Hellboy: Web of Wyrd Review (Fellvoid)
This is really tough for me to say, as this was one of my most anticipated games of 2023. Which becomes a bit obvious once I tell you that Hellboy is my favourite comic book series ever too.
I played for a bit over an hour and for that time — considering the game's promises — I managed to get past half of the content, without breaking a sweat. Considering that this game is tagged with "Action Roguelike", I didn't expect this to be the case.
During that time, I walked around environments that I could easily label as "unfinished" and fought a total of two enemy types. Even when I got to another zone, the enemy types remained, but just became reskinned. Nothing changed. Factually, there is a third enemy type, but it is just a variation of one of the initial two, so I'm not counting that at all. Then there are the bosses, who for the most part, didn't feel like anything beyond HP spunges.
While I am honoured for this to be the late Lance Reddick's last role, it simply doesn't feel right regarding HB's character to me, but that's subjective. Beyond that, voicework was mostly fine in execution. But the content is where it was odd. The game tries to tell its lore indirectly, but the way it is segmented makes it feel hard to understand, even for seasoned fans like me. On the other hand, the score was impressive in terms of ideas, but it was way too repetitive and it sounds incredibly unfinished. These tracks deserved to be properly remastered, there are some bangers in there for sure.
The biggest issue I found with Web of Wyrd, though, was game design. I mean, people, it's 2023 and this game's back button is mapped to Backspace by default. Who does that? Not only that, but it doesn't even allow you to map it to Escape or RMB like a normal person. Also, P for Pause. Not Escape or Tab even, but P? It's like we're in the 1980s or something.
Right after I saw these mappings I understood that I'm not in for the best of times. And I was right. It gets worse.
Some objects you interact with by pressing "E" for use (this time, a logical choice). Other times, you need to smash them. And then there are the times where you need to smash, and then Use. And these, mind you, are objects that look pretty identical. None of this interraction should be required in an action-focused game.
Also, for some reason, this game has traps in the corridors connecting the arenas. Hellboy can't jump in this game. This is beyond me. What is also beyond me is the choice to let me leave arenas with enemies inside them. This not only allowed me to skip fights — because, for the most part, they were boring — but also glitched later rooms, because some enemies decided to run after me only to become glitched down the line. I couldn't always see that, so I had to resort to backtracking in order to allow myself to proceed.
All that being said, the most glaring issue I had is related to controls. I've never played a game with worse Mouse controls than Web of Wyrd. When you look around, there is this odd acceleration implemented that works backwards. If you move the mouse slow, the game speeds it up and if you move it faster, the game slows it down. It is extraordinarily bad and you cannot turn it off.
And then, the cherry on top is input delay. Numerous times — I can't stress this enough — I'd instruct Hellboy to do something, only for him to react one or two seconds later, which led to me getting hit. And the worst part of this was that these instances would pile up like commands, so the more you press buttons to try to correct the situation, the more HB would do random stuff and get himself almost killed.
So, it's bad. It's really bad. And the asking price is exorbitantly high for what the game offers, if the promise of a total of five issues is correct and not misleading for secret story purposes. After all, I passed half of that in 80 minutes. And the biggest challenge that I faced was the game itself trying to function.
In a world where "Hades" exists for the price that it costs, this game has no right to launch in a state like this. And trust me, I'm saying this with the best of intentions. Because I cannot tell you how much it pains me to be this disappointed from my most anticipated game of 2023.
I hope the devs continue to support this game, clear out a bunch of the issues and improve the experience. I'm totally eager to return and continue the adventure. But not at this state and not at this price. As of now, though, "Hellboy: Web of Wyrd" was the most painful refund I had to ask for.