Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC
The secret sauce for Hellraiser has always been its interplay between sex and death – or rather, pleasure and pain, with creator Clive Barker infamously being inspired by extreme BDSM clubs, then taking that dichotomy to even greater extremes through a horror lens. However, video games, as a medium, are notoriously awful at handling sex, so can any attempt at bringing Barker’s sadomasochistic world to interactive life capture what made those early films so darkly compelling?
Developer Saber Interactive certainly understands the guiding principles, with Hellraiser Revival starting with a kinky session between protagonist Aidan Lynch and his artist girlfriend Sunny, with her piercing his flesh with needles while he scratches her back open with some strange box he found earlier. As anyone who’s seen the films knows: terrible idea. Before you can say “Lament Configuration”, Pinhead and Pals have popped by, offered Sunny an eternity of forbidden pleasures, torn her to shreds with meat hooks (consensually!), and dragged her to hell. Poor Aidan, meanwhile, passes out from the experience and gets scooped up by a gang of Cenobite-worshipping cultists, then tortured for information on how to summon them back.
Around here is where the game really starts to earn its 18 certificate (as if the aforementioned meat hooks weren’t enough). You awaken strapped to a chair in the filthy basement-turned-lab under a sex club, treated to a first-person view of your penis, and forced to slice your right arm free from being stitched into your stomach, while your left hand has been nailed into the chair. Once you’ve done that, you’re left to explore the cultists’ artistic efforts – a pair of corpses stitched together into an ‘angel’, another body splayed open, a few too many moments of having to root around in their remains for key items to aid your escape (likely a nod to Kirsty doing similar to Frank in the uncut original film).
Eventually, you’re drawn into the hellish Labyrinth dimension yourself, chasing visions of a naked Sunny and evading unstoppable Cenobites. Nudity alone isn’t inherently sexual though, and aside from that opening sex scene, there’s none of the forbidden eroticism of the films here. Instead, there’s a lot of naked gore, in both realities. But does that make Revival a good horror game, at least?
Kind of — more so if you’re squeamish. From the disturbing character designs and the trypophobia-inducing walls of the Labyrinth, to the slow, almost too-detailed kills of cultists, Hellraiser Revival is best when its trying to unsettle players, rather than outright terrify them. Everything else just gets so extreme you’re likely to become numb to it – evisceration should never be met with a shrug. It’s somehow both gratuitous and often boring.
Mechanically, it all feels thoroughly average.
Mechanically though, it all feels thoroughly average. Aidan wields the puzzle box that accidentally consigned Sunny to hell as a weapon-turned-tool, allowing him to telekinetically move objects around, shift energy sources, and otherwise solve environmental puzzles (and before purists cry about continuity, this is technically the Genesis Configuration, a same-but-different box to that from the films). It’s a suitably video game-y twist for the franchise, but nothing gamers won’t have experienced elsewhere. Otherwise, this feels a lot like Resident Evil with considerably more of the red stuff splashing about.
This does lean a bit more into stealth territory in places, with it often being better to avoid cultists than engage them, while visits to the Labyrinth are often more focused on escaping Cenobites as the landscape shifts around you (which involves an infuriating control inputs of having to simultaneously pull down and click in the left thumbstick to enact a quick-turn). It’s not enough to salvage the overall experience, though.
There are some dark delights for long-time Hellraiser fans. Barker himself advised on the plot and overall direction of the game, so there’s an air of authenticity to it all, while original actor Doug Bradley returns to the role of Pinhead for the first time in two decades, imbuing the iconic Hell Priest with appropriate gravitas. Any time he’s on screen the game is improved enormously. Unfortunately, in a year that’s already crammed with some fantastic horror games – Resident Evil Requiem, Silent Hill: Townfall, or the slow-creep chills of the Twin Peaks-inspired Silver Pines, just to scratch the surface – Revival just doesn’t do enough to win over anyone who’s not already swayed by its dubious pleasures. The Hellraiser name alone isn’t enough to overcome seen-it-all-before gameplay wrapped in fetish gear.
