Hellboy: The Science of Evil

I know what you're thinking: "Please, sweet and merciful Christ, not another hideous attempt at a movie game crossover". But surely, with the KONAMI logo plastered all over it Hellboy can't be that bad. Can it?

In The Science of Evil, you play Red, an enormous demonic bloke with bad sunburn and the dress sense of a sex offender. He works for the bureau of paranormal research and defence, or at least that's what Wikipedia tells me. I had to check the net, as Hellboy lacks an opening cinematic. Not that the story line is anything worth getting erect over: the Nazis are at it again, collecting various magical items to gain boundless power and further their anti-Semitic genocide. Very Hellboy, but hardly original.

The Science of Evil is your basic hack and slash. Though the designers tried to recreate Red's lumbering powerhouse fighting style, they failed horrendously. The controls feel slow and sluggish, and there are only a handful of combos. Add the fact that there is no block function, and you have one horrifically deformed package. 

As is always the case with these games, you are given one small area after the next, and must dispatch all enemies before proceeding. As you blindly slaughter legions of the same foe, it is not unusual to experience feelings of frustration and entrapment.

Hellboy is further hampered by its terrible graphics. We now live in the era of Blue Ray and High Definition. So why does The Science of Evil look like a PS2 game? It's not even a particularly pretty PS2 game. The textures are poorly defined, the character detail makes everyone look like action figures and the environment may as well be made of Lego.

Hellboy's developers also saw fit to add a measly upgrade element to their game. They employed the usual method: defeat enemies, collect coloured orbs and buy new items for Red. This would work if there were more thought or imagination put into it. Unfortunately, it all seems very forced and idiotic. It's as though the designers looked at all the wonderful mythos of the Hellboy series and threw it out the window.  

Even with Ron Perlman playing the voice of Red, KONAMI were unable to disguise their attempt to milk money from an otherwise wonderful series of comic books and movies. This is just another terrible film adaptation that spent way too much of their budget on copyright and Hollywood actors. I foresee Hellboy: The Science of Evil spending a few months on the pre-owned shelf before being cast down to the deepest circle of gamer hell.