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Even as a fan of horror growing up, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser was something of a blind spot for me. Pinhead still managed to transcend this fact, and his demonic, pin-cushion head looking ass is the stuff of nightmares.
Hellraiser Revival is a brand new entry in that canon, and I hope that it’ll serve as a fine way for unfamiliars like me to soft launch their affair with the franchise, while delivering a compelling, otherworldly brand of survival horror. There’s a mysterious puzzle box that serves as the game’s McGuffin called the Genesis Configuration, which, I think we can all agree, is a tough name.
As Aidan, the one wielding this overpowered cube, it’s up to you to navigate the labyrinthian hellscape in an effort to save your girlfriend’s soul. It’s a simple premise, made stranger and stranger still by the core ideas that underpin the Hellraiser series. As a stranger to the wider canon, I didn’t know that fetishisation of sex and violence were both central to what Hellraiser is. As it turns out, sadomasochism, pleasure, and sensation are key aspects that the team hasn’t shied away from incorporating. Hellraiser Revival is as kinky as the day is long, and it’s somehow a perfect fit for survival horror.
As someone who, perhaps controversially, believes Resident Evil got good when it transitioned to first-person, Hellraiser Revival has shades of that experience. With the first portion of the demo taking place in an indulgent gentleman’s club, it had its share of classically inspired door “puzzles” where you find an overdesigned key for a door with a snake on it before finding a ticket for the voyeur’s lounge.
The combat I experienced was confined to this particular segment, and I felt like it was adequately weighty. There’s a satisfying squelch to headshots with the pistol, and two-tapping the helmeted cultists that emerge never gets old. As you’d expect, the shotgun is an absolute blunderbuss, but ammo is quite lean. Of all the guns I did use, I thought the submachine gun felt the weakest after having to pump a full clip into a guy’s gut before he’d drop. For a game that seems like its priority is the survival horror elements, I didn’t expect the gunplay to be so chunky.
But it’s a two-pronged offense, courtesy of the Genesis Configuration, otherwise known as the cube artefact you carry about. It’s your standard might and magic approach, and the power of this cube can’t be understated as it reduces enemies to meat chunks on the regular. Its power is replenished by killing, which is a great design choice that pulls the player forward into combat. I can’t wait to see what this cube can do—if the trailer is any indicator, it’s going to be a bloodbath.
Once past the voyeur’s lounge, I was transported to a portion of the game set within the Labyrinth, the interdimensional hellscape within which Pinhead resides. I didn’t see him a wink throughout this entire hands-on; however, his presence looms large within this demonic, complex structure of shifting corridors and looping memories.
Similar enough to something like P.T., you navigate repeated loops of a distorted version of your home. Unlike Kojima’s take, there’s no real puzzle element to it at all, instead giving the player a break from the action to take in a bit of lore, all the while dialling the horror up a notch. Before long, the facade of the home’s chaotic and ever-changing halls falls away to reveal the rigidly-ordered, geometrically-satisfying, and monolithic realm that Pinhead calls home.
It’s in this section that you make use of the Genesis Configuration, harnessing its power to alter the maze’s layout to forge a safe path through a series of spinning blade traps. Similar to Inception’s tumbling corridor, the area is broken up into three portions that need to be aligned to form a walkway across. I did feel the physics of using the cube to be a little cumbersome. Nevertheless, it all culminates in a rather confronting scene where you find Sunny, bound, mutilated, and under the guard of someone, based on light research, who might be Butterball from the films.
Despite having no frame of reference, I can sense the reverence the developer has for Hellraiser. From what I’ve read, this feels like as faithful an adaptation as you can realistically get away with. It has done enough to be one of my favourite games I played during my time at Summer Game Fest, and it has lit a fire in me to give Pinhead a chance to prove why he has earned a place in the movie villain pantheon.