Constantine takes the great comic book to movie translation of Hellblazer and translates it to video games in a less than stellar manner. Though the look and feel of the movie comes through with flying colors, the storyline from the big screen gets diluted by a ton of other levels that don’t seem to have any direct relation to the movie.

Like I said, the graphics of Constantine are wonderful. The John Constantine character looks, swaggers, and holds himself just like Keanu Reeves. The atmosphere of the world (both in and out of Hell) seems to be straight off of the silver screen as well. When in Hell, the colors are diluted and tinted red, the landscape is torn asunder, and you even get the impression of a harsh wind blowing throughout the city ruins.

The sound and voice acting also translate well. Though this game doesn’t boast the Keanu Reeves’ name for the Constantine character, the voice actor they got to portray his part sounds stunningly close to the big-name actor. But this game isn’t completely devoid of actors from the movie. The portrayers of Beeman, Balthazar, and Gabriel (Max Baker, Gavin Rossdale, and Tilda Swinton respectively) take on their roles again for this game.

John Constantine is a man who for some reason is blessed (cursed) with the ability to see demons and angels in the world around us. He can also (through mystical practices) cross over into Hell. The game Constantine loosely follows the movie – well, that isn’t completely true. All or most of the events from the movie are in the game – but they are surrounded by other levels and missions that either don’t have anything to do with the overall storyline or are supposed to be events we didn’t see in the movie.

Typically I don’t have any problems with movie-to-games that add to the story... when the movie hinted that there was more going on than you saw on film, that is. In The Incredibles, a lot of the missions you went on were not seen in the movie, but you could tell where they fit in. If you’ve seen the movie, then the level where you save people from a burning building fits perfectly into the story. In Constantine, on the other hand, I found myself meeting characters and going to locations that weren’t in the movie at all, which seemed to almost contradict the flow of the film.

The game starts off with a stunning rendition of the film’s opening sequence (where Constantine exorcises a demon from a girl), but then goes into missions that have the reluctant hero finding out about the demon uprising earlier (or at least in a different manner) than he did in the film. That, plus the fact that a lot of the mythos and symbology that the movie generated concerning Christianity was replaced with generic magic, seemed to betray the original idea and story behind the “Hellblazer” comic – at least a lot more than the movie did.

Ignoring the differences between the game and the movie, Constantine the game is rather enjoyable and does a good job of standing out in the shooter genre. You end up facing a wide variety of villains, and to defeat them, you have to do everything from blowing them to Hell (literally) with your Holy Shotgun to exorcising them from the hosts to casting various spells in order to clear your path and find out who or what is letting these demons out of their prison.

There are two main attacks in Constantine’s arsenal: spells and weapons. As you progress through the game, John learns to use various magics like Stormcrow (which rains down lightning on all of the enemies around you) or Exorcise (used to expel demons from their hosts). You also learn spells like Hunger that can either kill or distract villains. It sends a swarm of insects onto the targeted demon; if they are weak enough, it will devour them. If not, maybe you can sneak around the baddie and do more damage with another weapon. There are a total of seven spells that you can cast upon your enemies – each one has a different effect, and figuring out which spell to cast gives you quick victories.

Constantine’s weapons are a collection of artifacts that have been crafted by various holy people in the past. The Crucifier is a nail gun that shoots out 6-inch long iron “Martyr’s Nails” that can be reclaimed after firing. Dragon’s Breath is a flame thrower, while the Holy Hand Grenade... err... I mean Holy Shotgun, acts like your typical shotgun found in most games. It does a lot of damage when you’re close to your opponent, but the spread grows fast and hardly does anything but annoy enemies when they are far away. Considering the trouble you have to go through to get this last weapon (the shotgun is in three pieces that you have to hunt down and collect), I was hoping for something a little better.

Though these are Constantine’s weapons, he also has what is called “True Sight” at his disposal. When you turn this mode on, you move into first-person view and the image becomes an altered, almost negative of itself. Here you can see clues written on walls, passageways in the dark, even invisible demons or demons that are controlling a living person. This is a mode you have to get used to early because you have to use it often in order to defeat the forces of Hell.

Constantine is a long game with plenty of hard-to-get-through areas. This, plus the fact that it has three difficulty settings that change how the villains react (and how many there are), makes this an involved game that will take you a lot of time and effort to see to the end. Thankfully, I never found the tougher areas to be so bad that I would get frustrated and not want to play the game – well, on the medium level of Demonslayer that is. As for the other two, Trickster (easy) was a quicker run through, and though still involved, I didn’t die nearly as often. Hellblazer, on the other hand (that’s the hard setting), was a pain and I found myself struggling with each area I went into.

Though Constantine’s control scheme is fairly similar to other shooters, there are some aspects of it that I wanted to make sure to talk about in this review. The first is a good note: how you cast spells. When you press the Triangle button, you start to cast whichever spell you have selected, but you don’t automatically cast the spell just because you hit that one button. Time slows down and you then have to tap the face buttons in a particular order. To know which buttons to push, a circle appears on the top-center of the screen. You hit the buttons in the order they light up and, provided you don’t get hit by an enemy in that time, you can successfully cast one of your many powerful spells. I found this to be a good way to let you release these heavy hitters and not always make it a sure thing.

And now for the bad part of the controls. I don’t know what it was about the camera, but I was always tripping over myself when I was trying to maneuver it around. At first, I thought the inverted camera control was turned off, but when I went into the Options menu and toggled that setting, I didn’t find any improvement in the camera handling.

Though I don’t agree with how the game translates from the movie, as a game in and of itself, Constantine is a fun shooter that will keep you involved for many hours.