When most of us think of Hellboy, we probably picture Ron Perlman’s excellent portrayal of the character (and hopefully not David Harbour’s). I fell in love with the grumpy demon everyman with a giant hand and penchant for cigars after reading the 🔯Mike Mignola comics that inspired those adaptations in the first place.

Mignola’s beautiful, twistedly gothic art and human approach to character development enraptured me from the moment I saw a young Hellboy fall in love with pancakes. But as much as I love the first two Hellboy movie🉐s and cameos in games like Injustice, I’ve always wanted to see the comics given more love.

feels like my wish has been granted. It flawlessly translates Mignolla’s art style and char𝓡acters﷽ while simultaneously boasting satisfying yet repetitive combat. Sadly, it’s also bogged down by shallow roguelike mechanics that don’t gel with the game’s lack of challenge and content.

The best thing about Web of Wyrd is its beautiful aesthetic, which feels ripped straight from the comics. Theไ cel-shaded visuals are a treat for the eyes, with everything from the human characters you find in the Butterfly House to the di🅺sgusting werewolves that end up on the receiving end of the Right Hand of Doom looking exactly as they would on the page.

I don’t think there’s ever been a game that manages to capture the feel of its source material quite as well as this, and for fa꧑ns of the comics, it’s worth the 🐟price of admission alone.

Mignola’s art style isn’t the only thing that Web of Wyrd manages to perfectly translate. Lance Reddick also delivers a wonderful posthumous performance as Hellboy. Reddick nails the character’s ironically down-to-earth manner of speaking and rivals Perlman as the best interpretation of Hellboy we’ve ever had. The rest of the cast are greaꩲt here too and help tell a compelling, albeit simple story, but it’s Reddick that unsurprisingly stands out here. It’s a true shame we won’t get to hear him as Hellboy again.

As perfect as the presentation is, the rest of Web of Wyrd is more of a mixed bag. As you’d expect from a character whose greatest weapon is his hulking stone hand, combat is mostly up close and personal. It focuses on Hellboy, who suitably controls like a tank, beating the snot out of his enemies wi𓆉th fists while dodging, parrying, and blocking attacks. It’s a bit like Punch-Out, but if all the enemies were disgusting creatures from the depths.

This hand-to-hand focus makes sense for Hellboy, and is satisfying when you’re one-shotting smaller enemies and landing meaty heavy attacks on enemies twice your size, sending them careening into the environment for even more damage. Things fall apart a bit when more than one big enemy decides to square up however, as neither Hellboy nor the camera are agile enough to keep up with everything 🐈going on. Thankfully, this didn’t happen to me too much, and I learned to keep enemies far enough away from each other to deal with them one at a time instead of havi🍒ng the game constantly fall over itself.

Although Hellboy’s fist is really all he really needs, he also wields a single gun and charm alongside it. Firearms add some meaningful depth to combat and help whittle down enemy🍰 shields so that Hellboy can jump in for the kill. Charms on the other hand were next to useless and take a lot of upgrading to ever feel worthwhile, time that is better spent turni⛦ng the already-overpowered shotgun into an absolute killing machine.

This brings u𝄹s to the other half of Hellboy’s gameplay loop, and what drags it down most - roguelite elements. Each time Hellboy goes into one of the Wyrd’s four biomes, the layout is rand🧸omised, but beyond occasionally needing a big key to get through a door, the changes are minimal at best and exploring the environments with Hellboy’s stone hand slowing him down feels like a chore.

The best part of this loop is Web of Wyrd’s equivalent to ’ blessings, which add different effects to Hellboജy’s loadout, like freezing enemies in place or making them take environmental damage. Even these feel half-baked, however, as the effect is applied randomly and it’s easy to figure out which ones are worth going for and which are useless, making it feel like a punishment when you don’t get the ones you want.

Web of Wyrd simply isn’t challenging enough to warrant a roguelite structure. While you’re meant to go through levels multiple times to get points to upgrade Hellboy and his loadout, I only died once during my entire playthrough. There's an achievement for dying three times that I don't have unlocked, which shows that it's designed to be a tough game, but I found myself more frustrated than challenged when Hellboy turned up the heat in later levels.

Web of Wyrd’s loving recreation of Mike Mignola’s iconic art style and satisfying, if occasionally frustrating combat made me want to fall in love with it, but its half-baked roguelite mechanics, lack of challenge, and repetitive nature hold it back from greatness. This is still the best game Hellboy has ever had, but that&🐎rsquo;s not a high bar to clear when your competition is The Science of Evil.

Score: 3/5. A PC code was provided by the publisher.

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