Playing Hellraiser: Revival on Nintendo Switch 2 feels incredibly cursed, and the port is sadly just passable

Saber Interactive’s near-constant slate of releases isn’t shying away from Nintendo Switch 2, and Hellraiser: Revival is no different. Despite its Unreal Engine 5 base and its focus on shiny visuals, the game has been cut down enough to be more-than-playable on Nintendo’s handheld, although it’s not the best option to play.

Your introduction to Hellraiser: Revival will be glowing enough. The game’s cutscenes look phenomenal, but that’s down to the fact that most of them are actually pre-rendered on Switch 2 with the asset quality and cinematic flair of their PC or PS5 counterparts. They’re obviously compressed with noticeable macro-blocking in dark areas, especially during some very dense scenes, but they look good enough.

In game, though, it’s a different story. Hellraiser: Revival runs at a steady level of performance, although I’ve only been able to play the first half of the game as Switch 2 codes came in late. There are some drops here and there, but it’s mostly fine. Some areas of the game look fantastic in docked mode; the endless labyrinth the Cenobites call home is a stunner with gorgeous art direction and some very nice lighting.

This is where the Switch 2 port holds up best with gloriously gothic art design and fantastically staged lighting can shine. Even in handheld mode, the thick painted skyboxes sing, even if a lot of the gameplay in the labyrinth—at least from what I’ve played so far—is mostly basic puzzles and running around.

Where the port suffers most, though, is in its more mundane environments. On Switch 2 specifically, some of the more complex, detail-filled human locales—such as the opening scenario within a cult’s basement—can look very rough, and Unreal Engine 5 struggles to load in a lot of the game’s assets at full-resolution as you load into some of these environments as well.

One of the poorest looking environments we’ve seen yet involves a graveyard within the real world where you’re sneaking past cultists and being chased by a once-human monster called Charlotte. Compared to the fidelity offered in, say, Resident Evil Village, which showcases similarly flowing-haired creatures, it looks very poor indeed. 

The phrase “looks like a PS3 game” is often used negatively, although that’s not always fair, but Hellraiser: Revival does look suitably of that gen at times on the handheld. Most of the time, it’s a generation above, but there are times when every cut at once combines to create an image that looks like it is missing another lighting or shading pass. The gorgeous visuals and presentation of the PS5 and PC versions simply isn’t here, there’s a few cuts too many, and it seems that DLSS is also used as a crutch to help. To be fair, clarity is often fine, but presentation does suffer.

Additionally, the game doesn’t really support the Switch 2’s features that well, either. While games like The Witcher 3: Remastered supports gyro, HD Rumble, mouse mode, and the touchscreen,Hellraiser only supports the console’s HD Rumble, although it does so in a very satisfying way.

Gyro aiming would have been a huge help in this game as, even with strong aim assist features, Hellraiser: Revival’s stick aiming was completely busted during our early review period. By default, aiming was stop-start in a way I’ve never felt in a game before, but changing the “acceleration X and acceleration Y” options to 3 seemed to fix it. 

Despite this, and despite the fact that I think Hellraiser: Revival is a merely an okay game from what I’ve played so far, there is a certain glee caused by playing the game on a Nintendo console. There’s a macabre thrill seeing the series’ trademark grotesqueness and depravity in full display on a Switch 2 console, and then backing to home to see Mario’s joyful, innocent face right next to it.

As Saber told us just before release, the Hellraiser game is not censored in any way. You’ll be walking into S&M clubs, watching people get flayed with supernatural hooks, and chopping off limbs, all on the console that most people will be using for Animal Crossing or Mario Kart. Honestly, there’s just something funny about a game where the protagonist has a very visible Prince Albert being playable on the same system as Yoshi and The Mysterious Book. 

I don’t think I would necessarily recommend the game to anyone who isn’t a fan of the IP, both film or book. Oftentimes it can feel a bit juvenile in ways we’ll get to in a full review in the coming days, but it is still quite neat to see Pinhead, The Chatterer and the others I can’t name in video game form. At the end of the day, if you only have a Switch 2 and you want to play Hellraiser, the game will probably suffice. On the other hand, if you can, I’d recommend playing this one elsewhere.