{"id":1608255,"date":"2026-06-16T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/CnM3pjD6nduhC5SsxQ8wAi"},"modified":"2026-06-16T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T12:00:00","slug":"i-already-like-the-new-survival-horror-hellraiser-game-more-than-the-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/i-already-like-the-new-survival-horror-hellraiser-game-more-than-the-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"I already like the new survival horror Hellraiser game more than the movie"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I don’t know exactly when it changed\u2014when I<\/em> changed\u2014but over the last half decade, I realized I really like horror movies. Before that I thought<\/em> I mostly liked movies that leaned harder on suspense than jumpscares, or horror comedies that poked fun at the dumb slashers of the ’80s. But it turned out my love of Scream and Cabin in the Woods was just a gateway drug to unabashed enthusiasm for the camp, costuming, and incredible practical effects of a Nightmare on Elm Street or Scanners or Exorcist. I now think Possession is right up there with The Thing as one of the best films ever made and oh my god, why did I wait so long to watch The Blob? Every October I put a few more cult classics on my watch list and find a new horror favorite I never thought I would love but absolutely do.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Hellraiser sucks.<\/p>\n

Terrible movie! Amazing, flesh-tearing makeup and special effects. Those Cenobite designs? Immaculate nightmare stuff. But every scene in which characters talk is more painful than the kinky BDSM stuff the hell dimension creatures get up to. “This is a movie without wit, style or reason, and the true horror is that actors were made to portray, and technicians to realize, its bankruptcy of imagination,” Roger Ebert wrote about it at the time in a withering review<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a noted lover of videogames, I’m sure Ebert would agree with me that Saber’s singleplayer Hellraiser: Revival is already better than the film the second it hands you a shotgun.<\/p>\n

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\"Hellraiser:<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Saber Interactive)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had a great time playing about 40 minutes of Hellraiser: Revival, most of which I spent thinking “Oh this game is like, nasty<\/em> nasty.” The level I explored, set in a cult’s fetish club, was littered with BDSM flyers and sex toys, bear traps (the metal kind), and cultists in kink suits that doubled as effective armor plating. I chopped one’s arm off with a Jagged Messer, a giant machete the in-game tooltip notes is “a perfect weapon for disembowelment.” Another kept knocking me off my feet with shotgun blasts until I used the magical capabilities of the Lament Configuration, Hellraiser’s iconic puzzle box thingamajig, to suck the fire essence out of a lit brazier and blast it out like a flamethrower.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to exaggerate Hellraiser: Revival’s complexity by calling it an immersive sim, but at a surface level it feels very BioShock. There are tight environments littered with details to look at, drawers to open for ammo and other scraps, audio diaries scattered about, light puzzles gate your progress from room to room, and the Lament Configuration’s ability to temporarily take on certain powers doesn’t feel too far off from BioShock’s elemental plasmids. Unlike BioShock, however, Hellraiser is full of ball gags, vibrators, and what is definitely the first time I’ve seen the words “face fuck” written in a videogame. <\/p>\n

It’s absolutely not shying away from the horniness of Clive Barker’s film. Thankfully, the game does not take place almost entirely in an attic: after shooting my way through the cultists I got teleported to the hell dimension, where I ran through spooky transforming corridors until I could use the Lament Configuration to rotate the walls and floors of an Escher-like room to arrange a walkway to a pedestal awaiting the cursed cube. What followed was one of the best button prompts I’ve seen in years: Press F to Increase Suffering. <\/p>\n

Maximum Suffering Increased? I’m not sure what more you could hope for from a horror game, really.<\/p>\n