Hellboy: Web of Wyrd - Review

The Butterfly House is full of portals, and the man behind it Pasquale Deneveux is nowhere to be seen. Another member of the B.P.R.D has gone missing, and it is up to Hellboy to pull him out of the depths of the Wyrd. Oh, and there are Nazis.

Hellboy Web of Wyrd is an action brawler roguelike created in partnership with the Hellboy creator himself Mike Mignola. This wholly unique story and adventure sees Hellboy diving into a dimension known simply as The Wyrd (pronounced like word, and not weird like I kept saying it). Your first foray into The Wyrd has you finding fellow B.P.R.D (the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) agent Lucky and trying to investigate what is going on in this bizarre and strange new dimension. It’s all go from their on as you’re thrust into the bizarre and paranormal world of Hellboy.

There is a rather small cast of characters throughout the entirety of Hellboy. You’ll be talking to most of them every single time you return to the Butterfly House and thankfully both the voice acting itself is phenomenal, as well as the games pacing out of the conversations, so there isn’t a bloat of time spent listening to people talk. In a lovely touch, Hellboy himself is voiced by the late Lance Reddick, who you can tell truly tried crafting a character with his acting here, rather than just playing himself. Hellboy has the nice dulcet tones that Reddick is known for, you could easily not pick up that it is him at all with how beautifully put together the work is. With a group of only five to six people who are regularly talking it was important to ensure they all felt unique and different, without being grating on the ears, and Hellboy Web of Wyrd does a fantastic job in that regard.

The visuals of the game are the shining achievement of the title. Taking a comic book aesthetic and putting it into a game can be very hit or miss. Some games stick truer to the 2D worlds they originate from, whereas Hellboy Web of Wyrd aims to meld the comic panel aesthetic with a heavily cell-shaded shadowy 3D aesthetic. The world feels equal parts dark and joyful, with the environments within the Wyrd doing a good job of reflecting their real-world historical inspirations. Enemy design unique to each section excels in this regard too, which is nice but is lessened by the fact that all the enemies feel like reskins of each other. There was a lot of care put into making the game feel and look like a comic book, but as a result they have somewhat hamstrung themselves as well.

For an action brawler roguelike, Web of Wyrd does a few things right and a fair few things wrong. The gameplay and action are simple enough, strung together light strikes, charged up heavy strikes to knock enemies back, a dodge and block mechanic. The fundamentals are here, and if you didn’t feel like you were trudging through swamp water to execute anything the combat would be sufficient. Unfortunately, Hellboy seems to have suffered a case of heightened gravity in The Wyrd, as everything feels just a touch too sluggish to be enjoyable long-term. Couple this with extremely lacklustre upgrades found through each run, which bar a couple of particular buffs, feel mostly useless, and the actual barebones of the experience falls apart. The roguelike elements are far too weak to carry the action, which is far too stiff and slow to be an enjoyable brawler experience. You can upgrade some skills as you progress, and some upgrades to the guns feel a little noticeable. For the most part however the actual gameplay segments of the game are just unenjoyable.

This further compounds after you’ve done a couple runs of an area as well. The ‘rooms’ are randomly generated, and whilst this should make each run feel unique, the lack of actual mechanics and upgrades makes it feel like an attempt at retelling a drunken story with the major details never changing. Each area has a nice aesthetic to it, and the comic book stylings go a long way in hiding these faults. Yet problematically there is a significant lack of roguelike elements to the game, that have a spotlight shone upon this by the lacking gameplay. Speeding up Hellboy’s actions to make him snappier and more responsive, or drastically expanding upon the upgrades and buffs would go a long way in making the game feel more fleshed out, rather than an extended tech demo.

The story for the most part is solid. You can feel the Mike Mignola influence from the word go. The introduction of Nazis part way through and the opening of the back half of the levels feels like a nice nod to both the comic and movie fans. Mike does a good job of letting you into the Hellboy universe without expecting you to know everything that has come before. Although there doesn’t ever seem to be an in-game explanation of what the B.R.P.D is, or why they have some agents with supernatural powers. There are tons upon tons of lore item to collect throughout the game, but if you aren’t one to want to collect what is essentially text documents, then you may be left a little in the lurch. The story is self-sufficient, but the background lore of the Hellboy universe itself is somewhat light. The in-game lore is vast and seems never-ending, without any real relevancy beyond it being interesting to know.

Web of Wyrd feels like a concept piece that hasn’t fully been finished. There is an entire experience here, and depending on how you mesh with the gameplay itself, you’ll get a solid ten to fifteen hours from the experience. There is of course a post-game, but as lore collecting is the only real reason to do so, it feels a little unnecessary for a title that has a cohesive and finished story. The roguelike element is a hindrance to what could have been a tighter and focused action-brawler experience. One that could have focused on fleshing out the weaker parts of the gameplay, rather than spreading itself a little thin.

The Wyrd is unfortunately not all that interesting. Hellboy Web of Wyrd feels like a passion project of someone who has an idea of what makes something fun but wasn’t entirely sure on how to implement it. There are easy ways to fix the experience, and making the post-game exploration more relevant with expanded upgrades and unlocks with actual in-game relevance would be a good start. The voice acting is solid, and a beautiful world exists here. With the unfortunate passing of Lance Reddick, they are somewhat hamstrung in expanding content, as it would be impractical to have any new dialogue for Hellboy to engage with. There is the foundation of an enjoyable game, and a much more accessible and easier to play roguelike title here, but it falls apart in its insistence in being something it is not.

The Score

6.5

Review code provided by Good Shepherd Entertainment

The Pros

Comic book aesthetic works fantastically

Dialogue doesn’t take away from playing the game.

A solid piece of work to cap off Lance Reddick’s career.

The Cons

The combat feels sluggish and somewhat basic

A lot of focus put on lore collecting and text that has no reward for the gameplay

The Roguelike elements are implemented poorly