I am usually wary of games
that are based on movies, books, comics and the like. Too often they’re
just blatant attempts to “leverage brand recognition” to express it
in marketing speak (and movies based on games are usually even worse).
Of course there are exceptions – among the first that come to mind
is perhaps Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, one of the
best (if not the best) adventure games from LucasArts. But
I’m afraid Hellboy is not an exception to the rule.

Hellboy
is based on a comic strip by Mike Mignola. I do not know the comic
strip which might make my judgement biased – but then again it might
make it fair. The hero of the comic strips and the game is, not very
surprisingly, Hellboy. He is not much of a boy in fact – he looks
more like a cross between a demon and a superman. He’s rather large,
with bright red skin, massive muscles (he only wears shorts so he
could show them off) and has a large tail that he can flick in a rather
elegant way. He seems to have had his horns cut off. And he packs
a punch too – he’s wearing some sort of massive glove on his right
hand.

And he gets to use that
punch because Hellboy is not a pure adventure game – it is
the type of game that’s usually called “action-adventure”. Hellboy
is perhaps closest to the old Alone in the Dark games in style.
That includes the varied camera angles that make it so easy to get
lost even in a larger room, let alone a maze.

But let’s take a look at
the game. In the opening animated sequence we see an old man lying
on a hospital bed. Standing around him are several people in uniforms.
Later it turns out that they are members of Bureau of Paranormal Investigation
and Defense, whatever that is – there is no indication of when and
where the story is taking place. The old man tells them about Dogs
of the Night, evil incarnates who wait for their opportunity to create
Hell on Earth (wait – Hell on Earth? I’ve heard that in some other
game). Such opportunity presents itself every 666 years (now that
number sounds familiar doesn’t it?) at the time of a solar eclipse.
And as luck would have it, this event will occur within a few days.

The old man also
tells of twin brothers who were powerful magicians and attained immortality.
One of them was evil and tried to help the Dogs of the Night by opening
a gateway to Hell 666 years ago. But his brother foiled him that time.
Of course this time it’ll be up to you – that is Hellboy. Anyway in
the next scene we see one of the Bureau’s agents (if that’s what they
were) walking around a cemetery in the middle of a night equipped
only with a lighter. If you think that was rather foolish of him you’re
right. He’s looking at the tombstone inscriptions and seems to have
found something interesting. Unfortunately for him, before he has
a chance to tell anyone a huge beast leaps at him from the shadows
(could it be one of the Dogs of the Night?) and it’s curtains for
the poor agent.

And
here comes Hellboy! Together with another Bureau agent called Sarah,
Hellboy is now on the same cemetery looking for the missing agent
(his name was apparently Peter). Sarah goes ahead to explore another
part of the graveyard and the actual game starts with you in control
of Hellboy.

It doesn’t take long for
the first enemies to appear – zombies crawling out of the ground.
But it’s not difficult to dispatch them with a few blows. Hellboy
at this point actually has a gun too – but it’s either almost completely
useless or I just couldn’t figure how to use it. Punches seemed a
lot more effective than bullets to me.

After a short walk
and several more ex-zombies, Hellboy finds Sarah and Peter – but Peter
has nothing to say due to gaping wounds in his chest (must’ve been
that doggie). After a while Hellboy wants to continue the exploration
of the cemetery and goes into one of the buildings. But the door closes
and can’t be opened from inside – and then Hellboy hears ominous noises
and Sarah’s screams and silence. He naturally vows to rescue her from
the clutches of the hellspawn.

Which
keeps him occupied for the rest of the game. After leaving the cemetery
through an underground passage Hellboy pays a visit to a nearby asylum
where the guards seem a lot more dangerous than the inmates, then
goes 666 years back into the past and back to the present and so on
and on, I won’t bore you with the description of the entire adventure.

Not that it’d take very
long – it took me only about eight hours to win the game without any
aid in the form of hints, walkthroughs etc. I suspect it’d take even
less if the game wasn’t crashing so frequently in one nasty maze.
Anyway Hellboy hardly qualifies as a difficult or large game.

The entire game is divided
into several chapters. The hardest part of the game is a largish maze
populated with a number of nasty monsters. It is further complicated
by the console-style save games – it is not possible to save the game
anywhere and anytime you want, only in certain places where a hourglass
like object appears. I never liked this style of saving games and
Hellboy certainly didn’t make me change my opinion. The only
upside of this system is that the saved games are extremely small
(about 1.5 KB, compared to 20+ MB in certain other games) but on the
whole that’s not worth all the disadvantages whose list is way too
long.

The graphics are below
average – the game is 3D but uses low polygon models and doesn’t look
all that great. It tries to look dark and gloomy but in many places
the effect is spoiled by graphics glitches. Normally I’d blame Direct3D
or hardware drivers but I played this game on two completely different
computers with very different graphics cards and saw the same bugs
on both, leaving only the game itself to blame. I do not criticize
games for their graphics as long as they are on par with their contemporaries,
but Hellboy’s is not.

The game is controlled
solely through the keyboard – this in addition to the save game system
leads me to believe that Hellboy was ported from some console
system. The controls are a little non-intuitive but for the most part
work OK (that is to say, I’ve seen worse).

The
puzzles are not very difficult and for the most part are of the type
“find a key here and use it there”, not requiring a great mental exertion,
although some puzzles could perhaps present some difficulties to mentally
underdeveloped individuals (such as “use music sheet on organ”). The
battles are likewise quite easy for the most part (especially when
Hellboy finds some better weapons) although two or three were pretty
tough, but then again I’m no great warrior.

As for the game’s story,
well, there certainly is a story but it only rarely seems to be coming
near the surface and you get mostly disconnected bits of it. There
are some evil powers behind the plot but nothing very concrete. The
enemies you get to fight are almost all just their mindless servants.
That is one reason why there isn’t much talking in the game, although
Hellboy himself utters a droll remark here and there.

If I had to pick what I
liked best about Hellboy it’d undoubtedly be the music. It
is very atmospheric and I really loved it – which is more than I can
say for most of the other aspects of the game.

It is obvious from the
above paragraphs that I wasn’t very impressed with Hellboy.
It could have been different if I was a fan of the comic but I’m not
(which is not to say I have anything against it either – I just don’t
know the comic). Hellboy brings nothing new and the execution
leaves something to be desired. My overall rating of this game is
C only because I really liked the music. Hellboy is not outright
bad – there are just too many better games.

Final Grade: C

System Requirements
(PC version):

Win 98
P233
32MB RAM
300MB hard drive space
3D card