Hellboy: Web of Wyrd is a third-person beat ’em up game that takes the absolute beauty of Mike Mignola’s original comic book art and brings it to life in a game. You are sent to the infamous “Butterfly House” on a mission to locate a BPRD (Bureau of Paranormal Research & Defence) agent who is missing in action, and inside is a doorway to the peculiar dimension known as “The Wyrd.”

Each mission you do has its own little story, but they all link back to the main story in one way or another, and they all involve The Butterfly House. The team behind this title, Upstream Arcade, worked closely with Mike Mignola on the narrative, so you know it’s going to be insane when the creator Hellboy is involved.

The Butterfly House was built in 1962 by Pasquale Deneveaux. It’s more than it would seem – it’s not a residence, it’s a gateway. Pasquale designed and built The Butterfly House with one thing in mind – to open a terrible and fascinating dimension known as The Wyrd, which is broken down into several locations, such as Castle Wyrd, an Underwater biome, and a Subway, and these are really well designed.

The beauty of reviewing PC titles is that you can test it on either a keyboard and mouse or on the controller, and for some reason, I loved this more on the keyboard and mouse than on the controller. It just felt more natural playing in this setup, and that is a rare thing to come out of my mouth.

You have a little tutorial at the start, but there are also prompts throughout, explaining what you need to push and when. If you are a regular PC gamer, you will pick up on these quickly, as there are more or less generic controls you use in every single game.

The combat was on point, but I sometimes felt there was a delay when blocking, often resulting in me being hit by the enemy, and those boss fights would end badly for me. It was also frustrating because you’d try and perfectly time the block to pull off a sneaky counter-attack, but this didn’t happen as often as I would have liked.

The one thing I will fault is when moving around, the camera seemed like it was too close behind Hellboy, and it didn’t seem like it could be adjusted. This wasn’t as much of an issue in combat as it would zoom out to a more reasonable distance, but as I mentioned, that was only for the combat scenes. Luckily, there are quite a few of these.

I would have liked to see a little more difficulty added to the boss fights as they sometimes felt a little basic, especially for a game like this. There are options to adjust things like player health and enabling pre-attack warnings, but these seemed to be more along the lines of making things easier.

You can also use in-game currency earned during missions to purchase charms and weapons, both of which can be used to extend melee combos, and while Hellboy has quite a few different moves you can smash out, my favourite thing to do was block incoming attacks. It doesn’t sound like it should be so good, but doing so would build up the Revenge bar, and once full, I’d unleash sick super punches with the Right Hand of Doom.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the audio in this title, but I was pleasantly surprised by the level of detail. The voice acting alone sounded like something you would see in a cartoon show. You could hear in Hellboy’s voice that carefree attitude, but when talking to other people over the radio or in person, you could hear the emotions in their voices, and this felt fitting for the characters. The punching sound started to get a little old after a little while, but I mean, at the end of the day, how many punching sounds can you make? It’s a generic thud sound – not much you can do with that.

The graphics alone were the biggest reason I found myself drawn to Hellboy: Web of Wyrd. I love reading comics, and the fact that a game looked and felt like I was playing a comic had me nerding out hard. While I’ve already said it looks like a comic, if I had to say it another way, it would be that it features hand-drawn illustrations that have been digitized and brought to life. Each time you hit an enemy, there is a flash of light and a comic-like effect to confirm the attack. I may be a little biased, but even being cartoonish and comic-like, the game looked absolutely stunning. It literally is a comic turned into a game.

You don’t need to be a fan of Hellboy to enjoy this game. The combat, story, and immersion are enough for anyone to sink their teeth in, but the fact that it genuinely feels like you’ve opened up a comic and have full control over the characters certainly helps.

Written by: Hayden Nelson