// KOTAKU — GAMING
Hellraiser: Revival: The Kotaku Review
Clive BarkerHellraiser: RevivalReviewSaber InteractiveSurvival horror
The lurid environments of Hellraiser: Revival, a horror survival game continuing the sadomasochistic legacy of Clive Barker’s Hellbound Heart, might not be the best place to say “wow, deja vu!” Nonetheless, while combing the sticky floors of an in-game sex club for crafting supplies and coins, I suddenly remembered the rolled-up cocaine fiver I found in one of KitKatClub’s washroom stalls. Which I used on beer. The more continuous flashbacks I experienced were to Resident Evil Village, a similarly structured, over-the-top barrage of guns, goo, and ghouls. In seeking absolution in its earthly form as a video game, Hellraiser suffers some. It bleeds. You will, too. But oh, it has such sights to show you.
Few horror classics have benefited from distance to their respective eras quite like Hellraiser. Waves of critical reappraisal have sweetened the interior qualities of Halloween and Texas Chain Saw, but the rich, bespoke appeal of Hellraiser was always undercut by its own immediate success. Adapted from his own short story, Barker rendered a modern castle gothic for the big screen, chronicling a woman in peril from her evil stepmother and nasty uncle. The standout characters were the Cenobites, divine facilitators of pleasures beyond what flesh can provide. It was a nuanced interruption to ’80s slasher fare, but Miramax wanted a Freddy. And so, through increasingly diminishing sequels, Pinhead’s campaign of thanatos and eros was swapped for more boilerplate evil.
With Clive Barker’s name reattached, Revival wants to reestablish the distinct pleasures of the flesh to maximalist degrees. You play as Aidan Lynch, a medical doctor turned biker gang enforcer, the ultimate horror video game protagonist. You and your partner Sunny like to keep things freaky on the frameless mattress. Opening on the throes of their passion, the game finds the two deciding to give their latest toy a whirl: an ornate puzzle box that keeps spitting blue bolts of electricity. Despite clear omens, Sunny lashes the odd box across her naked form, summoning the Cenobites to bind her in hooks and twist her into heaps of molten sinew.
If things weren’t grotesque enough, Aidan is immediately kidnapped by a cult of oversexed thriller killers. Their leader Marlowe, a tacky ego tripper who fashions himself like Casey Jones from the Ninja Turtles, has spent the last few years recreating every Hostel movie beneath his nightclub in hopes of becoming a Cenobite himself. With Lemarchand’s box in Aidan’s hand, he discovers he can bargain with the Cenobites to bring Sunny back. Paid in flesh. Pound for pound.
Initially, Revival lunges for the throat. There’s more sex and evisceration in the immediate hours than Steam usually allows for even a few seconds. I cannot think of another commercial video game where you spend so much time with your virtual balls out. Naked, afraid, and in the face of gods.
That doesn’t mean it necessarily hits the jugular. As Aidan seeks his footing, he’ll face shockingly well-armed latex fetishists, naturally camouflaged in dark, blood-damp basements. Where they keep those grenades we will never know. The gunplay the game asks of you is unsatisfactory. A lack of staggers and feedback make it unclear how much impact each blow is having. Each clash makes you feel like you brought a gun to a knife fight, loading bullets into spongy opponents before eventually trading lashes like Tommy Lee Jones and Steven Seagal at the end of Under Siege. Savoring each bullet is a survival horror tradition, but no matter how true my aim, I mostly felt like I was wasting them.
"The feral ghouls make Taz noises and you can throw railroad spikes through them with psychic angel powers!"
First-person horror survival in the vein of Resident Evil Village: solve puzzles and shoot bullets, but with a lot more body parts dangling out.
Dealing punishment with newfound Cenobite powers is a hoot, impre