The first ever Hellraiser game, Revival, would do Clive Barker and the schloppy Eighties horror genre proud.
Remember when we’d go into Blockbuster or Movie Land or whatever our local rental store was called, walk along the wall and see 40 VHS copies of Top Gun? But then we’d see only two copies of a movie with a beat up cover that we’re not sure if it’s busted up because it’s been rented so often or because it was found on the street?
That’s Hellraiser, and that’s the vibe of Saber Interactive’s Hellraiser: Revival. A B-Movie horror flick that’s got all of the Eighties sleaziness and cheap gore and none of the modern restraint, I can’t believe how much I enjoy it.
It’s a survival action horror game, where it balances enough of both aspects without really trying to reinvent the wheel. It feels like an Xbox 360-era game, in all of the good, and acceptably mediocre, ways. I think Saber knows what they’re going for, and what bar they’re aiming to clear, and not, like, launch themselves up — just kind of tap their butt going over it.
Revival is magnificently bonkers. It’s gory as hell, and keeps throwing some of the weirdest stuff at us, trying to top itself at every turn. Hell, it opens with a full grotesque BDSM sex scene, and follows with the whole first hour of the game having us running around with our dong out. It never lets up after that either, being relentless with the barrage of eye-opening idea after eye-opening idea. There are moments where we need to sneak around as full murders are happening on top of us, puzzles that require us to rip the cavities of cadavers open, and mazes that constantly shift and make us question if we’ve started walking the wrong way.
I think it’s also both intentionally and unintentionally funny. There’s nothing like going elbows deep in strange holes as a way to save our game.
But it’s also extremely boilerplate gameplay. It’s not exciting from that part, focusing on a lot of walking, crouching, sneaking up and stabbing people (excessively), and average shooting. We have to crouch too much, actually, and it slows down the speed of the game a lot. I don’t love stealth portions in games, and Revival seems to rely on it as a core element, turning much of the otherwise cool areas we visit into slogs. Some of the control ideas don’t even really hit as well as they should, like the fast turnaround being too complex to time correctly in button presses. It kind of sucks and never works.
The Switch 2 version looks fine. It’s definitely not equal to the other platforms in fidelity, but I didn’t notice it until I actually looked at a version on the PS5. Granted it still looks GOOD, and there aren’t any real performance issues that bog it down. Saber has done well to get this bonkers experience working on the device, especially in handheld mode.
At least the major enemies and bosses are all interesting. The Chatterer is the first we come across, are definitely terrifying, and set the bar for what we could expect. In fact the supporting enemies are perhaps more interesting than Pinhead himself, who kind of comes off as sort of a performative priest than anything else.
Hellraiser: Revival is just a silly, dumb game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s gross, it has plenty of those sights to see, and it’s very surface level at what it wants to accomplish. It’s fun, it’s fine, and it’s a solid throwback to an era of horror that’s essentially disappeared. If Blockbuster was still around a bunch of 15 yr olds would grab that worn copy off of the shelf, rent it and absolutely love it.
3/5 ⭐⭐⭐
Good
This review is based on a Switch 2 code sent to the Editor by the Publisher or PR. Read about how we do our reviews here.
