Just a few days before heading out to Gamescom, I decided to watch Clive Barker’s Hellraiser for the first time. It’s a cult-classic 80s horror film filled with brilliant, gory practical effects and a niche sadomasochistic spin in its narrative.
It wasn’t just because it was a hole in my film C.V though; it’s because a few days later I’d be playing Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, which, to the shock of many, is a first-person single-player narrative game, clocking in at about 10 hours in length. That was music to my ears.
The portion of the game I played in a Saber Interactive booth took up about 40 minutes and was split into two distinct halves. The first saw me explore the base of this sex cult that our protagonist has previously infiltrated, trying to find keys to unlock a few locked doors – à la Resident Evil.
With a selection of guns and the magical Genesis Configuration in hand, the first thing that really caught me by surprise was the heft to combat. Ammunition is limited, and melee weapons all have durability that runs out really quickly. Then some of these freaky enemies, adorned by skin-tight gimp suits and spiked armour, were a little tougher to deal with than expected.
For example, armoured enemies are resistant to bladed melee weapons, so I’d often need to expend my few shotgun shells on those, while saving the slicing for the more exposed enemies. And lemme tell you, those guns have some kick. There was a real violent and meaty feel to the guns that I loved.
I also played the game on the hard difficulty, with four options available depending on your level of comfort with FPS games. Hellraiser difficulty, the hardest, has limited save points, which makes things a lot tougher, and the Narrative Director Antony de Fault claimed that mode might actually be “too hard”.
But in hard mode, I had a pretty decent challenge in combat, as enemies aggressively approach and seemingly attack at the same time too. I actually died a couple of times before finally learning how to quickly switch between hacking away with my blade, blasting a few select shots, and throwing sharp projectiles and even balls of fire at enemies with the Genesis Configuration.
It certainly felt like it had the legs to keep things interesting combat-wise, and it all had a great polished feel to it.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pushsquare.com/previews/hellraiser-revival-was-my-biggest-surprise-of-gamescom
