Since the release of Dead by Daylight in 2016, the landscape of horror video games, particularly IP adaptations, has existed in the long shadow of the asymmetric multiplayer game. One killer, four survivors – it’s a formula that has been applied to Friday the 13th, The Evil Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween most recently, and now even Saw is joining the party. And while there’s no denying that there’s a certain charm to hacking up your friends as Jason Voorhees or the Killer Klowns From Outer Space (yes, they have one too), it is a shame that so many varied and eclectic horror franchises have all been forced to fit into such a stale recipe, like a square peg forced into a round hole.
When Hellraiser: Revival was first announced last year, fans waited with bated breath to see exactly what kind of game it would end up being – after all, Pinhead’s first and last appearance in a video game was in Dead by Daylight. But with each trailer and gameplay clip, it became increasingly clear that Revival was hearkening back to the peaks of the survival horror experience, combining the franchise’s grotesque, erotic texture with a gameplay loop not all that dissimilar to Resident Evil or Silent Hill. And while it’s not as groundbreaking as those two instant classics, Hellraiser: Revival is still maybe the best licensed horror game since Alien: Isolation, because both are nerve-shredding single-player nightmares that shower their respective franchises with love while also daring to do something new with the sandbox.
