Hellraiser: Revival Terus Menjadi Horor Bertahan Hidup Aneh yang Tidak Sabar Saya Tidak Sabar

When I saw Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival at Gamescom 2025, I likened it to Condemned meets Resident Evil Village. The former for its brutal depiction of first-person combat, and the latter for its survival horror approach, leaning on the fantastical elements of its source material. That slice of Revival that I played, which was the beginning moments of this sexually-driven violent romp, focused on sneaking around the leather strapped foes of the Scarlet Church, gathering resources, and picking fights carefully in order to survive. At the time, the game wasn't rated yet, and the preview event also offered barf bags in case you ever got queasy.

I liked what I played a lot, and you can hear all about those impressions here. Fast forward to Summer Game Fest 2026, and I got to play another 30 minutes of the game, this time at a later stage in its campaign, and my feelings remain the same: it's grotesque, it's raunchy, and it continues to be one of my most anticipated survival horrors of the year.

Check out the video below where I expand on my time with the Lament Configuration (the iconic puzzle cube) and its role in combat and puzzle solving. I also talk about how the game handles player expression, whether you choose to be stealthy or go guns blazing, and how Revival has expanded into something that's more than just a combination of Condemned and Resident Evil Village. No barf bags, though.

A few things have changed since playing it at Gamescom. For starters, the game has a rating. Mature 18+. And, woof, I have no idea how they're getting away with it. Speaking to the developers at Gamescom, its lack of an ESRB was a hot topic. The game features full frontal genitalia, with naked bodies (alive and dead) scattered around. Some may even have limbs still! In Hellraiser fashion, it is a sexually-charged experience, with themes of pleasure and pain plastered on everything: on the walls, in the cutscenes, its enemies, and in the notes you find. Anything less than an Adult Only rating seemed inevitable. Yet, here we are. In fact, the developers told us that it managed to receive an M rating without cutting anything. Oh how things have come a long way since the days of Night Trap, Phantastmagoria, Doom, and Harvester.

What impressed me the most during my most recent hands-on session was the variety of gameplay on display. In a tight arena, I was shown multiple pathways in order to engage with enemies how I wanted, from stealthing around threats entirely to luring foes into carefully laid bear traps. There were notes to find in order to discover hints for how to bypass keypads or find hidden caches of resources. Back when I first played the game at Gamescom, Revival felt like a classic survival horror, but this hands-on preview alluded to, albeit lite, immersive sim elements. I left even more eager to play the full game, knowing I still hadn't seen many of its more fantastical and horrific enemies, or even much of the Cenobytes themselves.

I'll have to wait till later this year to come face-to-face with them, and, most of all, fingers crossed that Motorhead's Hellraiser has a needle drop somewhere in the mix. It has to, right? Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival is expected to release sometime in 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.