Such Sights Indeed...

Is there another horror franchise that’s been done as dirty as Hellraiser over the years? I struggle to think of one. Sure, basically every major ‘80s slasher series had their fair share of crappy sequels or reboots, but even the worst of those you can think of probably doesn’t hold a candle in terms of awfulness to the absolute bastardizations we received as Pinhead and the rest of the Cenobites were coldly shoehorned into random spec scripts for projects that released straight to video without any input from their original creator. The immense potential of the property has been squandered for literal decades by companies who were churning out straight garbage solely to hold onto the rights to something they clearly had no intention of ever doing anything worthwhile with.

That’s a not insignificant part of what makes Revival so special. It took 39 trips around the sun and a switch to a completely different medium, but we have at long last finally gotten a worthy follow-up to the classic 1987 movie that’s always felt to me like a unique mix of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Saw, and (obviously) sadomasochistic fetishism. I might even like it more than that first film.

The devs at Saber Interactive have crafted an amazing ride of haunted house style thrills, exhilarating chase sequences, and a variety of fun one-off scenarios that occasionally pay homage to other genre greats such as Evil Dead or Silent Hill whilst simultaneously causing this to be the most phenomenally paced adventure I’ve touched in what feels like forever. All of which is held together by tried-and-true, first-person survival-horror sneaking, combat, and puzzle solving that can stand proudly alongside the best of them. Yes, this is an entirely single-player experience. A fact that led to it getting quite a bit of buzz when it was first announced.

As much as we all love complaining about how so many of The Hell Priest’s contemporaries have been turned into asymmetrical multiplayer titles however, I think this game reveals just how difficult it would be for a lot of them to get similar treatment. It might be relatively easy for the likes of Freddy Krueger due to his ability to conjure up all sorts of monstrosities in people’s dreams, but how the heck do you come up with other enemies for players to regularly contend with that would make sense in offerings centered around Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers when they are basically the sole threats in their cinematic counterparts? I suppose the obvious choice would be to create power fantasies where you control whichever nigh-unkillable iconic villain and go on a rampage, but that arguably wouldn’t be as engaging as the alternative.

A big reason these extra-dimensional beings were able to pull it off so successfully—on top of always sort of acting as background forces who manipulate events behind the scenes in the vast majority of their stories—was thanks to a healthy amount of involvement from Clive Barker himself. The multitalented author, artist, and filmmaker helped the Saber crew ensure that their vision remained faithful to and captured the true essence of what he created with that onscreen adaptation of his own 1986 novella. The result is a surprisingly entertaining and, dare I say, gripping tale with a compelling cast that not only introduces a new faction with foes you can actually fight, but provides a deeper exploration of and believable expansion upon the lore that was introduced in Hellbound that I would love to see taken further in a sequel.

The real star of the show though may be everything that’s going on visually. With exception to the somewhat out-of-place looking human character models that give the impression of having been made with MetaHuman creator (especially the protagonist) and whose lip syncing often doesn’t match what they’re saying, the graphics are gorgeous. Yet, the sights they’re bringing to life are what’s truly noteworthy. From the haunting, unnatural beauty of “The Labyrinth” the Cenobites call home to the meticulously decorated BDSM clubs and cult leader mansions, nearly everywhere you turn there’s always something interesting to see that feels ripped straight from the mind of the man who wrote The Damnation Game. Essentially meaning all of it is extremely twisted, otherworldly, macabre, or sexual in nature. It honestly blows my mind a little that a package this no-holds-barred in its approach has come out uncensored on consoles—Switch 2 included!—rather than being solely some PC exclusive people feel they need to hide in their Steam libraries from judgmental turds.

This is exactly the type of package the infamous Madmind Studio repeatedly tried and failed to deliver. Although, while this succeeds in every area they continuously came up short in, it still won’t appeal to everybody. I’ve read plenty of criticism regarding how strict the resource economy is. Yes, ammo/health packs are scarce, your inventory space is incredibly limited, you need to carefully scour environments for items hiding in not obvious places, must make smart decisions regarding what you craft or buy at the shop, and boss battles seem specifically designed to completely burn through your meager stash of supplies (I literally beat the final one with the very last bullet in my possession). So if you’re a member of the crowd that’s concerningly beginning to find any survival-horror offering that doesn’t let you steamroll monsters à la Leon Kennedy in Requiem too inconvenient these days, well, then this won’t be for you. Personally, I was only bothered by how flimsy the melee weapons are as they break rather stupidly fast.

Whatever other flaws or shortcomings that might be encountered here stem from this being an at times clearly lower-budget production. Because of that and the unapologetically graphic adult content near-constantly on display, I also wouldn’t recommend this to those who demand absolute perfection or the easily-offended pearl clutchers out there (you know who you are) either. The explorers in the further regions of experience meanwhile? Oh yeah, you’ll want to grab this as soon as you can. This is easily among the best, if not THE best, Hellraiser works to date and a total steal at $39.99. Shoot, even its deluxe edition that comes with a prequel novella you currently can’t get anywhere else is the same price as SH: Townfall’s standard version, making this one of 2026’s greatest bargains.

9.2/10