Hellraiser: Revival drops players into the world of Clive Barker’s cult horror franchise, as developer Saber Interactive aims to bring a faithful Hellraiser experience that doesn’t hold back on making you uncomfortable. GameSpot was able to go hands-on at Gamescom, and our play session with Revival definitely delivered tension and unease, as well as an exciting new gameplay element.
Hellraiser: Revival is a first-person action-horror game that puts you in the shoes of Aidan Lynch, who has made the mistake of toying with one of Hellraiser’s iconic puzzle boxes, the supernatural cube designed to open a gateway to hell. Aidan’s girlfriend is taken by Hellraiser’s Cenobites, the torture-loving demons from a hellish dimension known as the Labyrinth. Aidan makes a pact with Hellraiser’s most infamous Cenobite, Pinhead, in order to rescue his girlfriend. There’s no way this deal is going to end well for him.
In terms of gameplay, Hellraiser: Revival plays similarly to a traditional Resident Evil game, providing obstacles such as locked doors, an abundance of puzzles, and plenty of creeps trying to kill you. You’ll have access to guns for combat, but ammo was hard to come by during our playthrough, while melee weapons were more abundant. However, the developer did explain that you don’t really fight Pinhead and the other Cenobites head-on; instead, the threats are a mix of tortured souls and the human fanboys of the Cenobites, whom the developer calls the Cult of the Scarlet Church.
The combat is typical for a first-person action game, but the action still feels brutal. The threats we faced in our time with the demo were mostly the BDSM-styled human cultists, but even those standard enemy types felt powerful, and it didn’t take many hits from them to die. The dodge button in Revival is your friend.
The most distinct part of Aidan’s arsenal is the puzzle box. The most common puzzle box in Hellraiser lore is the Lament Configuration, which is the cube designed to open the gateway to hell, but Saber Interactive explained the studio created an entirely new puzzle box called the Genesis Configuration.
This new Genesis box can summon the Cenobites, but it was specifically made for a different purpose that the developer didn’t want to spoil. It can also be used in combat against the enemies in the game, as well as manipulate the world around you. In the demo, we could pull items like saw blades toward us, then release them, dismembering the enemies in our path akin to the gravity gun in Half-Life 2. The developer also teased that Aidan will discover more ways to use the Genesis Configuration as the game progresses.
My favorite part of the play session was a puzzle room where you needed to use the puzzle box to rotate parts of a tunnel and create a platform in order to progress. This segment didn’t have any combat, and the developer said using puzzles as breaks from combat is intentional, but the tension never left me even in those quieter moments.
At least two hours of Revival takes place in the actual Labyrinth hell dimension. There’s no combat in this area of the game, and the Genesis Configuration works as both a key part of the story and a tool for manipulating the Labyrinth.
Where Revival really stands out is in the overall aesthetics and the way the world always carries tension. Revival features no shortage of violence, dismemberment, and torture. Even when limbs aren’t being sawed off, the atmosphere always reminds you that hell is just around the corner. Often, the game forces you into closed spaces, with narrow interiors and tiny rooms to explore. In one section of the demo, you’re led down a hallway that transforms similarly to that of PT, the teaser for the canceled Silent Hills game, where it feels endless and panic-inducing as you rush to escape.
All the discomfort is something the studio didn’t want to compromise on, even for the sake of ratings.
“We knew how disappointed Hellraiser fans would be if we did compromise, so it was just never really on the table,” explained narrative director Anthony de Fault.
Our playthrough was only a small piece of Revival, but the offering definitely captured the tone of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, and the story is canon to the franchise. That provides an extra incentive for franchise fans to check it out, but the extreme gore and tension offer something even if you aren’t already invested in Clive Barker’s hellish nightmare world.
Hellraiser: Revival is coming just in time for Halloween, releasing on October 8 for PC, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and Switch 2.
