This article contains descriptions of sexual themes and graphic violence. Hellraiser by Clive Barker: cover has received the ESRB Mature and PEGI 18 ratings and is intended for an adult audience.
I spent about twenty minutes with the upcoming survival horror game Hellraiser by Clive Barker: cover and in that brief time I managed to witness a graphic sex scene (which the demo opens cold to, no less), the protagonist piercing a few nipples, and the death of legions of leather-clad enemies who seemed to enjoy being a bit mortally bludgeoned. Also a lot.
In other words, it’s a decidedly bizarre game that relishes extreme violence, something you’ll already know if you’ve caught a glimpse of the brutal trailer for the new release date.
Set 20 years after the debut of the equally bloody cult classic Hellraiser horror film series, Awakening is a brand new story written in collaboration with original franchise creator Clive Barker that seems to perfectly capture its essence.
Welcome to the club
It follows protagonist Aiden Lynch, a gang member who stumbles upon the Genesis setup. It’s 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 summoned the Cenobites into the real world while the two were getting down and dirty. After a cutscene that lays out some 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 couldn’t pay me to touch.
It doesn’t take long before I start running into classics of the traditional genre: elaborate doors that require specific keys to unlock, safes that have me searching for hidden codes nearby, and puzzles that have me fishing around in my backpack to choose the right items in order to progress.
Although my time at 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 dressed in spiked fetish gear, alternating mostly between 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 uncomfortably underlined by the groans that sometimes escape enemies’ lips just as a thud connects.
The Genesis setup also has some powerful tricks up its sleeve, including allowing you to grab the flames from open torches so you can throw them for a deadly steamy blast. I soon also find a shotgun and a submachine gun, and realize that Aiden can pull off an incredibly nimble slide just by pressing the crouch button that helps you dodge incoming fire.
Just when I really started to rack up the kills, I was thrust into a fast walk through a nightmarish vision of Aiden’s house, interspersed with cutscenes showing him doing the deed with Sunny and doing drugs before it all hit the fan.
After a few turns, I come upon what looks like the girlfriend’s twisted corpse, gagged and impaled on spikes as blood pours from her closed eyes like tears and her organs spill onto the floor. Delicious.
Add to that my brief diversion to a more puzzle-focused section set in the twisted world of Cenobyte, which had me manipulating the magic cube in one hand more in order to rotate pieces full of platforms, and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how the whole game will play out.
This all seems very Hellraiser, and this little taste of depravity certainly left me eager to see how far Hellraiser by Clive Barker: cover will come to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC on October 8, 2026.
Follow TechRadar on Google News And add us as your favorite source to get our news, reviews and expert opinions in your feeds.
