Hellboy: The Stench of Evil

It's not really our business to question the wisdom of marketing people, but if you're going to sub-title your game 'The Stench of Evil' you need to be very confident that nobody's going to come along with the suggestion that it stinks. Unfortunately the smell emanating from this production line movie tie-in is not exactly rosy.

Actually, though, this doesn't seem to have anything to do directly with the new movie, but rather the recent (rubbish) home console game. Your reviewer happens to be a big fan of the original comics on which this game is allegedly based and seeing Anung un Rama being forced to jump through the usual licensed hoops is enough to fill up anyone's rage meter.

You probably don't even need to look at the screenshots to guess that this is an action platformer, complete with not very difficult jumps and bad guys whose interest in playing the game seems even less pronounced than your own, as they trundle forwards in resigned fashion or shoot at your listlessly from a distance. At times it seems reminiscent of Konami's own Castlevania games, but without any of the pseudo role-playing elements or wide variety of enemies.

Although Hellboy has a giant stone hand with which to hammer opponents, close up fisticuffs have all the visceral punch of a wet haddock. Indeed it's far easier in most cases to just shoot bad guys from a distance, in exactly the way that Hellboy would never do in the comics. You can pick up objects to toss at them as well, with each level filled with an endless array of crates, cabinets and other decidedly non dangerous looking objects.

Beyond throwing small wooden objects at monsters (who needs silver bullets or crucifixes?) the only other complication to the combat is the rage meter, which slowly fills up as you take hits. When maxed out your hand starts glowing and bad guys become even easier to dispatch than they already were.

One factor in the game's favour is that the 2D graphics are very good. Both backdrops and characters are nicely detailed and everything moves smoothly and at a fair clip. The problem is that half of the appeal of the comic is the unique expressionist art of Mike Mignola, which this makes not even the least attempt to mimic. Admittedly neither does the console game or the movie, but in a game so lacking in defining features it really could have done with at least this one.

Ultimately, it's hard to know who this is really aimed at. It's pretty lacklustre as a game, in a genre so oversubscribed most mobile phones are already bursting at the seams with other near identical titles. If you liked the comics you'll hate what this does with the characters and visuals and if you only vaguely know Hellboy from the movies then you'll likely wonder what this has to do with either of them.

If you belong to the most important constituency, meanwhile (that of gamers) you'll just be bored.