This article contains descriptions of sexual themes and graphic violence. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival received ESRB Mature and PEGI 18 ratings, and is intended for adult audiences.
I spent roughly twenty minutes with upcoming survival horror game Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival and in that brief time managed to witness a graphic sex scene (that the demo cold-opens on, no less), the protagonist piercing some nipples, and the deaths of legions of leather-clad enemies that seemed to enjoy being fatally bludgeoned a little too much.
In other words, it’s an unapologetically freaky game that relishes in extreme violence, something you’ll already know if you’ve glimpsed the brutal new release date trailer.
Set 20 years after the start of the equally bloody cult classic Hellraiser horror film series, Revival is an all-new story that was written in collaboration with original franchise creator Clive Barker that seems to capture its essence perfectly.
Welcome to the club
It follows protagonist Aiden Lynch, a gang member who stumbles upon the Genesis Configuration. This is a mysterious puzzle box that’s, unbeknownst to him, somehow connected to the sinister dimension of the Cenobites — towering demonic creatures that relish inflicting otherworldly pain (or pleasure) on unsuspecting humans.
Naturally, his girlfriend Sunny’s first instinct seems to have been to take it to the bedroom, where she accidentally summons the Cenobites into the real world while the pair were getting down and dirty. Following a cutscene that lays out some of the premise, my preview begins with Aiden carefully exploring the interior of a labyrinthine BDSM club, its winding corridors filled with red velvet curtains and sofas that you simply couldn’t pay me to touch.
It’s not long before I start running into traditional genre staples: elaborate doors that require specific keys to unlock, safes that have me scouring for codes hidden nearby, and puzzles that have me fishing around my backpack to pick out the right objects in order to progress.
Although my time at the club was brief, there was a surprising amount of combat in what I played — at least more than I initially expected from a survival horror game. I took on rooms full of rabid cultists all decked out in spiky fetish wear, predominantly switching between a pistol and blunt melee weapons.
The gunplay is decent, as you would expect from a seasoned shooter developer like Saber Interactive, and every swing of my bat had a good feeling of weight to it, something that’s rather uncomfortably emphasized by the moans that occasionally escape from foes’ lips just as a dull thud connects.
The Genesis Configuration also has some powerful tricks up its sleeve, including letting you grab flames from open torches so you can toss them for a lethal scorching blast. I soon find a shotgun and submachine gun as well, and realise that Aiden can pull off an impressively nimble slide with a tap of the crouch button that helps you dart around incoming gunfire.
Just as I was really starting to rack up the kills, I was thrust into a brisk walk through a nightmarish vision of Aiden’s home, interspersed with cutscenes showing him doing the deed with Sunny and dosing up on drugs before everything hit the fan.
After a few laps, I’m walking in on what looks like the girlfriend’s twisted corpse, gagged and impaled on spikes as blood runs from her closed eyes like tears and her organs spill onto the floor. Delightful.
Throw in my brief diversion to a more puzzle-focused section set in the Cenobyte’s twisted world, which had me further manipulating the magic cube in one hand in order to rotate rooms full of platforms, and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how the whole game will unfold.
It all feels very Hellraiser, and this little taste of depravity certainly left me eager to see just how far Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival will go when it comes to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC on October 8, 2026.
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dash.wood@futurenet.com (Dashiell Wood)
