Are the Critics Wrong About Hellraiser: Revival?
Nobody agrees on Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, and that is the most interesting thing about it. Saber Interactive's first-person horror game came out last Thursday, October 8, on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC at $39.99. At launch the reviews spanned almost the whole scale: Insider Gaming gave it 9/10 and called it "an unexpected gem in almost every way," while Game Informer landed on 4.5/10 and "a halfway respectable take on the popular horror franchise." Metacritic sits at 69 on PS5 and 74 on PC and Xbox.
Players have already picked a side. By Sunday, October 11, the Steam page showed 2,666 positive reviews out of 2,803, about 95 percent, which Steam labels Overwhelmingly Positive. That gap between the press and the paying audience is worth taking seriously, because both camps are describing the same game.
What the critics are right about
The combat is the weak joint. GamesRadar's Oscar Taylor-Kent, who scored it 4 out of 5, still writes that the core combat "is fairly basic," that enemies "take hits until eventually keeling over on the spot," and that the guns "feel like peashooters." IGN's 6/10 lands on the same complaint from the other direction: one thing is nailed, and "little else" is nailed "to anywhere near the same extent." Push Square called it "a frustrating experience." If you play horror games for the feel of a shotgun, those warnings are fair and you should listen to them.
What they are underrating
The one thing it nails is Hellraiser. Doug Bradley is back as Pinhead, and the game treats the Cenobites the way Clive Barker wrote them: as a cold, bored third party with their own rules, rather than slasher villains. You play Aidan, who uses the Genesis Configuration, a puzzle box, to try to pull his girlfriend Sunny out of the Labyrinth, and the box is also your weapon. GamesRadar describes flinging saws, throwing flame and the occasional chance to command the series' hook-chains, and it calls this "one of the most explicit games I've ever played." Its reviewer finished in about 8.5 hours.
What the puzzle box can do
The verdict
We side with Steam. Revival is the spooky-season pick for anyone who came to it for Barker: the fans of the films, readers of The Hellbound Heart, and horror players who forgive clumsy fights when the atmosphere and the monster earn it. GamesRadar calls it "a great continuation of Hellraiser across any medium," and for that audience the critics' median score undersells it. If you want polished, weighty combat first and mythology second, skip it, because this game will spend eight hours testing your patience in exactly that department.
Watch these first
Two films, in order. Start with Hellraiser (1987), where a puzzle box summons the Cenobites and Bradley's Pinhead first appears. Follow it with Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), which sends Kirsty into Hell itself on a rescue, the same errand Aidan runs in the game. Then open the box yourself.
