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