movie but voice talent and release date both suggest it to be something of a companion title to The Golden Army. Then there’s the comic angle, where we could discuss at length the widespread proliferation of titles based on comic books lately and again question their aggregate quality. We could even talk about the worrying number of games to follow the Devil May Cry/Ninja Gaiden/God of War template lately without the talent or ideas to pull it off. Instead though, we’re just gonna keep things simple. Because however you judge Hellboy, one constant remains – it’s a turgid and unenjoyable mess.
The biggest crime here is that as a character, Hellboy is actually pretty well suited to a gaming role. The combination of huge clobbering fist and hand cannon gives him both short and long range potential, neither of which is realised fully in the game itself. Melee combos are painfully sluggish and often surprisingly weak while your trusty gun, by contrast, is pretty much all you need to clear out most areas – ammo supply points litter each stage, meaning you never even need to worry about running out.
Using debris as makeshift weaponry is a fair concept but as proven by the latest Hulk effort, it’s pretty tough to get right. Here, many chunks of the scenery that you destroy can be picked up and used to pummel things but there’s rarely much point. Most offer but a miniscule damage boost and break mere seconds after being picked up, with even a lot of the genuinely useful weapons being incredibly fragile. Far more effective are nature’s own weapons – tree trunks and rocks do ridiculous damage and will almost always be your first port of call if there are any about when more enemies spawn.
And they will. Constantly. Every ‘room’ in each level is an exercise in the mundane, filling with countless enemies and with any chance of escape or early progress shot down by DMC-style ghostly walls that, of course, only come down when you’re the last guy standing. Smaller grunts can be grappled easily and air-slammed for almost total health recovery, making most areas more chore than challenge. But without these little annoying dudes around, things are noticeably trickier. Bigger enemies can only be grabbed when on the brink of death – as well as offering the same massive health recovery option, a finishing move can be used on a held foe to steal their weapon, should they have one. And when one hit too many from your stock combos is usually enough to piss away any chance of landing a finisher and getting hold of an enemy weapon is a necessity, the usual Hellboy beatdowns turn into far more tiresome, unnecessarily calculated affairs.
And what self-respecting third-rate third-person adventure would be without a collection of stupid bosses that don’t really work? Science of Evil has these down to an art form, one particular highlight being a battle with a giant gorilla. Try and go toe to toe with the megamonkey and it’ll all end in tears, making you wonder just how you’re supposed to beat him at first. But then finally, a small part of you will die when you realise that the only way to finish him off is to smash up your surroundings until the whole building falls down. Dumb.
And to cap it all off, you’ll be glad to hear that Hellboy doesn’t even cut it visually – ropey models, slack animation and mundane corridor levels make for one of the least impressive games this gen so far. When you think about what is actually going on on-screen, it makes you realise just how tepid every aspect of the game’s design really is – what should be edge-of-your-seat, incredible battles against the amassed forces of evil somehow have the power to lull even avid fans into an X-button-induced coma.
Generally professional voice acting does just tip the credibility scales slightly in Hellboy’s favour but even this minor positive is shattered as Red utters the same tired battle cries again and again while running at the same enemies in areas that look… well, the same. Another ‘almost’ comes in the form of local and online co-op but while we’d usually applaud such an inclusion, here it’s just a Misery Takeaway For Two. And they’ve given you a hell of a lot more than anyone could eat.
So with what few saving graces the game does have shooting themselves down before they can be in any way beneficial, it should be pretty apparent that Science Of Evil is awful. Stunningly so, in fact, almost to the point where we start to question whether the game was even designed by people at all or if perhaps it was just a by-product of the infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters experiment – they’re still no closer to Shakespeare but would appear to have come up with fully ‘working’ code for a rubbish Hellboy game by mistake. Annoyingly, an extensive credits list makes the latter option unlikely. Still, we’d rather believe that than consider the alternative, as even beginning to contemplate the amount of man hours that must have gone into this utter shambles would probably make us cry salty tears of shame and regret on behalf of everyone involved.
