Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, bringing a BDSM-soaked survival horror experience that adapts the 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart.
Taking place 20 years after Barker’s first adaptation in the original film, the survival horror adventure puts players in the shoes of Aidan Lynch, who is living the fast life with his girlfriend Sunny. Aidan is an addict in love, a man from a wealthy family with a penchant for self-destruction rather than some trained agent, making his struggle as someone simply human all the more grounded.
Saber Interactive Adapts The Hellbound Heart With Explicit BDSM Imagery
The title leans heavily into the source material’s obsession with pleasure, pain, passion, and sin, embracing its source with total commitment and refusing to shy away from get filthy about it. Early in the journey, Aidan combs sticky floors in an in-game sex club for crafting supplies and coins, exploring lurid environments filled with normal patrons just looking for a good time alongside cultists who have gone off the deep end. The Cenobites act as arbiters and observers to depravity rather than participants, serving as angels to some and demons to others.
Upon returning to the world of the living, Aidan is captured by a faction of Scarlet Church fanatics headed by Marlowe—a fanatical, magnetic personality devoted to the Cenobites. Ascending through crimson sanctums, offal-strewn tunnels, and assorted untidy bedrooms, Aidan encounters dismembered and flayed bodies on display in Marlowe’s basement next to an oil canvas, turning the horrifying sights from hellish to ethereal.
Resident Evil and BioShock Inspirations Shape the Labyrinth and Combat
Mechanically, the adventure borrows heavily from established first-person survival horror blueprints like Capcom’s Resident Evil, particularly the Ethan Winters entries. Players pick up blades that deteriorate after a few swings, craft ammo for a pistol, and master the basics of hiding in the gloom while managing inventory space. The combat mechanics require a certain amount of precision, and when a combat level becomes hard to pass, switching to stealth-based takedowns alters the flow.
Combat relies on stock standard survival horror shooting, using weapons that seem to empty their ammo in seconds while players furiously scan their surroundings for pointy objects. Powered abilities inspired by BioShock draw from a suffering meter that requires constant replenishment by stunning foes and executing a brutal finisher where the demonic Rubik’s Cube is shoved into their mouths before nine-inch nails are fired straight into their brains. Executing an opponent with a finisher sends their spirit back to the Labyrinth and yields Suffering, a resource utilized for box abilities like telekinesis—allowing users to pull sawblades and steel pins from the environment to hurl at leather-clad cultists—and pyrokinesis, which draws fire from lamps to shoot at foes.
Critics Split Over Frustrating Boss Fights and Combat Jank
While the atmospheric world, faithful adaptation of Clive Barker’s universe, and Pinhead—voiced by the original actor—earned praise, the gameplay drew mixed reactions for its frustrating mixed bag of ideas. Reviewers highlighted uninspired enemy behavior, a severe lack of resources where collected scraps do not align with the number of enemies and bosses thrown your way, and occasional bugs like enemies glitching through walls and audio dropping out during boss fights.
Platforms show a notable divergence in review aggregation scores. The PlayStation 5 version sits at a Metacritic score of 69, while the PC and Xbox versions are both sitting on 74, alongside individual publication scores such as IGN awarding a 6/10.
Fans Hunt Easter Eggs in the Lament Configuration
Beyond the core campaign, eagle-eyed horror fans combing through the Lament Configuration have spotted 13 hidden references and easter eggs.
Available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (via Steam), the title takes roughly eight hours to complete according to the developers. Finishing the story simply boots players out to the main menu with nothing extra to reward them for completing its narrative.
A copy of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival was provided for review by Saber Interactive.
