Hellboy

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Hellboy's brawling action is reminiscent of God of War to the extent that you almost have to wonder exactly how much of the design document was copied from David Jaffe. Ripping apart the small Bambinis will net you some glowing red orbs, there's a combo attack that ends with a ground pound, and there are even some larger enemies that require you to tap a series of buttons to take them down. You could think of worse games to mimic than God of War, but the resemblance is certainly there.

But there is more to Hellboy than simply being a God of War clone. In a smart move for a game based on an oversized hero, Krome Studios made a large part of the environments destructible and interactive. Cracked walls can be punched out, crates can be either destroyed or picked up and used as weapons, pipes can be ripped off of walls and used as makeshift clubs, and just about all of the flotsam strewn about on the ground can be smashed with Hellboy's massive fist.

[...]The visuals in Hellboy follow along with the style laid out in the movie. Lighting effects are being thrown in to just about every little nook you can imagine from Hellboy's glowing arm, to the flashy enemies, to the nice shadows that fill out the environment. It's a little tough to take in everything, as Krome Studios have opted for set camera angles for each environment. You can use the second analog stick to move the camera around a bit, but it is still anchored in one place preventing you from spinning it around to get the full view of your surroundings.

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GI: There’s hasn’t really been a brawler, but there have been hack-and-slash titles for next-gen. What are you guys doing with the next-gen brawler that you couldn’t do on the current gen?

Armatta: The obvious thing is the look of it. I think the guys who are developing the game, Krome Studios in Australia, have gone above and beyond and out of their way to develop their next-gen technology to really push the graphics and the detail. I think they’ve really done a great job. I think it stacks up against all the other next-gen stuff I’ve seen. Beyond that, there’s just more horsepower in the thing, so the animations run better, you can do more with the AI, you can do better-detailed textures, and we’re trying to take advantage of all that stuff to make the game feel and play more realistic. You don’t just feel like, ‘There’s another dumb guy that’s running at me that I’m just going to kill.” Specifically, it is a brawler, but we’re trying to add some strategy to it, so it’s not just wave after wave of guys coming and you have to kill them over and over again.

You’ll see with these guys, the little characters in the demo, the Bambinis, they come at you as a group. They’re small, and they know they’re small, so they have to have a little bit of a strategy to go after Hellboy. They’re trying to go around behind him and jump on his back and spread out so he can’t go after all of them at the same time, and that’s what we’re trying to do with all the enemy types—give them all a unique behavior, give them all a unique setup. When Hellboy walks into a situation, he can always go in and start pounding people with the Right Hand of Doom, or he can look at it and go, “All right, there’s a really smart way to do this, or a more efficient way to do it,” and figure it out and do it that way.

[...]GI: Are there going to be any noticeable differences between the PS3 version and the Xbox 360 version?

Armatta: No.