Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival review – we have such sights to show you

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival – Pinhead is voiced by the original actor (Saber Interactive) Pinhead and his hellish band of Cenobites are reborn in a hyper-sexual riff on Resident Evil, which doesn’t hold back on the sadomasochism. Video games might be brash in terms of portraying violence, but they’re not so bold when it comes to sex. The medium has struggled to evolve from its teenage titillation phase, ever since Lara Croft featured in lads mags in the 1990s. All these years later, and sex scenes in modern games, like Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3, are still mostly awkward humps between uncanny valley CG models, borne out of flirty persistence in a dialogue tree. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival won’t be pioneering gaming’s sexual liberation, but it is unashamed to lay out its kinks from the off. In the opening scene, you’re introduced to Aidan and his girlfriend Sunny as they engage in an S&M fumble involving pins, nipples, and a glowing box. Within the context of the horror franchise, the fetish is business as usual – but for video games, it’s one of the most arresting openers of recent memory. If you’re familiar with Hellraiser, you’ll know what happens next. As the puzzle box cuts down Sunny’s back, the couple inadvertently open a portal to Pinhead’s labyrinthian dimension. Sunny submits to the horror icon and his sadomasochistic Cenobites, who tether her with hooks and brutally drag her into their realm of pleasurable pain. Aidan, left reeling in his birthday suit, feebly follows them into the portal to try and bring her back. As you might expect, Aidan’s rescue mission doesn’t go to plan. After being pulled back to the real world, he finds himself kidnapped by a group of Scarlet Church cultists, led by Marlowe – a charismatic and maniacal figure who worships the Cenobites. He wants to become one of them and transcend mortality, with his followers believing they can join him as well, and unlock their purest form, by exploring the extremes of pain and pleasure. You don’t have to be a Hellraiser devotee to keep up with Revival. The game doesn’t assume any deep knowledge of Clive Barker’s creation, and a large chunk of the plot re-runs a core concept from the first movie. The developers have said they were inspired by the first two films (aka the best ones) and Barker was ‘deeply involved’ in the project, but this is a standalone story which does a commendable job of remixing the hits for both devout fans and newcomers. Want GTA 6 news? Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for the latest GTA 6 news, reviews of new games you should play and exclusive analysis of the biggest stories of the week. If you are among the converted, Hellraiser: Revival’s greatest strength is how much it doesn’t shy away from the nastiness – or sexual themes – the franchise is known for. The cultist’s den houses a litany of spectacularly gory displays that are equally repulsive as they are fascinating: with two humans conjoined by their ribcages and severed busts of men with their guts sprouted outwards like flowers. In a later sequence, where you explore the house of a twisted artist named Bruno, described as ‘Picasso with a scalpel’, bodies dressed in bondage gear and tangled up in sex swings are littered about like proud museum pieces. There’s a sense that Serbian developer Mad Head Games (one of the many teams within Saber Interactive) is relishing the freedom baked into the IP. At one point early on, you enter an underground sex club where, in order to get the key to the VIP area, you have to retrieve three items for a masked woman on a bed: a spanking paddle, a spreader bar, and the ‘biggest, thickest dildo’ you can find. The sequence is built for shocks and giggles, and achieves them when you’re asked to press X to spank, but the brashness – while likely not to everyone’s taste – feels in step with Hellraiser’s origins as a challenge to sexual norms. Similarly, this particular scene doubles as an important counterbalance to show BDSM’s safe and silly side, against the violent extremities elsewhere. It helps that Aidan, who you control, actively enjoys the subculture, so while he is rightly freaked out when he sees ritualistic murder, he’s never condescending to the sexual pursuits that led there. The guns feel very out of place (Saber Interactive) Hellraiser: Revival is smarter than it looks in its handling of sex and violence, but this, for the most part, doesn’t translate to the gameplay. At its core, this is a survival horror game cut from the same cloth as Resident Evil, with inventory management, scarce ammo drops, and a lot of puzzles where you’re moving statues from one plinth to another. There’s even an equivalent to the Merchant, where you can upgrade your guns and replenish your health supplies. As a first person horror, it owes the most to Resident Evil Village, but it throws on mechanics from elsewhere too. There are stealth takedowns, melee combat which aspires to Condemned, and BioShock-esque powers via the Genesis Configuration box you carry around. The latter is the best tool in the arsenal, with the first ability you unlock allowing you to rip blades, nails, and other objects from the environment and blast them at enemies, as if Magneto was unleashed on a sex cult. The amalgamation has its moments, but because of these disparate elements, Hellraiser: Revival feels unsettled in its identity. If we had our way, we’d remove the gunplay entirely – because it lacks any satisfying punch, and because it feels at odds with a franchise hinged around intimacy and suffering. It’s easy to understand why it was included, because it follows the Resident Evil mould, but when you’re scrambling away from grenades like Call Of Duty it’s a jarring shift. The Chatterer provides the best scares (Saber Interactive) Melee combat makes more sense, and there’s a decent amount of variety from baseball bats to cleavers, but its execution is subpar. There’s a dodge mechanic to avoid attacks, but there isn’t any elegance to your movement otherwise – so fights often boil down to running in circles with the occasional panicked stab. It doesn’t help that the enemy AI is also pretty dire, so instead of generating scares, they’re mostly just an annoying chore to deal with. Hellraiser: Revival is more at ease when it strips away combat inside Pinhead’s labyrinth. The game oscillates between real world sections, where you’re primarily fending off the cult, and hallucinogenic sequences inside the dark maze. The latter is where it takes inspiration from P.T., in how corridor loops morph when your back is turned, and the chilling atmospherics of a realm that’s constantly shifting – and hiding sinister sights – behind every corner. For long-time fans, it’s in these sequences when Revival feels authentically Hellraiser – both aesthetically and in its gameplay. Instead of lacklustre gunfights, you’re engaged in corridor run chases from the terrifying Chatterer, as you slide beneath chains that try to obstruct your path. In other instances, you’re navigating around deadly traps, like Leviathan-shaped spikes, which barrel towards you on tracks when you’re in sight. The other joy of these sections, outside of the labyrinth’s eerie recreation, is being in the presence of Pinhead himself. Doug Bradley returns to voice the character for the first time since 2005’s Hellraiser: Hellworld (outside of recording a few lines for Dead By Daylight DLC), and he’s just as imposing and quoteworthy in video game form. Like the other Cenobites, he’s smartly deployed too – so when he does pop up, it’s always an event. Hellraiser: Revival is confused, derivative, and janky, yet it’s one of the most fascinating games we’ve played all year. Those without any affection for the franchise might dismiss it as a shoddy Resident Evil reskin with added quirks, which wouldn’t be inaccurate. But when it thrives, it’s a surprisingly bold, unhinged, and faithful extension of a challenging IP. It’s taken almost 40 years to get the first standalone Hellraiser game and while not devoid of it entirely, it’s certainly not a waste of good suffering. Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival review summary In Short: An uncompromising and faithful adaptation of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser universe, where the horror pleasures are let down by the pains of its combat. Pros: Unflinching in its handling of sex and violence in a way that understands the IP, with scenes you’ve never seen in a game before. The Labyrinth realm is brilliantly realised and creepy, and well utilised in terms of gameplay. Doug Bradley’s return as Pinhead. Uses the Configuration box, both in puzzles and combat, in cool ways. Well paced over its roughly 10 hour campaign. Cons: Gunplay and melee combat is ropey, and in the case of the former, out of place. Highly derivative of other games and lacks its own gameplay identity. Poor enemy AI. Score: 7/10 Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, PCPrice: £34.99Publisher: Saber InteractiveDeveloper: Mad Head GamesRelease Date: 8th October 2026Age Rating: 18 A nightmare configuration (Saber Interactive) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. Arrow MORE: Gears Of War: E-Day is getting a sequel and it won’t take as long says Xbox Arrow MORE: Star Wars Zero Company team teases DLC as it rehires staff Arrow MORE: Games Inbox: When will the next mainline Zelda game be out? 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