Hellraiser Revival review – Angels, demons, and everything in between

Lauren spends most of her time dead in League of Legends, or equally as dead in Valorant. Don’t ask her about Vampire: The Masquerade.

Published: October 8, 2026

There’s a moment in Hellraiser Revival where you’re trapped in a tight, cubic room with no doors. The eerie sound of footsteps reverberates off the walls; it’s deafening in this tight little box, and it’s getting consistently louder. Yet, for barely a few seconds, the footsteps stop; for me, it seems like a lifetime. I feel myself clutching my mouse for some sort of moral support; I know something is coming, but I can’t look away. The silence is crushing: there’s just the ragged whispers of my breath, and the sound of my mind playing tricks on me. This moment – short as it is – encapsulates everything that Hellraiser Revival does well: it toys with you like a lion with a mouse, and it knows that, secretly, you like it.

Hellraiser Revival casts you as Aidan, whose girlfriend, Sunny, has been inducted into the Cenobites’ beastly Labyrinth after a particularly raucous evening that involves myriad needles, chains, and the Genesis Configuration (colloquially known as ‘The Box’). After being abducted by the Cult of the Scarlet Church – an order dedicated to worshipping the Cenobites – Aidan hears Sunny calling to him from The Labyrinth, and chooses to wade knee-deep into the fray to try and bring her back. A mysterious deal with Pinhead later, the bargain is set: the Cenobites will return Sunny to Aidan, but at the cost of his own flesh. What that means is relatively unclear, but it probably isn’t anything good.

I’m going to take a pause here to warn you that Hellraiser Revival isn’t for the faint of heart. It deals with serious, real-life themes including sadomasochism and BDSM, abuse, substance abuse, and extreme violence. Some of the relationships in the game are deeply unhealthy, including Aidan and Sunny’s. If these are themes that distress you, that’s entirely okay. But it may mean that Hellraiser Revival – and this review by proxy – aren’t quite for you. Reader discretion is advised.

Let’s start at the very beginning. This is a Hellraiser story, and as such, it has to fit with the overarching feel of the movies and Clive Barker’s 1986 novella, The Hellbound Heart. That, in itself, is no easy task; there’s deep, well-established lore here, and a passionate fandom that’ll be quick to spot any errors. Thankfully, Saber has done an outstanding job of bringing the world and its characters to vivid, unchained life.

The cinematics are absolutely gorgeous. In many ways, Hellraiser Revival feels like a playable movie; I’d happily sit back with some popcorn and watch Aidan and Sunny’s tale of woe unfold (literally) in front of my eyes for an evening. I don’t know what Cenobite tech Saber has implemented here, but its models look amazing, and the toggleable ’80s movie filter is a nice touch.

That, of course, extends to the Cenobites themselves. Anytime Pinhead is on-screen, he dominates. I found myself unable to take my eyes off of him; the way that he talks; his stiffened stature and almost ethereal, angelic feel. He perfectly encapsulates the phrase ‘demons to some, angels to others;’ he’s an odd juxtaposition of foul and regal that leaves you both unsettled and intrigued. Even when the focus is Sunny or Aidan, or any of the other Cenobites for that matter, your eyes are on Pinhead – as, in many ways, they should be.

I do like the consistent interactions with all of the Cenobite cast, however. Fallen (the female Cenobite, also sometimes known as Deep Throat) weaves her way into the plotline nicely, and the chase sequences with Chatter are genuinely frightening. I wish we’d maybe seen a little more of Butterball, but honestly, he’s creepy as hell, and I’m kind of okay with not having to deal with him.

More generally, however, the game’s characterization is absolutely stellar. I took an immediate dislike to Sunny, and as the story progressed and we learned more about her and Aidan’s relationship, I grew to dislike her even more. Aidan himself isn’t just the vaguely bumbling horror himbo – instead, we see him slowly grow to make his own choices, for better or for worse.

Perhaps the most interesting characters, however, are the Cult themselves. In some ways they’re vaguely reminiscent of Far Cry 5’s Seed family, with top dog Colin Marlowe reflecting the maddened, psychotic feel of Joseph Seed, while Bruno Keller, Charlotte Strauss, and Sister of Mercy all act as his ‘generals.’ Marlowe steals the show whenever he’s on screen, but I have to shout out Keller, whose odd, ‘unhinged artist’ personality and screechy outbursts consistently left me both uncomfortable and unsure of what he was going to do next. It’d be easy to have the Cult blend into one, but each member feels established in their own right, and terrifying to boot.

These characters all work together to create a world that you actually find yourself caring about. While ‘the quest to save Sunny’ initially rang a little hollow with me, Saber’s narrative team has done a fantastic job of fitting all of these characters into one cohesive storyline that often tugs on heartstrings (thankfully not literally) and explores themes that we see in real life. Placing Sunny as the abuser versus Aidan shines light on an often-forgotten male relationship experience, which is cleverly juxtaposed by Marlowe’s treatment of the Sister of Mercy – the concluding part of that boss fight genuinely made me well up.

It means that Hellraiser Revival becomes more than just a series of jumpscares – yes, those are in there, but they’re used cleverly and to great effect. Instead, it’s an almost human story, despite the hyper violence, over-the-top BDSM, and otherworldly themes – something that, in many ways, makes it even scarier.

That odd sense of humanity is reflected in the game’s environments, too. Action takes place on two fronts: on ‘Earth’ and in The Labyrinth. While the latter portions aren’t much to write home about – they largely consist of the usual sewers, laboratories, outdoor sequences, and clubs – The Labyrinth itself is brought to life in stunning detail.

There’s a real sense of oppression; corridors move and shift to funnel you to your destination, and during the Chatter chase sequences, you do find yourself blindly running down passageways and hoping for the best. Sometimes that works – you get spat out where you want to be. Other times, you run slap bang into him, cueing a particularly brutal death animation. It puts you in the shoes of a horror movie protagonist, which is exactly what you are.

Those sequences are made more difficult when you have to use the Genesis Configuration to move floating elements out of your path or, alternatively, build new routes forward using the objects around you. While the chases and consistent panicked running make you feel helpless, the Box gives you an odd sense of power – you can literally bend the Labyrinth to your will, just as the Cenobites do. There’s a little rush of excitement every time you use it, and an interesting sense of wrestling back some form of control in a world where you are, indeed, very much not in control.

All of this is amplified by spectacular sound design. There’s almost an overwhelming sense of ‘white noise,’ with eerie ‘waow, waows’ echoing off of stone walls, and the rampant scuttling of what you presume are insects. That, once more, builds on the idea of deafening silence: the constant sound makes you feel like you’re never truly alone; that every move you make is being analyzed and observed. There’s a heaviness to the Labyrinth that you never quite shake off.

Most of the actual combat, however, takes place in the real world. While I won’t spoil exact plot points here, in order to save Sunny, you have to take out high-ranking members of the Scarlet Church. You start out with little to no weapons, but as you progress, you’re followed around by the Church’s resident enigma, Zora Beckett, who sells you guns, med kits, and various kernels of wisdom. Man, I wish I had a voice like her.

It’s clear from the onset that combat is going to be brutal. To retrieve a knife early in the game, you have to remove it from what you believe to be a corpse hanging upside down. Turns out, said corpse is alive, and he really, really likes being stabbed and, consequently, unstabbed. You’ll hack your way through hundreds of cult members, stealthily carving into their sides, or popping heads with Zora’s rifles as the game progresses. It’s messy, chaotic, and made vaguely uncomfortable by how much your foes seem to enjoy being dismembered.

Even seemingly mundane things like increasing your health or saving the game require you to shove your hand into weird, pain-inducing contraptions, often prompting a “why did that feel kind of good?” from Aidan. Procuring new items and powerups requires violence at every turn; it’s a constant, yet clever reminder of what you’ve gotten yourself into, and who you’re dealing with.

Around the midway point, however, the female Cenobite teaches you to use the Genesis Configuration as a weapon. You can pick up various sharp objects using telekinesis, including sawblades and shears, then later in the game you can use it to absorb and shoot fire. Lobbing sharp objects at enemies chops off different limbs depending on where you aim, and if your foes line up in a queue, whatever you’re tossing cleaves through them. I also noticed that when you summon the object, it’ll damage any foes it passes through on its way to get to you. It’s a nice touch, and scoring a multi-enemy collateral never gets old.

The Box, however, is powered by Suffering, so you need to inflict pain on others to charge it up. It’s a fun metaphor – cause pain to cause more pain – and I found that it tempered how overpowered the Box could be. I found myself running out of resources semi-frequently, meaning I had to get into the nitty-gritty, and couldn’t just spam-toss sawblades from afar.

Perhaps my only real issue with the combat is that you can banish creatures to the Labyrinth to sap up some health and Suffering. Enemies that are banishable are outlined in blue, but I found that sometimes the prompt only appeared at certain angles, and that if I accidentally hit them once when they were in that state, they’d die and the banish would no longer work. I’ll actively admit that I spent most of Hellrasier Revival in a vague state of panic, so I did keep accidentally killing enemies that I wanted to banish. There’s some user error here for sure (not helped by my ever-present tremor), but I think making the prompt a little more responsive would have helped overcome that hurdle.

Hellraiser is all about its boss fights, however. Some of them are more cinematic than others, but overall they all provide something unique. An early fight against one of Marlowe’s deputies, for example (I won’t tell you who), feels incredibly reminiscent of the first Tzimisce fight in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, while the latter showdown with Charlotte forces you to use the Box and its newfound flamethrower abilities as your primary weapon. They each test different things, and force you to utilize all of the different tools in your arsenal.

There are a couple of fights that felt like they went on a little too long – the Sister of Mercy sometimes felt a little like she was just a bullet sponge, and the third or fourth run-in with a recurring slug-like, corpse-fed monster gets a little old. Generally, that’s indicative of the pacing towards the latter half of the game, which, while still enjoyable, feels a little rushed in some places, but bloated in others. Fewer slug enemy fights and a little more time spent on the game’s final boss would have gone a long way to making the latter feel more conclusive and bombastic, but Revival is still fun, and the narrative is strong enough to carry you through.

I’ll also note here that I didn’t really encounter any performance issues. I did get stuck between a couple of bodies during one combat sequence, prompting me to reload the save, but there were never any major issues with frame rate. If anything, Hellraiser is one of the more polished games I’ve played in a long time.

What I really love about Hellraiser Revival is that I simply didn’t see it coming. It’s really easy to attach an IP to a middling game and call it a day, hoping that the hype around the brand will make mediocrity easier to forgive. What Saber has created here, however, is the perfect tribute to the films and novella, while simultaneously making a genuinely unique horror game. Revival is more than a cheap homage; it’s a standalone, well-crafted experience.

But perhaps what’s more important is what Hellraiser Revival made me feel. There are jumpscares here; there was fear when the Chatter chased me, and anxiety when I was politely asked to spank a girl in a gimp suit at a sex club. Putting all of that risquéness aside, however, Revival made me feel uncomfortable; it made me face some of my own triggers head-on. As a result, I walk away feeling more complete, and in a better position to deal with those thoughts and feelings whenever they may appear. Very few games have left me feeling that introspective.

Perhaps the Cenobites are angels; then. There’s a lesson there, I reckon. But either way, Hellraiser Revival will leave you feeling some kind of way, and in my mind, that’s proof of a good game.

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