This article contains descriptions of sexual themes and graphic violence. Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Rebirth It received ESRB Mature and PEGI 18 ratings and is intended for an adult audience.
I spent about twenty minutes with the upcoming survival horror game. Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Rebirth and in that short time I managed to witness a graphic sex scene (in which the demo opens cold, no less), the protagonist getting some nipples pierced, and the death of legions of leather-clad enemies who seemed to enjoy getting a little fatally pummeled. also a lot.
In other words, it's an absolutely bizarre game that revels in extreme violence, something you'll already know if you've seen the brutal new release date trailer.
Set 20 years after the start of the equally bloody cult classic. hellraiser horror movie series, Renaissance is a completely new story written in collaboration with the creator of the original franchise, Clive Barker, which seems to capture its essence perfectly.
welcome to the club
It follows protagonist Aiden Lynch, a gang member who stumbles upon the Genesis Configuration. This is a mysterious puzzle box that, unbeknownst to him, is somehow connected to the sinister dimension of the Cenobites, towering demonic creatures who enjoy inflicting otherworldly pain (or pleasure) on unsuspecting humans.
Naturally, his girlfriend Sunny's first instinct seems to have been to take him to the bedroom, where she accidentally summons the Cenobites to the real world while the couple was getting down and dirty. After a scene that establishes part of the premise, my preview begins with Aiden carefully exploring the interior of a labyrinthine BDSM club, its winding hallways filled with red velvet curtains and couches you just wouldn't pay me to touch.
It's not long before I start running into traditional staples of the genre: elaborate doors that require specific keys to open, safes that have me searching for codes hidden nearby, and puzzles that have me searching through my backpack to pick the right items to progress.
Although my time in the club was brief, there was a surprising amount of combat in what I played, at least more than I initially expected from a survival horror game. I faced rooms full of rabid cultists, all decked out in spiky fetish gear, predominantly switching between a pistol and blunt melee weapons.
The gunplay is decent, as you'd expect from a seasoned shooter developer like Saber Interactive, and each swing of my bat had a nice sense of weight to it, something that's rather awkwardly emphasized by the groans that occasionally escape enemies' lips just as a dull blow connects.
The Genesis Setup also has some powerful tricks up its sleeve, including allowing you to grab flames from open torches so you can hurl them and generate a deadly searing explosion. I soon find a shotgun and submachine gun as well, and realize that Aiden can perform an impressively agile slide with just a touch of the crouch button that helps you dodge incoming shots.
Just when I was really starting to rack up the kills, I was thrown on a quick walk through a nightmarish vision of Aiden's house, interspersed with scenes showing him doing the deed with Sunny and taking drugs before everything went haywire.
After a few turns, I approach what appears to be the bride's twisted corpse, gagged and impaled on spikes as blood runs from her closed eyes like tears and her organs spill onto the floor. Charming.
Add in my brief detour to a more puzzle-focused section set in the twisted world of Cenobyte, which had me further manipulating the magic cube in one hand to rotate rooms full of platforms, and I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how the entire game will play out.
Everything feels very hell collector, and this little display of depravity certainly left me eager to see to what extent Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Rebirth It will arrive on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC on October 8, 2026.
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