Hellraiser: Revival Review

Hellraiser: Revival wants to make you squirm. 

It lives in discomfort, it thrives in fear. Moments in this game will send chills to your very core. It is beautiful and disgusting and enamoring all at once. Your adrenaline will spike and your dread will simmer, sometimes at the same time. Pain and pleasure are intertwined, which is a clear sign that the team at Saber Interactive understood the assignment. I'm not a horror guy, but after playing through Hellraiser: Revival, I'm now a Hellraiser guy. 

Hellraiser puts you in the shoes of Aidan Lynch, who’s living the fast life with his girlfriend Sunny. Experimentation is a big theme in the bedroom with these two, but one night Sunny brings home a puzzle box that turns out to be the Genesis Configuration, one of the many cubes tied to the otherworldly Cenobites. Pinhead (or Hell Priest, as his peers call him) and pals decide to take Sunny away in pieces, which you get to watch in full gory detail, and it's Aidan's job to get her back and put her back together. 

The four iconic Cenobites command the scene every time they're on screen. Doug Bradley reprising his role as the Hell Priest is fantastic, as is the Fallen, who appears to speak with Aidan a few times throughout the game. There's one Cenobite, a fat one with glasses that I'm told is named Butterball, who doesn't do much throughout the game… but the one time he does appear is one of the strangest parts of the whole thing. You'll note I said four Cenobites; we'll get to the fourth one shortly.

Sunny's fate is gruesome, and you see it five minutes into the game. After the first encounter with the Cenobites, Aidan is captured by a cult that mixes actual BDSM with bloody deaths, sacrifices, and mutilation. From there, you'll find yourself sitting in a chair, with one arm sewn to your chest and the other nailed to the chair you're sitting on, and your first task is to get yourself out of it. Doing so is teeth-grittingly gruesome, one of the most uncomfortable things I think I've ever done in a video game, and it's only 15 minutes in!

The cult that put Aidan in that predicament is insane, sure, but Hellraiser takes ample care to view them not only as insane, but separate from people who simply have particular sexual tastes. There's plenty of imagery of kink play, BDSM, and other sexual pursuits depicted in the club's various rooms and hallways, but they're presented separately from the bloodlust of the cult and its members. 

While the club upstairs hosts the carnal delights, the basement halls are where the murder and bloodshed happen. Normal patrons are just looking for a good time, while the cultists below have gone off the deep end. Other games might have lumped the sex in with the savagery and called them equal, but there is no kink shaming here, and that's a good thing. I will say that the cultists have some of the goofiest dialogue in the game while they're patrolling an area. They'll routinely shift between craving pain, praising the cult, or saying weird things like "you have to soil yourself to achieve purity." One cultist even screams "I'll jerk you off after I kill you," which sounds like a really bad deal, honestly. 

Outside of the club, Aidan will travel through graveyards, dark alleyways, and other typical horror game fare while fighting against the ghouls. There's random graffiti and posters strewn about the walls, but there's not a whole lot of standout level design to write home about… except the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth rules. 

It is claustrophobic, disorienting, and overwhelming. It stretches as far as the eye can see, whether you're in a small hallway or overlooking a vast horizon. It's littered with obstacles, from bladed traps to puzzles which require you to move the walls themselves to solve. It constantly adapts and changes, seemingly on a whim, and just when you think you're done, it will add another hall and another room. 

Sometimes, you'll have to outrun the Chatterer, the fourth Cenobite, who has no eyes and constantly chattering teeth. These are some of the most tense parts of the entire game, as ol' Chatty will instantly kill you if he touches you. It's bad enough trying to stay out of arm's reach, but then you'll have to dodge a massive bladed obstacle or move blocks with the Genesis Configuration to solve a quick puzzle while he is merely a few footsteps away from you, and the anxiety ratchets up to 11.

Aidan's adventure is standard first-person-shooter fare, with guns that can be upgraded and various melee weapons that can be found around the world. As if the tension wasn't high enough, melee weapons can degrade and break after multiple hits. Repair kits will keep those in top shape, while bandages and health kits will keep Aidan healthy too. 

The Genesis Configuration is itself a weapon, powered by a resource called Suffering collected from dealing and taking damage, and it gives access to otherworldly powers. It can pull saw blades, spikes, and other shrapnel out of the walls and launch them. It can absorb fire and turn it against the hordes. Eventually, it will gain the ability to clear an entire room of baddies with one ultimate attack, and that move kicks ass every time I use it.

All of these things (outside of the Genesis Configuration) can be purchased from Zora, a mysterious woman who randomly appears to help you out but has more stake in the game than she first lets on. I like Zora a lot, especially when she's throwing a quick one-line zinger at Aidan.

This inventory requires managing, and this is where Hellraiser borrows from another famous horror franchise: The Resident Evil 4 attache case is here! Each item takes up a certain amount of space, and you have to move stuff around in order to fit the cool new item you just found or risk leaving it behind. Fond memories of moving my weapons to one side in order to make room for ammo in RE4 came flooding back to me, though Zora never asked "what're ya buyin', strange-ah?"

The management here in Hellraiser is clumsier than its inspiration, though. Multiple times throughout the game, despite pressing L3 for automatic sorting, I'd still have to make room to fit a health kit or box of ammo I needed. I can think of a few times where I had to drop something, pick up ammo, reload that gun, and then pick up what I dropped just to make it work, which annoyed me.

I am pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Hellraiser: Revival. Its respect for its source material is apparent throughout, with the Labyrinth, the Cenobites, and the Genesis Configuration being standout pieces of the puzzle. The rest of the game isn't reinventing the wheel for first-person horror, but the "don't fix what isn't broken" approach works just fine here. The squeamish need not apply, as there are moments made to make your skin crawl, but even the most horror-averse people can have a great time in this Labyrinth.

Saber Interactive has such sights to show you, and thankfully, there's more pleasure than pain.