Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival Review

The game can be broken down into two types of gameplay: combat and/or stealth and then exploration and/or exposition. This kind of structure is somewhat filmic. The city of Clairport serves as your combat and stealth arena against deranged cult members, while The Labyrinth (essentially Hell) traps you in otherworldly puzzles and hazards. This is a first-person action horror survival game that balances making you feel both utterly powerless and dangerously capable. The stealth system is rather basic in design, giving you an icon to know when you’re hidden or not. You can take down enemies for quiet kills, provided they are not in sight of other enemies. You can also throw things like stones and glass bottles to distract others and get them turned around. You do spend a lot of time crouched, sneaking around because you’re never really sure if you should be in stealth or not. But there were lots of times where I could clear whole rooms silently just by doing takedowns. One thing that irked me was the inability to close doors once opened. It doesn’t actually impact gameplay, but it meant I never felt truly safe – though maybe that’s exactly the point.

In the beginning of the game, you only have a flimsy knife with which to defend yourself. The game introduces different types of melee weapons, between bladed and blunt and the types of damage they do. Blunt weapons will break the armor off of enemies, and bladed weapons will do damage to flesh. At points, it felt like Condemned: Criminal Origins-style combat, complete with the head-bashing satisfaction and weapon durability. This durability can be repaired with kits you find or make, but you always should seek out backups. If you run out of extra weapons, your default unbreakable yet weaker knife takes its place. Several hours in you’ll amass a small arsenal with expected weapons like a pistol, shotgun, revolver, and SMG. The combat is really satisfying, as location-based melee is represented physically and a headshot from a pistol is a one-hit kill.

When you’re transported to The Labyrinth, this is where you’ll complete Resident Evil-style puzzles like forming shapes out of items, reading notes to find clues to open safes, finding ornate items that combine or fit into certain slots. There’s nothing obtuse, and I never got stuck for too long, but they do a good job of maintaining momentum and making you feel smart. Sometimes Pinhead shows up, and walks you around, giving you bits of lore. Other times, you’ll have to complete highly nerve-wracking chase sequences. This is where you learn the game has a quick turn button, which becomes immediately useful as you get pursued by a Chatterer. In the movies, the Chatterers are unsettling to observe, but here they raise the hair on the back of your neck as hearing their teeth clack and footsteps clomp right behind you is truly terrifying. All along the way you’ll have to dodge obstacles, be rerouted due to the Chatterer teleporting, or doors violently slamming shut just before you reach them. Perhaps the coolest thing that happened later in the game was being chased by a Chatterer while needing to solve a puzzle simultaneously was a uniquely tense sequence that nearly had me sweating.

The aforementioned gold box is known as the Genesis Configuration, or a puzzle box. It does many things, but it gives you many powers with which to dispatch your enemies. The first power you get with it is telekinesis; you’ll use it to move objects and avoid traps. There are a great many death machines, rotating tunnels, and collapsing stairwells to keep you in flight mode. The puzzle box also has offensive capabilities, where suddenly it’s like the Ravenholm level of Half-Life 2 and you’ll be pulling sawblades, a pack of nails, and other items to you in order to carve up the unworthy enemies that try to overwhelm you. Once an enemy is battered enough, the puzzle box can be used to banish them, a brutal execution on stunned foes that allows you to recover health. Other upgrades to the puzzle box let you take flame from burning sconces and use them to set the unworthy ablaze. There’s an ultimate ability that’s positively electric, and fun to use every time you can. The puzzle box is one for the ages.

The game uses an Alien: Isolation save file system, where it’ll take a couple of seconds of animation to insert your arm into what I can only describe as a “hell hole,” which apparently feels good, according to Aiden’s dialogue the first time you use it. You will have to manage your inventory in and out of combat, and at save stations is where you’ll be able to transfer items from your body to a stash. As you progress, you’ll expand your personal inventory space, but you’ll often need to store items elsewhere for later, such as items to sell to a vendor. There’s a total of twelve blueprints to craft, and provided you’ve collected enough materials, you can craft on the fly, creating items such as lockpicks, bandages, ammo, and even repair kits.

The game’s locales are many, from the lively and hyper-sexual clubs to a lonely park within Clairport. Contrasting that is the gothic and cold Labyrinth, full of brutalist architecture and living structures. The game uses these places in tune with the licensed music at key moments for building up to perfect, spine-tingling crescendos.

As is becoming the norm, Unreal Engine 5 powers Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival. It has one of the fastest shader compilation screens I’ve ever seen, finishing in just five seconds. It’s also really well optimized; I was able to get an average of 115fps with everything set to “Epic” (highest), DLSS using DLAA (native resolution), and Frame Generation. During my time playing the game, I didn’t have any issues with frametime or framerate drops, it was buttery smooth the entire time, no matter what was happening on-screen (there can be a lot!).

“Hellraiser” finally gets a video game worthy of its name and does not disappoint, as Saber Interactive understands the source material. It borrows ideas and themes from many modern survival horror games and brings them together in clever and exciting ways. It’s never overly complex; you’re always moving forward and ensuring you’re never stuck for long before facing whatever fresh hell waits around the corner. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is a game for fans, but accessible enough to drag new victims into the fold. Games this sadistic don’t come around often, but when it does, it’s truly special. As Pinhead warns: “Dreams Are Fleeting. Only Nightmares Last Forever!” – and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is wonderfully depraved enough to stand the test of time.