《Hellraiser: Revival》的批评并不新鲜，一款完美老游戏可证明

There is a current split between critic reviews and audience reactions to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, with fans rating the survival horror game highly, while critics have not felt quite the same. The critical score of the official Hellraiser game from Saber Interactive is 69 of 100, while the user score is somewhere closer to 8.5 out of 10, marking a big divide between opinions. For the most part, this is due to a large amount of critics disliking Hellraiser: Revival‘s approach to violence and sensuality, two topics that reflect how other games have been rated poorly in the past.

There’s no denying that the Hellraiser franchise has been somewhat contentious ever since it debuted in the horror scene, as its themes surround extreme blood and gory violence mixed with ideas of often explicit pleasure. It only makes sense that Hellraiser: Revival draw the same controversy, as developer Saber Interactive has made the game a very accurate representation of the series’ topics within a brand-new story. However, the decrying of such “inhumane” violence and sexual themes in this Hellraiser work is not something games haven’t experienced before, with many titles being heavily criticized for their use of taboo materials.

Manhunt Was by Far the Most Controversial Game Before Hellraiser Merely Took Inspiration From Its Source Material

Rockstar Games, the developers behind the also controversial Grand Theft Auto series, got into a lot of hot water similar to Hellraiser: Revival through the release of the game called Manhunt. This 2003 survival horror stealth action game had players embody a serial killer who could murder victims in increasingly extreme ways, often through incredibly violent means. Although killing characters in a game was never a new concept by the time Manhunt came out, it was the freedom players had in staging their kills that made the game become a big talking point. Instead of just shooting someone, you could maim, torture, or dismember targets in whatever way you chose, creating a twisted sense of creativity in the process.

Needless to say, Manhunt drew tons of ire from critics in ways that hadn’t been seen in gaming since the original Mortal Kombat from 1992. The brutality of the title was something that got many to try and ban the game outright, with its violence being labeled as “depraved” and too grotesque for any player to be engaging with. This draws a big comparison to how Hellraiser: Revival is being treated by some audiences now, who are not only criticizing the game’s hyper violent tones, but also taking those complaints a step further by talking about the game’s blatant sensual content too.

While Manhunt wasn’t known for addressing the same “pain and pleasure” themes as the Hellraiser movies and other media have, it does share the same gameplay traits as Saber Interactive’s latest title. Both Hellraiser Revival and Manhunt are steeped in survival horror that puts you up close and personal with the violence on display, with neither game avoiding the depiction of extreme events through any sort of censorship. For that reason alone, playing these games and showing events within them can get you banned on sites like YouTube or Twitch, a fact that is leading to some frustration with fans who embrace those elements of titles like these.

Hellraiser: Revival’s Public Criticisms Help the Game Stand out Just Like the Movies

Many of the actual low scores for Hellraiser: Revival are about the game’s slightly rushed story or a lack of interest in some gameplay ideas that didn’t quite hit for some reviewers. If you were just listening to the general public, though, you would think the game was in the same realm as something like Manhunt, with its blatant depictions of violence merging with sexuality being something grotesque and unappealing. This is honestly reflective of the Hellraiser movies in general, with their body horror often leading people to denounce the content within them as something akin to a snuff film. Again, comparisons to Manhunt are apt here, as the artistry behind that game is often lost by those who simplify it to being senseless violence for the sake of it.

Much like Manhunt, Hellraiser: Revival has lots of survival horror creativity within it, from the powers players can wield to how it weaves puzzles into the intense situations it crafts. If anything, the criticisms here will likely draw in more players to Hellraiser: Revival, in the same way they did for Manhunt when its controversies reached their peak. Even people who aren’t fans of the Hellraiser IP might want to try Hellraiser: Revival for how unfiltered it is compared to other survival horror games, which can sanitize their formula into simple jump scares without any substance. The disturbing environments in Hellraiser: Revival make them more interesting because their explicit, not less engaging for genre fans.

As it stands right now, Hellraiser: Revival is a solid survival horror experience, but now one with more notoriety following its criticisms. This has likely contributed to the much higher user score on sites like Metacritic, in the same way that Manhunt did some years ago. Games with ultra-violence that lack any censorship will always draw the same conversations, which inevitably lead to the same interest and appeal titles in the horror genre have often gained. Although its part of a familiar pattern, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival marks perhaps the most fascinating part of this trend, as it comes from an IP that already went through it, but now is doing so again in a completely new medium.

What other games do you remember that went through the same criticisms as Hellraiser: Revival and Manhunt? Let us know in the comments below!