Hellboy Web of Wyrd Review
As easy as Insomniac might make it look, taking a property from the pages of a comic book and breathing digital life into it is no small or simple task. Baying legions of rabid fans are the first obstacle, and developers will have to weave through a chicane of potential online vitriol, before you hit the sizeable bump in the road of either creating a wholly new narrative or translating a well-worn one that you can’t possibly divert from.
Mike Mignola’s Hellboy presents a particularly unique set of challenges, with its mixture of pagan iconography, folkloric tale-telling and an art style that’s both instantly identifiable and utterly idiosyncratic. While Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army stands as the current celluloid highlight, Web of Wyrd is arguably the first time we’ve seen those pages truly come to life, offering an experience that captures Mignola’s art in impressive fashion while layering suitable sights and sounds upon it.
You’re drafted into The Butterfly House, an abandoned mansion that’s suitably creepy, questionable and somewhat alive. It plays host to a series of Bell Chambers with a connection to the Wyrd – seemingly pronounced ‘word’, not ‘weird’, which is quite… odd – an otherworldly dimension that’s bursting with aggressive adversaries and wraithlike creatures. Prime amongst them is Scheherazade, an unpronounceably mysterious being who tags you with the name ‘protagonist’ and sets you off to explore the decaying and disconnected realm.
One way to sidestep any question marks over the narrative is to work alongside Mike Mignola himself and Dark Horse Comics. As such, Web of Wyrd feels like a true Hellboy tale, with a narrative that’s laden with unsettling moments, unfathomable entities and
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