Hellraiser: Revival PC review — Hooks in you

When Hellraiser: Revival was announced, I had no idea what it could possibly be. I assumed it would be an asymmetrical multiplayer game, considering the dev had previously made the Evil Dead game, but that would be a pretty odd choice for this franchise. I wouldn’t have expected a survival horror game and I especially wouldn’t have expected it to be as good as it is, even if does go a bit too far into being a Jack of all trades.

The plot concerns a man named Aidan whose girlfriend, Sunny, gets taken by the Cenobites after the two open a puzzle box. This results in him getting hunted by (and hunting) a murderous cult while attempting to free Sunny from the Labyrinth. It’s all surprisingly good, easily making this the best Hellraiser entry since the 80s. As a long-time fan of the first movie, it’s especially a treat seeing the Cenobites and the Labyrinth presented as they are here.

Hellraiser: Revival is played from the first-person as Aidan does survival horror activities to get Sunny back. There’s a bit of everything here. You’ll be sneaking past and fighting cultists and monsters (complete with stealth kills and a generous assortment of upgradable weapons) as well as running from Cenobites and avoiding traps. There’s a pretty shocking amount of variety here as the game constantly changes things up.

You’ll go from sneaking through cult compounds while sneaking up on unsuspecting enemies and brutally stabbing them to death, to getting into firefights, to running through the Labyrinth avoiding The Chatterer. The game clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Resident Evil, with some sections evoking the intense standoffs of Resident Evil 4 (complete with boarding up windows in a cabin while desperately fighting off a horde).

Much of the game is spent exploring to try and find items to open the way forward or solving puzzles. There’s even crafting, as Aidan can find all sorts of stuff to make pretty much anything. Of course, ammo and healing items are limited (and I found myself running low on ammo on multiple occasions), but the Labyrinth sections are pretty far removed from this. In most of these, there’s no reason to use your weapons, and you can’t heal.

Aside from running from The Chatterer, you’ll be avoiding traps (spikes jutting from walls, sawblades, etc) or solving minor puzzles, albeit differently from the ones set in the real world. Aidan actually uses a puzzle box, which functions as a weapon similar to plasmids in Bioshock in the real world, while letting you manipulate cubes or your surroundings in the Labyrinth. You literally rotate entire rooms at times, which is freaking awesome.

In the real world, you’ll mostly use it to grab metal objects and fling them at foes, but there’s more, such as using it to take fire from the environment and set enemies ablaze. Later on, you can summon hooks to tear everything in the vicinity apart if you’ve got a full meter. It’s incredibly Hellraiser. The gameplay here is quite solid, even if it’s mostly not anything you’ve never seen before. The shooting is decent, the melee combat has a lot of impact, and the sneaking’s usually just fine too.

Annoyingly, melee weapons all break super quickly, save for the default unbreakable knife that does very little damage. Some enemy attacks do ridiculous amounts of damage too, with some enemies themselves being quite spongey. This is the worst during boss fights where it feels like they just refuse to die no matter how much ammo you pump into them. Still, I’m very satisfied with the gameplay here.

Unfortunately, Hellraiser: Revival has some accessibility issues. The game has the most flashing lights I’ve seen in a game in some time. From lightning to just randomly flashing when Cenobites appear, it can be brutal. Certain sections were bad enough that I had a severe migraine and eye problems the day after playing. Granted, at least this isn’t always a thing.

What is an always thing is how the option to turn viewbobbing off in the menu just does absolutely nothing. The devs are aware of this issue and have yet to fix it, even though a modder figured it out in just a couple of days. Go figure. It’s really odd to see such a talented dev flub features like this, but hopefully there’ll be a patch for the viewbobbing soon (I’m positive the excessive flashing will be left as-is, though).

I very much think Hellraiser: Revival is a pretty terrific game. It runs brilliantly, has a strong presentation, and I very much enjoy the story. I hate all the flashing lights, and the viewbobbing is quite uncomfortable, but this is a winning survival horror game that does a hell of a lot with the franchise, and I’m still surprised by what Saber Interactive has done with it.

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