Go to Hellboy!

This week in gaming, I encountered five stories about the new Hellboy game for the Xbox-360, which, by my count, is roughly six more than I should have. For a moment, allow me to explore the many reasons why a buzz should not be emerging for a game whose existence itself defies all parameters of logic and decency.

For those who haven't seen the Hellboy movie, allow me to offer a quick summary: Hellboy chronicles the tale of a young agent named Meyers who is recruited into a federal organization that uses good monsters to fight bad monsters. Having never seen or heard of monsters before his first day on the job, Meyers grows accustomed to his new surroundings quicker than would be expected of most, overcoming his initial shock in all of 90 seconds. He then embarks on an emotional bullet train of overly rapid, underly meaningful character development, essentially becoming Hellboy's brother in about a day's time. Once the duo begins to fight evil, the audience begins to wonder how this federal organization ever functioned before the arrival of Meyers, as he is the only member of the entire unit who serves any purpose thereafter. The rest of the movie is a string of plot-holes, nonsensical scenes, and horrible one liners all leading up to the climax, during which generic antagonist #5 establishes an unbreakable mental grip on Hellboy, causing him to summon an unbeatable god monster. The story is resolved haphazardly and anticlimactically, as the unbreakable mental grip is broken by Meyers telling Hellboy to "remember who he is," and the unbeatable god monster is beaten by...wait for it... some grenades. If you haven't seen the movie, I do not apologize for the spoilers, as the only thing I have spoiled is your appetite for a film you should never taste anyway.

That being said, I can't help but be puzzled as to why Konami would publish, let alone publicize, a Hellboy game in 2007, three years after the movie was released and a year before the film's sequel. And you don't have to send a bunch of emails telling me that Hellboy has a rich history and that the character was portrayed in comic books over ten years before the movie was released... I know all of this. This doesn't change the fact that the movie was a piss-poor adaptation of a concept already reeking of mediocrity, and a game released three years after that very movie generated 80% of Hellboy's current notoriety is a crime against humanity. If you disagree, kill yourself.

EDIT: The TrueWiseman has pointed out that the unbeatable god monster was not beaten by grenades, but by dynamite. Well... that makes much more sense.