Hellraiser: Revival Review — Glorious Gore, a Fair Price, and Too Many Bugs

Hellraiser: Revival is the rarest kind of licensed game: one that actually understands its source material. Saber Interactive's first-person action-horror launched October 8 at $39.99, and players love it — Steam ratings sit at Overwhelmingly Positive, around 94% positive. Critics are more divided, with Metacritic at 69 on PS5, 75 on PC, and 71 on Xbox Series X|S. In this Hellraiser: Revival review, I break down where the horror lands and where the polish falls short.

Hellraiser: Revival Review: The World Is the Star

You play Aidan, who uses the Genesis Configuration puzzle box to try to pull his girlfriend Sunny out of the hellscape. The story is serviceable horror pulp, but the world is the real draw. Saber has built a Labyrinth that feels plucked straight from Barker's imagination — flesh-and-stone architecture, impossible geometry, and Cenobites who carry real menace instead of just being bullet sponges.

Moment to moment, you're pushing through the Labyrinth's zones with a small arsenal of period-appropriate firearms and improvised tools. The Genesis Configuration isn't just set dressing — manipulating the box gates progression and triggers some of the game's best set pieces. Resource scarcity is tuned hard: ammo and crafting materials are deliberately tight, which keeps the horror tension alive even when the gunplay feels soft.

The big win is Pinhead. Voiced by Doug Bradley himself, he anchors the whole experience, and his presence elevates every encounter. The art direction and sound design do the heavy lifting elsewhere: this is a game that sounds as disgusting as it looks, in the best way. Body-horror spectacle lands constantly, and the pacing respects your time — no 40-hour bloat, which is exactly right for $39.99. Outlets like Console Creatures (90) and Xbox Nation (8.5/10) clearly responded to that same confidence.

Where It Stumbles: Bugs, Puzzles, and Stealth

The low end of the review spread is earned too. Hellraiser: Revival launched buggy, with performance hiccups and rough edges that a day-one patch didn't fully smooth out. Puzzles frustrate more than they satisfy — too many feel like they punish experimentation instead of rewarding it. And the forced stealth sections are the game's worst idea: Aidan is not built for sneaking, the detection logic feels inconsistent, and these stretches kill the momentum the action sequences build.

Gunplay is the other weak spot. Weapons lack clear feedback — hits don't register with the punch you'd expect from a game this committed to gore, and ammo economy is tight enough that every wasted shot stings. Boss fights suffer from poor telegraphing; more than once I died to an attack I couldn't have reasonably predicted. None of this is fatal, but it keeps the game from its obvious potential.

Should You Buy Hellraiser: Revival?

Yes, with a caveat. For horror fans this is an easy recommendation at $39.99 — no licensed horror game in years has committed this hard to its source material, and the atmosphere alone justifies the price. The Steam numbers say players agree: this is a game people are finishing and loving. But the bugs and the clumsy stealth mean you should go in expecting friction, and anyone on the fence can wait for a sale and a few more patches without missing much. This Hellraiser: Revival review lands at 7.5 — a faithful, grisly horror game that needed two more months of polish.

If you're weighing it against other recent horror, our Valor Mortis review covers a soulslike with sharper combat but a thinner world, Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is the gothic gold standard this year, and Ratatan proves horror-adjacent weirdness can still surprise.