Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival review

Bloody hell, that monster with the metal stakes for arms and legs is quick. No matter how fast I run or how well I hide it'll be right where it needs to be, on time and ready to impale me. Don't get me wrong, I actually quite like coming face to face with a de-fleshed monster— especially when it looks this cool—but I'm not a fan of being funneled into the same set pieces over and over again.

Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival does a lot of things right; its body horror and gore is top tier and some of the puzzles really grew on me towards the end. But its action and horror didn't manage to hit the same highs no matter how many grotesque monsters it threw at me.

I played Hellraiser on its standard setting—I find it's a good way to get a baseline—and while I didn't have a massive problem with how easy that was, I didn't gel with how inconsistent the fights were and how, ultimately, nothing I did mattered.

Take the final fight scene with our aforementioned monster with stakes for arms and legs, otherwise known as Charlotte, for example. After being chased through the cult's HQ and the woods she finally cornered me in a clearing in the woods. I used everything I had against Charlotte, going through all the ammo and healing items I had diligently stacked up all while sliding and dodging out of the way of incoming attacks, but she just wouldn't go down. Finally, when I had nothing left, she got me. And then the realisation set in as a cutscene played out; I was never meant to win this fight.

This happened a couple of times throughout Hellraiser, an action set piece in which your actions didn't really matter. One segment felt like a poor man's COD zombies that saw me nailing planks of wood to the windows in a futile attempt to keep those pesky brain-eaters out. It's not my first rodeo so I was on it. But ultimately I chewed through all the ammo and other resources I had yet again. Soon after a flood of zombies invaded the small cabin I was in and pushed me into a corner where I was trapped by the horde's flailing arms.

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I actually managed to get out of that situation thanks to some well placed crouches but I didn't last much longer. Eventually one dropped from the rafters (don't ask me how he got there), and I crashed through the floor boards in another short cinematic. Ah, this was all part of the game's plan. It's fine for there to be an outline of how the action should play out, but when the guard rails are this obvious it can be suffocating.Why not make it all into a cinematic if my actions have so little consequence?

I may have even been able to excuse the strict script if killing enemies were satisfying enough for the journey to outweigh the destination. But the kills are just sort of okay. Enemies' torsos randomly detached from their legs when I threw a saw blade at their head, zombies fell to the floor as if playing dead only to then bite at your ankles, and fighting the guys in full suits of armour is far less epic than it sounds; you just have to hit them over and over with a blunt object.It's very tedious.

My favourite part of the action by far had to be using the genesis configuration box, an item that bestows the user with limited telekinesis. In fights you can use it to throw deadly items that are helpfully highlighted in blue, like nails or even fire. But this played less of a part than I would've liked with pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles carrying the brunt of the action.

Something's wrong

So the action isn't all there, but what about the horror? Well, unfortunately I didn't find Hellraiser scary at all. The jumpscares were predictable and I quickly learned that most of the time when a monster scuttled across a gap in the wall or stabbed the log I was crawling through, it was all just for show; it couldn't kill me and therefore wasn't scary.

You get haunted by a monster riddled with flowing veins stretching out of its body that looks so cool while in the Labyrinth but it never really amounts to anything, none of the horror in the Labyrinth does. Occasionally, the extra-dimensional sadistic cenobite Chatterer will chase you around the maze but he walks pretty slow so he was never much of a threat. At one point I literally ran circles around him while using the genesis configuration to solve a finicky puzzle.

I will admit, though, I may be slightly numb to jumpscares and horror at this point, so take this with a grain of salt, but while my tolerance may be higher than most, a well placed scare can still get through. Silent Hill: Townfall and Amnesia: The Bunker are just some recent examples that come to mind.

Wasted potential

It's all a bit of a shame because the look of Hellraiser: Revival is great. I loved all the guts and gore, and every single one of the major monsters looked so awful I couldn't tear myself away. Charlotte may have been an annoying boss fight, but it's been a long time since I saw a monster that was designed so brilliantly that I felt the odd mix of impressed and horrified.

The puzzles were another highlight. I found using the genesis configuration to solve them to be intuitive and rewarding. It actually had me wishing that this game was solely set in the Labyrinth. I think a stealth horror game where the protagonist has to sneak around the maze while solving puzzles would have been much more satisfying and scary. It could have also made the cenobites seem a bit more intimidating, because instead they came off as a bunch of kind of chill alien things who were just into some kinky stuff. They kept their word, helped guide you, and occasionally followed you around the maze.They seemed alright to me.

Ultimately, Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival was simply okay. It's not particularly innovative and the action isn't massively satisfying. But when you stack it up against the greats of the action horror genre like Resident Evil 4, The Last of Us, or even Alan Wake 2 its pitfalls become even more apparent. The gore is cool and all the BDSM is certainly eye-catching, but a fetch quest for the biggest dildo available isn't enough to bump this game up into a must-play for a fan of the genre; you can get better elsewhere.

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