Hellraiser: Revival Preview – This is not Hellraiser-lite
by Nick Petrasiti · tsaThere are some horror franchises where you can make a reasonably safe prediction about what their video game adaptation will look like. Hellraiser isn’t one of them.
Clive Barker’s creation has always been about more than monsters and gore, blurring the lines between pain, pleasure and obsession. That makes adapting it into a game a particularly tricky proposition… but Saber Interactive and Mad Head Games haven’t shied away from that challenge with Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival.
Hellraiser: Revival is a first-person action horror game following Aidan Lynch, who finds himself drawn into the Labyrinth while trying to rescue his girlfriend, Sunny. At the centre of the experience is the Genesis Configuration, a mysterious puzzle box that gives Aidan abilities that are considerably more useful than simply summoning Cenobites.
Our demo started in a more grounded environment, with Aidan exploring and attempting to find his way through a series of rooms. There’s combat, but this isn’t a game that encourages you to simply charge into every encounter with guns blazing. In fact, I quickly found myself getting overwhelmed when I tried to do exactly that. Enemies are aggressive, ammunition is limited and there are environmental hazards, like bear traps, to contend with.
A stealthier, more tactical approach feels like the better option, particularly when you don’t know what might be waiting around the next corner.
The combat itself is solid. It doesn’t feel like Hellraiser: Revival is trying to reinvent the first-person shooter, but there’s enough weight to the weapons and enough pressure from the enemies to make every encounter feel dangerous.
The real star of the combat, of course, is the Genesis Configuration.
The puzzle box essentially gives Aidan access to telekinetic abilities, allowing him to manipulate objects in the environment and turn them into weapons. During my session I could rip metal from the environment and hurl it at enemies, while fire could be pulled from torches and thrown at anything unfortunate enough to be standing in the way.
It’s a fantastic way of making the central Hellraiser concept relevant to the actual gameplay. The box isn’t simply an object you’re carrying around because it looks cool; it’s a fundamental part of how Aidan fights and explores. And it gets considerably stranger once you enter the Labyrinth.
As Aidan ventures into the Hellraiser equivalent of the Otherworld, the rules of reality become considerably less reliable. Here, the Genesis Configuration becomes a puzzle-solving tool as well as a weapon.
One puzzle had me manipulating the environment using the box, effectively changing the layout around me in order to progress. It’s an idea that could easily have become a gimmick, but there’s something very appropriate about using a supernatural puzzle box to manipulate a world that already feels completely wrong. At other points, the box itself could be used as a key to unlock a path forward.
That relationship between the box and the environment is one of the things I’m most interested in seeing more of. If the full game continues to find inventive ways of making the Genesis Configuration useful, it could become the mechanic that separates Revival from other first-person horror games – a genre that has been resurgent in recent years.
The Resident Evil comparisons are obvious. There’s a survival-horror structure, limited resources, exploration, environmental puzzles and even a menu system that immediately reminded me of Resident Evil 4. There’s another influence that became increasingly obvious during the demo, though… P.T.
At one point, Revival completely shifts gears and drops Aidan into a nightmare sequence that feels much more like psychological horror than traditional action. The environment becomes increasingly disturbing, reality starts to break down and the game begins messing with your expectations about what is actually happening. It’s the sort of sequence where you start questioning whether you should continue walking forward. Naturally, you do, and then you immediately regret it.
These moments are important because they demonstrate that Revival isn’t relying solely on the Hellraiser name to create its horror. There’s an attempt here to build tension and psychological discomfort alongside the physical brutality. And make no mistake: this is a very brutal game.
Hellraiser has never been known for restraint, and Revival is clearly embracing that. The imagery is graphic, the violence is deliberately unpleasant and the game deals with some extremely heavy BDSM and sexual themes. It isn’t going to be for everyone, but that’s arguably the point.
Trying to sanitise Hellraiser would completely undermine what makes the series distinctive. Barker’s world has always existed somewhere between horror, fantasy, sexuality and grotesque beauty, and Revival seems determined to preserve that uncomfortable mixture. It understands it, as well, trying to make the Hellraiser mythology a part of the gameplay itself.
And then, of course, there’s Pinhead. Doug Bradley returns as the voice of the iconic Cenobite, giving Revival a direct connection to the original films that fans are going to appreciate. The Cenobites aren’t simply disposable enemies either, with the game treating them as something considerably more dangerous.
That sense of danger was one of the things I appreciated most during my demo. Even with weapons and the Genesis Configuration, you’re far from an unstoppable action hero and trying to brute force your way through can easily leave you overwhelmed, when using the environment and abilities intelligently gives you a better chance of survival. It creates a nice balance between action and survival horror, and after playing it, I think that might be Revival’s biggest strength. The biggest question is whether that balance can hold across the full game.
My demo only gave me a small glimpse of what Revival has planned, and there are still plenty of things I haven’t seen. The Genesis Configuration seems to have more abilities to discover, while the Labyrinth appears to offer some considerably more elaborate puzzles than the ones I encountered. After my time with it, I’m cautiously optimistic. Hellraiser: Revival is grotesque, uncomfortable and occasionally downright difficult to look at. It probably should be.
It’s certainly not going to be for the faint of heart, but if you’re a Hellraiser fan who has been waiting for a game that actually embraces the weirdness of Clive Barker’s universe rather than simply borrowing its imagery, Hellraiser: Revival could be exactly what you’ve been waiting for.
Just don’t expect to sleep particularly well afterwards.