Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival - Such A Limited Imagination (Review)
Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival
Released: October 8th, 2026
Developer: Saber Interactive
Publisher: Saber Interactive
Systems: PC, PS5 (reviewed), Switch 2, Xbox Series
Hellraiser: Revival is not an assymetrical multiplayer game, which is a modern fucking miracle. Yes, an 80s horror movie series has been translated into a format for which it’s actually suited, not simply crammed into a trendy stencil. Well, I say Revival’s format is suitable, but that’s a statement with varying levels of truth - a wacky shooter with homeopathic traces of BioShock isn’t the most comfortable fit, but it does a surprisingly good job of wrestling the source material around itself.
Revival kicks off with a needle through a nipple, which I'd call an immediately promising sign. Whatever else one might say about the game, it doesn’t hold back on the sadomasochistic Clive Barker shit and it’s committed to delivering a stream of lurid body horror. As a Hellraiser fan and gore lover in general, I found the unrelenting grotesquery deeply offputting, so it does it job well! You spend so much time immersed in blood, limbs, and depravity, it’s hard not to feel dirty in the process, but I’m a germaphobe and I can’t help worrying about so many open cuts in such unsterilized conditions.
The game's proper filthy, mate.
As seems to be en vogue these days, there’s a heavy seventh generation vibe in terms of both gameplay and narrative delivery. Hell, the protagonist is cut right out of 2008 with his short hair, Prattish good looks, and the perfect name of Aidan Lynch - it doesn’t get more Xbox 360 than that. Anyway, Aidan's girlfriend Sunny got ripped to shit by Pinhead n’ Pals after he plays with her sexy box, and then he’s got to deal with a cult who worships the Cenobites and are trying to make mad pleasure monsters of their own. It’s a straightforward premise for a straightforward game.
Tonally, Revival lands somewhere between Hellraiser II and Hellraiser III. By its very nature as a combat-heavy game, it has to adopt the schlockier elements of the widely disliked and personally beloved third film, but it retains the stoic dignity of the Cenobites as seen in the preceding two. Thanks to how seriously the script takes its central characters, it does an impressive job of balancing out the schlock to where those far less inclined to love Hellraiser’s sillier forays could forgive it.
The point is, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth is an underrated masterpiece of bullshit.
Armed with the Genesis Configuration - a fancy new Puzzle Box that has all the power of two unupgraded Plasmids - Aidan Lynch crawls, shoots, and severs his way through a bunch of pretentious cultists and their rejected attempts at Cenobiting people. I sincerely enjoy how vapid the cult is and how despite being qualifiably depraved, their understanding of the Cenobites and their god's Labyrinth domain is laughable. The posers’ bloodstained sex clubs and indiscriminate butchery are the main source of aforementioned schlock, and the gameplay they facilitate is similarly exaggerated.
Lynch starts out with basic melee capabilities, always carrying a weak knife but able to grab fragile weapons with better stats along the way. It’s a rudimentary system of graceless swings and dodges, which does the trick in a one-on-one fight but falls off quickly against groups. A suite of guns avail themselves over time, either found or bought from a shopkeeper who took all her cues from another game’s intrepid merchant - a game from which it also borrows the “Item Tetris” inventory system, weapon upgrades, loot drops, and a number of setpieces. I’m saying this game takes several blatant cues from Resident Evil 4, if that wasn’t clear.
Alongside Resident Evil is the aforementioned BioShock influence, and this is where Revival starts to let itself down. There are many superficial elements taken right out of Irrational Games’ seminal shooter, from the Genesis Configuration’s powers to incredibly granular stuff like the way consumable food’s been presented around the environment. Unfortunately, Revival has none of BioShock’s variety and doesn’t take the same inspiration from immersive sims, all while constantly reminding players of a game with those very qualities.
The Phil Collins Configuration can pick up predetermined sharp things and fling them, suck up fire and fling it, and perform Doom-style executions for a pittance of healing. Aside from an admittedly delicious mass finisher (acquired too late in-game to get much mileage), that’s about it as far as combat applications. Had it been given more to do, the Box would’ve been a brilliant Plasmid expy, but its value is entirely contextual and disappointingly limited. Shame that such an iconic part of the setting was reduced to gimmicky attacks and a few insipid shaping puzzles.
You can theoretically use bear traps and gas cans to prepare for battles, but predicting when such a battle’s coming requires guesswork more than anything else. Several times I laid down traps for no reason, and other times a fight occurred without enough warning to put stuff down, which is hardly a compelling reason to waste precious inventory space on these considerable space hogs. They’re the kind of half-useful idea that smacks of scaled back ambition, like much more was planned than what we got.
All of this amounts to a competent shooter with threadbare stealth that doesn’t stand out all that much in the mechanical department. Lynch’s guns are a standard assortment including a pistol and SMG, and while they can be upgraded with a few neat perks, they’re ultimately nothing special. Really, your immediate concern should be to outfit the shotgun with Dragon shells so it has a high chance to set enemies ablaze on top of the shredding damage it starts out with. Where its fellow weapons feel unremarkable, the shotgun stands out as genuinely gratifying.
A vestigial crafting system only further hints toward unrealized ambitions. It’s a simplistic exercise in pressing a button to transform Junk into Stuff, though crafting components are so unevenly distributed you’ll regularly have too much of one thing and not enough of whatever you need to make it useful. While resources are halfway scarce, they’ll still strain Aidan’s delicate pockets - your carrying capacity is so utterly shit that, even with upgraded slots, you’ll be fiddling around in a tedious grid menu right until the credits roll.
Oh, and there’s a lockpicking minigame. 2008 never died, baby! Yes we can!
Revival makes up for its mundane combat with plenty of style and a series of detours into the Labyrinth. These conventional horror sequences pull from a standard assortment of tricks (think Layers of Fear with BDSM) but the sheer authenticity of the Labyrinth as an environment carries what would otherwise be unremarkable gags. A great job’s been done of capturing the disorienting maze seen in Hellraiser II - eerie light pours from cracks in bleak walls, the brutalistic geometry is impossible, and there are more barbed chains than anyone knows what to do with. Leviathan, aka the D8 of Orgasms, feels like a constant presence, and visits to its Wank Palace offer some surreal refreshment between killing sprees.
Good as they can be, the horror portions are prone to overstaying their welcome, especially when progression hinges on a series of puzzles or hazards. Gameplay is so mechanically basic in the Labyrinth that extended exposure just gets more dull than scary. Same can be said for the Chatterer’s chase sequences that frequently append a bunch of trudging - my favorite Cenobite’s appearance is sometimes threatening, but it usually heralds the beginning of a lengthy sprint with hurdles that sometimes verge on trial-and-error and no checkpoints until the finish line.
I bloody love the Chatterer, and it’s a huge shame that he quickly becomes a harbinger of annoyance, especially because his chases can be cool. Aidan handles really smoothly when running, while the shifting corridors and chain barricades are a real trip to navigate when they don’t feel like a total ambush. The whole time, a dental demon is teleporting around you, necessitating rapid course correction, and its characteristic gnashing of teeth signals its proximity in an inspired touch. The sound’s so well used as a threat indicator that I wish stealth had been more than an afterthought, because it could’ve been terrifying.
The Cheeky Chomper’s role as a pursuing threat is a neat use of the character regardless of spotty implementation, and it’s indicative of how hard Revival works to contextualize Hellraiser’s lore. Each of the classic Cenobites have perfect roles for a story-driven videogame, with Pinhead giving the protagonist his main motivation, Deep Throat offering help or advice at key points, the Chatterer driving players forward as an active threat, and Butterball… well, he’s always just happy to take part. All four look brilliant, they’re animated nicely, and Doug Bradley’s Pinhead performance is a delight as always.
Visuals are great throughout, with a lot of imagination clearly evident in the more grotesque designs. If you’re a fan of environmental storytelling you’ll find plenty to gawp at here, even if the stories are all “here’s something that must have fucking hurt and definitely hurt fucking.” Once again I must say I’m impressed with the authenticity when it comes to recreating Hellraiser's imagery, and the accompanying soundscape is perfect - the chains, the slicing, it all sounds as it should and it’s backed by a score of equal measure. The cultists you spend a long time fighting are a bit generic, but their Unworthy creations are disgustingly memorable.
While I’ve pointed out quite a few flaws, Revival is carried admirably by its story and creative direction. It feels very much like a proper Hellraiser story - a fuck sight more than many of the later movies - one that doesn’t compromise on the more salacious aspects of the mythos. Saber Interactive also takes steps to avoid condemning actual kink, and while they don’t always nail it, they did conjure up a peppy sub who’s both very charming and a cute example of healthy BDSM. Really, the sex club was probably the best part of the whole campaign, not just because videogame nightclubs are always a high point, but because this one has a fetch quest for the biggest, thickest dildo in the house.
As a self-contained narrative, it harks back to another questionable favorite of mine, Hellraiser: Inferno. Though criticized for keeping Pinhead to a bare minimum, it felt to me like a great direction to take the series, a self-contained episode about an encounter with the Lament Configuration. Revival’s thematic exploration of love versus desire, punctuated by flashbacks and hallucinatory scenes, gives off the same “bottle episode” vibe that I always wanted to see more of. If we get a sequel, I'd love to see that concept continue.
On its own merits, the game's story still stands up - a well written script does a respectable job of playing with our perception of Aidan and Sunny throughout the story, and while the final act is predictable, it’s no less enjoyable.
Hellraiser: Revival is a decent game and a rather good Hellraiser story. Made with evident reverence for Clive Barker’s kinky chicanery, it’s a commendable attempt at an action horror that could have been terrific with some meanginful depth and refinement. Saber did nothing wrong in borrowing BioShock and Resident Evil’s ideas - what it did wrong was fail to borrow more of them!
7/10
