Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival

If you have ever read even a single review I have written, you know how much I love and was influenced by movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, Halloween, or all the other slasher movies that were released in the eighties and nineties. They mean so much to me, and, in its own way, Hellraiser is among that list. I am a big fan of the Pinhead character along with some of the other Cenobites, and I like the world that Clive Barker slowly but surely developed. It’s a complicated relationship though, really. I am not a huge fan of any of the movies. I have seen every Hellraiser film. All of them. I was there for the bargain bin Pinhead from Hellraiser: Revelations and I was there when the Cenobites went to space. I am not a huge fan of any of them. My favorites being the original film and Hellraiser: Inferno, the fifth film, which was directed by Scott Derrickson, the director of The Black Phone and Sinister, two other favorites of mine.

I mostly disliked all the rest of the Hellraiser films (I didn’t mind the new Hulu film and I thought Hellraiser: Judgment was a good redemption from Hellraiser: Revelations), and that is the general consensus everyone has about the series (swap Hellraiser: Inferno for the second movie, and you basically have what everyone thought of them. The first two were good. All of the rest were bad.)

I’d still say I’m a big fan though.

I’ve read The Hellbound Heart and The Scarlet Gospels, and I am right there with you wondering what Clive Barker did with the other one-thousand pages of the sequel. I’ve read the graphic novels and I’ve bought the merchandise. You see, I loved the iconography and what I thought Clive Barker was going for, but I never had a self-contained experience that’s sum of its parts didn’t bog it down for me in some way.

Hellraiser: Revival is by-far my favorite depiction of the characters ever created, and Hellraiser: Revival feels like the most realized, complete concept ever presented of them.

It isn’t without its problems – in-fact, if I am being completely honest with you, there is actually a lot of them.

Hellraiser: Revival sees you play as a character named Aidan, a man who’s more than a little rough around the edges, particularly given how he succumbs to heavy drug-use and sadomasochism. Of course, I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, but I would call it fair to say Aidan’s vices border on the self-destruction. The character’s girlfriend Sunny one day decides to bring the Genesis Configuration, the Hellraiser cube by another name, and incorporate it into their wild, crazy sexual adventures – resulting in the summoning of the Cenobites. The Hell Priest and friends enter, rip Sunny into literal smithereens with their hooks, and leave Aidan unconscious. When Aidan wakes up, his goal is to enter the Labyrinth and bring back his girlfriend, by any means necessary.

Hellraiser: Revival doesn’t have a great story, even by the standards of other Hellraiser media. I don’t think the story is bad, per se. Just like how there are a lot of Hellraiser movies where the story was alright, but just alright, I would call Revival’s story predictable and exactly par for the course. It isn’t bad though, and, with this series, it is more about the spectacle and the world than what brings them to it.

Before I played Hellraiser: Revival, I was a little apprehensive about buying it. Videogames are expensive and, even though Hellraiser: Revival was a budgeted title sold at a budgeted price, I’ve been burned before. I told myself I would accept a product that was short (I’m saying five to six hours of gametime) and, maybe, a little janky, as long as I felt like I was doing something during it. What I mean is – I wanted a good, honest to God survival horror game. I didn’t want a walking simulator like Layers of Fear (and I like Layers of Fear), I didn’t want idle a simple stealth game like A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead or Outlast (and I love me some Outlast), and I didn’t want a cinematic game like Until Dawn or The Dark Pictures Anthology (and I love those as well). I wanted a real, honest to god videogames’ videogame.

And, Hellraiser: Revival delivers that and more, a few times over.

There are a lot of games that take inspiration directly from the Resident Evil franchise. Whether it is your cup of tea or not, I don’t think there is any denying that Capcom’s hit franchise is the most influential survival horror series ever made. The videogame led to Konami creating Silent Hill in the nineties, and decades later, you still see new franchises come around that wear their influences on their sleeves. That said, most times, when that happens, they’re taking from the classic games on the original PlayStation. They take from Resident Evil. They take from Resident Evil 2. And, every now and again, you get a Shadows of the Damned or an Evil Within that borrows from the fourth game (which, of course, were both directed by the same person who did 4, Shinji Mikami). What I think’s special and really unique is that we’ve begun seeing a lot of games now that take from Resident Evil 7. I haven’t reviewed it yet, but Crisol: Theater of Idols is an example, same with My Friendly Neighborhood. Hellraiser: Revival is now among that list, and it’s fucking awesome for it.

In truth, the game doesn’t just feel inspired by Resident Evil 7, it feels like the developers must’ve been playing it on their lunch breaks. It has the weapon inventory system, the shop / upgrade system (which includes a “What Are You Buying?” trophy as an homage), and the map system. Of course, none of these can be attributed only to the seventh game, and are traits that apply across most of the Resident Evil series and are now staples of the genre in-general. However, the longer I played, the more I noticed the influences. Many of the puzzles, I felt like, had a direct counterpart to 7, and even the pacing of the game felt very similar. The same way that Resident Evil 7 starts out slow, almost akin to the first games, before going more balls-to-the-wall insane like the ones that came after, Hellraiser: Revival does as well. There are flaws to talk about, but, as far as the ‘meat’ of Hellraiser: Revival is concerned, it offers everything I could have wanted from it and more.

The second I took sight of The Hell Priest and the Cenobites, I felt like Hellraiser: Revival was already worth the price of admission. The Cenobites looked fantastic and seeing Doug Bradley‘s likeness and voice made it feel like, for me, the series finally getting its flowers. It is a series that has never been treated with the care and respect I think it deserves, and so, to finally see something like this gave me absolute goosebumps.

It is the best horror videogame I have played based on a licensed I.P. and is genuinely just a wonderful surprise. 

It literally feels like Capcom decided to step away from all the games they were making and create Hellraiser: Revival (and then, release it way too early).

There it is though – that’s the catch with Hellraiser: Revival. It is very buggy and pretty damn rough around the edges. I played it at the same time as a friend, and he and I had a back and forth where we reported all the glitches we encountered along the way of our playthroughs. The first time he met the merchant, he clipped through the ground, fell through the floor, and was sent to Hell. I didn’t encounter that, but I did encounter plenty of my own. Most of them weren’t so bad. For example, there were a handful of times when a dead enemy would randomly turn into a lens flare, like someone turned on a flashlight but the light was made out of their face rendering stretched out to infinity (I can’t think of a better way to describe it). Those were funny and I laughed at those. Other times, they pissed me off. During one boss battle that requires a surprising amount of finesse, I discovered that every time I would head up the stairs, my character would be locked into a full blown sprint that couldn’t be turned off, making him all but impossible to control, usually resulting in him running off the edge of a balcony and inflicting fall damage on himself. It happened over and over again, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t keep it from happening (and I’m not alone, many others reported the same issue). It made what was already a challenging boss a grueling one, and it made what would have been a fun boss battle a bad one.

The Hellraiser game has a lot more depth to it than I would have expected it would. The gun play feels good, meanwhile the melee isn’t too shabby either. There are a plethora of guns you can unlock, as well as upgrades that can offer them a little more oomph. The melee sees you using weapons that breakdown over time, sans one, weaker melee weapon that never breaks. Each weapon has different advantages. Some weapons are bulkier and inflict more damage, but are slower, and some are faster, but weaker. There is a dodge mechanic where your character will dash backward, allowing him to evade enemy attack that I know some players found both unhelpful and disorienting. While I agree with the latter sentiment, I found that once you got the hang of it, it was incredibly useful and pivotal to melee combat. Eventually, you will also receive the puzzle box which allows you special powers that can be used to aid you in combat in some pretty cool ways. It reminded me of the telekinesis ability in Dead Space, where you can use objects in your environment and shoot them off like they’re projectiles.

Something I found out is that Hellraiser: Revival is surprisingly hard. I don’t call myself a good gamer or anything like that, but I’ve beaten dozens of survival-horror games, and think I’m good enough to at least speak on behalf of the average gamer. I had a lot more trouble with Hellraiser: Revival than I did any of the Resident Evil or Silent Hill games, for instance (and I’ve beaten most of them). Some of this difficulty is unintentional. It’s because of the unexpected jank you’ll uncover as you play. Most of it, maybe is. Some of it though, is because it’s just pretty damn difficult. In one small section, you’re forced to fortify a building with planks, in a Call of Duty zombies-esque fight, and it’s so much harder than I would’ve ever expected. When it hits though, it hits. Sometimes I felt indestructible, taking out hordes of enemies with melee combat and feeling comfortably able to switch between different ways of attack. Other times it felt like shit simply doesn’t work right.

Stealth is mostly an afterthought. It feels like stealth exists, but it also feels like the game wasn’t made from the ground-up with it in mind. Some people prefer stealth, for them, I think you’ll find it is a little lackluster, with not much meat on the bones.

Besides the combat and puzzle-solving, Hellraiser: Revival also includes chase segments and platforming. I don’t know what the consensus is for either, but I have a feeling a lot of people won’t like the platforming. That’s fair. There were a lot of moments where I felt like things didn’t go the way they were intended because the game’s lack of polish. Still though, for the most, I liked them and thought they offered a nice change of pace. The chase segments I also liked a fair bit for the same reason, and could see some people disliking them for when things go south. What we were chased by was also The Chatterer, which I think is really cool.

I told myself that I would be satisfied with Hellraiser: Revival if it was a seven-hour campaign with solid game play and memorable moments, by the time the game finished, I clocked out at about fifteen hours of game time (which is a little more than average, but I did try to take in the scenery and explore every nook and cranny). By the end, I was more happy with what I received. It was awesome, to tell you the truth.

It was an uncompromising and brutal depiction of Clive Barker’s world that felt fully realized and absolutely barbaric. I expected them to iron out some of the more unruly aspects of Hellraiser to make it appeal to a mainstream audience (similar to how they’ve done with nearly all the movies), but it was pretty unrelenting and bold. It sits soundly with Outlast as a game that I thoroughly enjoyed that certain others may look at me funny if they saw me playing – and, no joke, contextually, it may be one of the harshest games on the market.

I’ll admit, it had a lot of problems. A. Lot. Of. Problems. It was enough problems to make me ask if I would still recommend it if it weren’t for the fact it was a Hellraiser game. I’ve thought it over and, if they would iron out all the glitches, all the bugs and awkwardness, I legitimately do think this would be there as one of the best survival-horror games on the market and maybe even the best not by Capcom or Konami. It has bugs, and they are what they are, and I hope they fix them, but, for me, it was a really good survival horror game in spite of them.

It absolutely helps that it is a good survival-horror game based on such an iconic and influential intellectual property. To me, at least, that matters a lot. I’ve always wanted them to head in this direction with certain franchises. Robert Englund to old to play Freddy Krueger anymore? Why can’t we have him do a voice-acting performance? So many times, when they do licensed horror games, we see asymmetrical horror games hit the market. All due respect to everyone who enjoys them, I don’t want to yuck your yum, but I personally can’t stand them. At the same time though, this is a game that has the goods and earns itself a place in the world of survival-horror on its own merit.

I’d highly recommend it (especially after they’ve released some patches).

They have so many sights to show you.