Hellboy Web of Wyrd Reviews
Missed opportunity haunts every inch of Hellboy: Web of Wyrd. It's simple to dive into and play but all too soon you reach the bottom of its shallow gameplay. Its roguelike runs are short and sweet, but its enemies aren't a challenge worthy of Hellboy.
"Web of Wyrd is a compelling concept in need of further iteration and continuing evolution"
The best visual representation of Hellboy outside of the comic books, but an absolutely terrible video game, whose shallowness and lack of variety is matched only by its constant repetition.
Hellboy's Right Hand of Doom is the star of Hellboy: Web of Wyrd, but this melee-focused roguelite lacks substance outside of pummeling mythical creatures to dust.
Hellboy: Web of Wyrd will delight fans with its visuals and Mignola-certified tale, but its roguelike nature and slow combat don't make the most of the source material.
Hellboy: Web of Wyrd is full of style and runs perfectly stable as is typical of roguelite games. However, unlike the greatest games from this increasingly popular genre, it lacks enough of a hook to have players wanting to experiment with its mechanics. While the story can be entertaining, it's nothing too special.
Hellboy Web of Wyrd has some issues when it comes to the combat, but it's still fun to play, and fans of the comics are going to love diving into a new story featuring the surly yet loveable demon.
When it comes to adaptations, Hellboy hasn't had a ton of luck lately. Hellboy Web of Wyrd certainly isn't on the same disastrous level, but it's underwhelming in its own respects. Hellboy and his world is a potential gold mine of fantastic adaptive potential, as Guillermo del Toro proved with his pair of films in the early 2000s. The character offers so much more, and though Web of Wyrd has some bright spots, it ultimately fails to realize the potential of its source material.
Way of Wyrd's shadow-heavy visuals perfectly capture the Hellboy aesthetic. Sadly, the game lurking beneath those shadows suffers from unambitious design, inconsistent mechanics, and occasionally devastating bugs. Fun can still be found in the Wyrd, it's just harder to find than it should be.
I wanted to love Hellboy: Web of Wyrd as a lover of beat-em up games but more so as a HUGE comic book fan, sadly the game just fell short in a few too many areas. As I said the art style is just beautiful to look at, I cannot understate how amazing it looks but once you start moving and the weird frame trick issues pops up everything just comes apart for me. Lance Reddick made for a fun, threatening, caring, funny, thoughtful portrayal of Hellboy, and whether that is attributed to Mignola’s writing or his own talent it was a fantastic take on the character. It’s just so upsetting that the rest of the game was not as strong as the narrative.
At first it is exciting to unleash the destructive fury of the Red Demon on the unfortunate enemies in the realms of the Wyrd, the first clashes are brutal and pyrotechnic to the point of predicting great things. The truth is that one punch at a time the enthusiasm wanes until it shows, under the skin of a stylish aesthetic that adheres to the original, a roguelite structure that is not very courageous and a gameplay that fails to convince.
Review in Italian | Read full review
As a comic brought to life, Hellboy Web of Wyrd nails the narrative tone and art style that Mike Mignola perfected decades ago. As an action game, there are impediments to enjoyment, starting with the purposefully choppy animation and Hellboy’s lack of fluid movement. What works in the pages of a book doesn’t necessarily translate to fun in the hands of the player.
Underneath the thick red skin of its unpolished exterior there is an entertaining and surprisingly sophisticated roguelike brawler to be found in Hellboy Web of Wyrd. It's just a shame that sluggish combat, uninteresting lore and poorly executed exploration all conspire to drag Hellboy Web of Wyrd down into the depths.
Web of Wyrd is clearly created by people with a reverence for Mignola's work and impresses as an adaptation. However, as a roguelike and a brawler, it underwhelms.
Hellboy: Web of Wyrd is an insufficient game in almost every aspect. Unfortunately, the love that the development team must have for the franchise is not matched by an action roguelike, slow, cumbersome and terribly poor in variety.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Between its sticky brawling mechanics, repetitive level design, and extremely low difficulty, Hellboy Web of Wyrd simply feels like an unfinished game that was early on its journey to greatness. There’s a heft to its combat, yet the controls aren’t nearly snappy enough, and it’s too easy to be engaging. The striking art design means its worlds look nice, but they’re made up of the same rooms and hallways. Incomplete or not, it utterly fails to realize what could have been and only continues Hellboy’s video game curse.
Hellboy Web of Wyrd's sharp art direction, warm voice performances, and goofy if basic combat struggle to shine through in a roguelike that is otherwise too messy in too many ways.
Hellboy Web of Wyrd cleverly uses the roguelike genre to its benefit in creating a game true to the comics while still being fun to play for fans of the genre.
Hellboy Web of Wyrd is, sadly, a giant wasted opportunity: the sublime artstyle wasn't unfortunately accompanied by a gameplay that could do justice to the beloved hero.
Review in Italian | Read full review