Customer Reviews

Hellboy: The Science of Evil

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Hellboy: The Science of Evil is a very basic brawling/beat em up game starring the cat loving anti-hero, Hellboy. I thought the game was good, not great, but not completely horrible either. I love the Hellboy movies and the comics, so it's probably a good idea to be a fan of Hellboy before considering this game. I also love some games that are sort of mindless and don't bother with litering the game with puzzles.

The graphics are kind of bland, but at least Hellboy himself looks great, especially with his big Right Hand of Doom. You'll visit some locations like a castle, an old creepy villiage, a Japan like forest, a lost desert, and some others.

The game itself is rather easy to play, because it's just a simple beat em up. You just run from one area to the next, beat up all the bad guys in that area, and then move on to the next, and to the next, until finally you come to some boss that only takes a little more thought to beat than the regular baddies. And if you get beat up too bad and take too much damage, you just avoid enemy attacks for a moment and you're health will completely regenerate, which kind of makes the game easier than most games of this type.

The sound was mostly generic, but at least they got Ron Pearlman to voice Hellboy. I've yet to play multiplayer, so I don't know how the other movie star voice actors held up in the game.

Basically, if you're a fan of Hellboy, love the idea of wielding the Right Hand of Doom, and don't mind some simple mindless repetitive action, then you've at least got yourself a good weekend rental. Everyone else should probably stay far away though.

Being a fan of Hellboy, I was kind of looking forward to Hellboy: The Science of Evil. However, also being a veteran gamer, I wasn't looking all that forward to the game, simply because of the terrible history of licensed video games. Well, I didn't expect too much out of the game, but what you get here may even be below your lowest expectations. Hellboy: The Science of Evil puts you in the shoes of the title character as you brawl through numerous hordes of baddies and take on the occasional boss. That's it. That's all you do from beginning to end in this game, and it gets boring very, very quickly. Not to mention that the game as a whole is quite short, quite easy, and features some technical issues that all combine to make the game quite bad. The game features some bland environments and choppy animation, and the clipping issues are more distracting than anything else. Co-op multiplayer is also available where you can play as Abe Sapien and Liz in addition to playing as Hellboy, but it offers nothing to improve the experience at all. Hellboy film stars Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, and Doug Jones lend their voices to the game, but they all sound so bored that they just add nothing. No matter how much of a Hellboy fan you may be, avoid Hellboy: The Science of Evil like the plague. There's no challenge, innovation, or anything else to even come close to holding your interest.

This just isn't a very good game, period. It's better than some of the other movie tie-in games out there, but, I eventually got so bored with the repetitiveness of this game, that I never even bothered to finish it. This is one of the very few games that I've walked away from without finishing it.

It is a fairly well-made title, it just isn't very well written.

This game, evidently, was bad enough to squash any possible sequels, since none have been developed. Some times it's a good thing, knowing when to quit. Like the old adage says: When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing that you need to do is stop digging.

At least this developer knew when to stop digging. I have to respect that.

I love comic books and enjoy it when I see them leap to the big screen. Of course, I enjoy it even more when they transition over to a video game platform as well. The trouble with games that tie-in with movie releases is that there usually not great games to enjoy and only end up being mediocre. Some end up being down right awful and completely frustrating.

I am always pretty lenient with video games reviews and despite the fact that some games really deserve three or three and a half stars. I'll end up giving four stars out of generosity, but Hellboy was a bit of a letdown. My only real complaint is the camera angle and control.

Almost every game these days has the ability to rotate the camera 360 degree with the 2nd analog stick. This is such an important feature. However, this is not the case with Hellboy. The camera is always at one point of a view in this game and does change based on what you're doing, but it doesn't let you control it. If you are going inside a building it will zoom in a bit closer, but you can't control that zoom. It just happens when it wants to. We all know Hellboy involves the supernatural and supernatural things usually happen at night, so the majority of the game all takes place when the sun is down which results in a dark creepy atmosphere. Considering how dark every level is, everything happens at night, and the fact you can't control the camera only makes seeing Hellboy and the villains in the game a bit more complicated. Also, some of the objectives for each level are very unclear as well. I guess the only way to change this is to turn up the light setting on your TV, so you can see where Hellboy and the villains are on screen.

In the first level you have to defeat the witch, who just happens to be flying above in the sky. The camera is set a ¾ overview. Kinda like Zelda back in the Super Nintendo days, so you can't really see where she is. The instructions on screen actually tell you to throw the goblins that she throws at you, back at her. It's kinda complicated to do so when you can't see her and you can't control the camera in order to see her.

That is my only real grievance with this game. Other than that, the visuals are very pretty and I found the game to not be at the point where it was so horrific that it was unplayable. It's doable for the price of being under twenty bucks, but I really did expect a lot more.

With his Right Hand of Doom and his trusty hand cannon, the Samaritan, by his side, Hellboy stands ready to pound the ever-lovin' crap out of any evil that stands in his way.
In the game, you control the titular character as you get to smash through an assortment of enemies like werewolves, frogmen, Nazi robots, and cybernetic gorillas in order to stop the Nazi scientist Hermann von Klempt from doing...something involving creating a new creature.
The game itself is a fairly standard beat-'em-up. You go through various stages and attempt to clear out rooms filled with villains. However, this can get quite tiresome, as Hellboy himself has a limited set of combos, of which are all available from the beginning of the game. Of course there's also the Samaritan and a variety of ammo you can use to defeat your enemies, some more effective than others. There's also a light bit of puzzle solving, which basically boils down to finding a lever, and pull it, or using a specific kind of ammo from the Samaritan to clear obstacles.
The graphics are nice, and all the cinematics are with in-game graphics, but I think it looks like it's just a short step up from any higher caliber Xbox games. Having Ron Perlman (who played Hellboy in the films) lending his voice talent to the game helps, along with veteran actor Jurgen Prochnow lending his voice as the villain von Klempt, makes the game feel as if it is right out of the del Toro films. I haven't played through multiplayer, so I can't really say how well the other actors played (Selma Blair as Liz Sherman, Doug Jones as Abe Sapien).
Overall, the game is just okay. It seems the main draw to the game is the multiplayer aspect, but I'm not really able to take advantage of that. The game feels really repetitive and limited, but can be quite fun if it's played for a few minutes at a time.

While the separate stories seem disjointed the overall game is fun if you're a fan of Hellboy. Non-fans might not appreciate the game near as much. So, Hellboy fans = 4-5 stars, casual fans probably = 3.

I think we all know that movie adaptation games are normally so-so at best, but this game is terrible. Graphics: Horrible. One of those games where you can't really control the camera, and sometimes your character gets "lost" on the screen. Plus everything is vaguely "fuzzy". Game play: BORING. Same thing over and over again. Plot is completely not engaging in the least.

Let me put it to you this way. I was 40 points away from 10,000 XBOX achievement points. Looking at the achievements in the game, it would only have taken completing a few levels on any setting to get that benchmark...just plowing through 1/4th of the game would have given me 10,000 points. And I didn't do it. I'm not a points nut, but wow. If I can't be bothered to get 40 points from a game, it probably stinks.

So this isn't that bad of a game, well rounded, there are a lot worse games out there that are liked better then this one.