Saber Interactive hands-on with Hellraiser: Revival, Turok: Origins and Stuntman

Stuntman: Hollywood – just one part of Saber’s upcoming line-up (Saber Interactive) With Hellraiser, Turok, Stuntman, and John Wick games in the pipeline, Saber Interactive had a lot to show off at Gamescom last month, as GameCentral speaks to industry legend Tim Willits. Saber Interactive is quietly becoming one of the rising stars of the games industry. With its unusual mix of unglamorous simulator games (truck-driving game Road Kings, for example, made its first appearance at Gamescom) and big action blockbusters featuring highly recognisable IPs, it seems to have found a way to avoid the games industry woes that have seen many rivals laying off staff. At Gamescom, we played three Saber Interactive games – Clive Barker’s Hellraiser Revival, Turok: Origins, and Stuntman: Hollywood – and interviewed the company’s chief creative officer Tim Willits, something of an industry legend after his time as studio director at id Software. All three games were highly entertaining and playable and Willits, as ever, had plenty of interesting points to make, about both Saber Interactive and the future of the industry itself. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival hands-on Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. The cumbersomely named game, derived from the much-loved horror movie franchise, is scheduled for an October 8 release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC. We actually played it at last year’s Gamescom, but this year’s demo level took place at a later stage in the game. Hellraiser: Revival’s first person perspective action pivots between two physical levels – above ground in the real world (albeit a somewhat twisted Clive Barker world of fetish clubs and the like) and a hellish, labyrinthine underworld. The new demo started in the former, in an upmarket yet seedy private club, which we had to negotiate using all the available tools, most notably several weapons for which, in the survival horror tradition, we had limited ammo. Armed with a revolver, shotgun, and submachine gun (the latter initially lacking ammo, although we eventually found some for it), plus a machete, our character Aidan Lynch also holds the Genesis Configuration in his left hand. This elaborate puzzle box provides extra powers which come in handy when low on ammo, such as the ability to grab fire from braziers and project it at enemies. Hellraiser: Revival – Clive Barker has been involved with quite a few video games in his time (Saber Interactive) Above ground, Hellraiser: Revival’s gameplay mixes puzzling with shooting. Initially, a couple of enemies have to be dispatched in order to acquire a key to a storeroom, which yields some useful ammunition, plus raw materials that can be crafted into healing draughts, and a combination safe. Normally, we would have searched the room for clues to its combination, but time was at a premium. The enemies took some dispatching; pulling off headshots helped, especially against those who wore helmets, as did firing fiery or electrified blasts from the Genesis Configuration – particularly when we needed to finish off weakened enemies. In one phase, enemies spawned from sort of upright coffins and pursued us pretty relentlessly; when several were close to each other, Genesis Configuration blasts provided a modicum of very useful splash damage. Eventually, after some pretty intense sequences of taking out waves of enemies and looting their bodies for ammo, we acquired a ticket to put into a machine, which moved the action to the underworld. Here the gameplay switched between running while being pursued through a stone labyrinth and puzzling. You’re not going to be able to just shoot Pinhead (Saber Interactive) For the latter, we had to use the Genesis Configuration’s telekinetic abilities to rotate sections of a room to create a navigable path, while avoiding traps which would chop us to pieces. Careful manipulation of our surroundings allowed us to create a path to an area containing a useful object, before reconfiguring the room to reach the end. Aidan proved to be a pretty human and believable character to control, without the ability to jump very far. In terms of atmosphere, Hellraiser: Revival is superb, with a gloriously sadomasochistic undercurrent. Although in this year’s Gamescom demo, there were far fewer skin-flayed Cenobites around than in last year’s one. It looks fabulous, and feels pretty responsive, albeit within the confines of typical survival horror mechanics. Willits is keen to point out that Clive Barker himself has been heavily involved in its development: ‘He’s helped us – he knows the game, he’s approved concept art, he’s approved the story.’ It will be interesting to see whether some of the more traditionally prudish territories ban it, since it does have a lot more sexual content than most games, but it stands a good chance of introducing Barker’s unique oeuvre to a younger audience, which may not previously have come across it. Turok: Origins hands-on This is a very different kind of game to the original Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, published by Acclaim in 1997 for the Nintendo 64. As its name suggests, Turok: Origins functions as a prequel to that game and its successors. It still preserves a certain amount of the Native American style mysticism, that gave the 1997 game much of its uniqueness, but it feels like much more of a modern shooter. Unusually, Turok: Origins (which is due in early 2027) allows you to switch between first and third person modes at will; for the Gamescom demo we kept it in third person mode, which felt appropriate for the gameplay. The demo we played put us in a three-player fireteam, since Turok: Origins boasts drop-in/drop-out co-op play for up to three people. The beginning of the demo provided a bit of story – it takes place in a sort of barracks on a dinosaur-infested alien planet, and sets up the premise that you are at war with an alien race. We had to choose between three character classes – Cougar, Bison, and Raven. The former, which we chose, was an all-rounder, the Bison a tank, and the Raven a long-range specialist armed, amongst other things, with a bow. So the latter is the most in keeping with the original 1997 game. Turok: Origins – we’re pretty sure that’s not a real dinosaur (Saber Interactive) We were then teleported to a battleground, in a lush, jungle-like setting, which provided non-stop, intense shooter action. It felt precise, nicely fettled and responsive, although not massively distinctive. We soon discovered that we had two main weapons – a pistol and an automatic rifle – plus an intermittently available heavy weapon, in the Cougar’s case a heavy machine gun with super-rapid fire. Cutely, when we needed to, we could restock ammo and replenish health by interacting with different types of plants dotted around the battlefields. Also, killing alien enemies built up meters bringing about a variety of special moves, including a power buff, a shield, and a sort of ground pound, triggered by different button combinations. At the end of the level, having cut through swathes of aliens, we had to take down a boss which was, of course, a huge dinosaur. It was a bit of a bullet sponge (as expected with three of us fighting it) but had a vulnerable head area which sped proceedings up somewhat. The Gamescom demo of Turok: Origins felt very much like an amuse-bouche; it didn’t really give a lot of insight into the game’s storyline and nor did it feel much like the often somewhat clunky 1997 original. Gameplay-wise, it was slick, fluid, and definitely modern, but even with the dinosaurs it may struggle to stand out amongst other online shooters. Stuntman: Hollywood hands-on Willits explains that the Stuntman IP – the first Stuntman game, developed by Newcastle’s Reflections, came out in 2002 – was owned by Embracer group, ‘So when we were in the Embracer family, we were like ‘Hey, we love driving games.’ The team that we had, which was becoming available, had experience in that driving genre, and we had a great relationship with Universal, and Universal was like ‘Yeah, let’s do this’.’ That relationship with Universal means that Stuntman: Hollywood lets you be the stunt driver on the sets of recognisable movie and TV franchises including The Fast and the Furious, Knight Rider, Miami Vice, Jurassic World, and Back to the Future. Which is pretty cool. The demo we played consisted of five short courses of stunt-driving, on the sets of those movies (commendably, Stuntman: Hollywood doesn’t shout about which movie you’re on, but lets you work that out yourself), driving appropriate machinery, including a modern American muscle car for The Fast and the Furious, a white Ferrari Testarossa for Miami Vice (giving extra OutRun vibes), and a motorbike for Jurassic World. Stuntman: Hollywood is a surprising revival (Saber Interactive) The courses provide bite size but intense stunt-driving fun, with a director telling you what to do at all times – drift around certain corners (the left bumper triggers a drift), knock over bits of scenery, follow paths to avoid explosions, pass close to other cars and objects, and hit the right speeds over jumps. Most sequences culminate in a spectacular jump, for example from the end of a pier and onto a yacht. We were rated for pretty much every action and given an overall rating at the end of each sequence, providing plenty of replayability in search of that perfect take. We also discovered that if we made too many mistakes, we’d have to reshoot the scene. In other words, Stuntman: Hollywood is very much in the vein of its illustrious predecessors, albeit with very high modern production values. It’s fun, throwaway, and highly addictive. It will be released at an unspecified point in 2027. Tim Willits interview Beyond Saber Interactive’s upcoming games, Willits gave some insight into his blueprint for running a successful video games publisher in a challenging time for the industry: ‘I’ve been slightly critical of traditional North American business strategies, and the news has verified everything that I’ve said. Old school publishers have these teams that focus on one game and if that isn’t a mega hit, you lose money. We make entertainment and experiences, but it’s a business. Every business, everywhere in the world, has to make money, otherwise you can’t be in business. ‘So for us, we have multiple strategies. We obviously have a culture where we can move people around and everyone works on everything. We work in countries that are just a little cheaper. We work with major franchise holders where we have IPs that have built-in audiences and have done really well. We have business relationships where we have co-funding, where one party helps pay for the development, we pay for some of the development and we share it together – that reduces risk across the field. ‘Then we have our bread and butter games and work. We do stuff like Docked, like Bus Bound – smaller titles that are profitable but are cheaper to make. We still do old-fashioned work-for-hire work, and that is consistent, reliable, and predictable money. And then the last thing is that we’re not afraid to take risks and we’re not afraid to kill a game or an idea if it’s not working. ‘North American publishers have to get out of their own way. If you have highly talented, highly paid employees and they all work on one thing, it’s like ‘Come on’. You’ve got to spread that out, like other businesses. Movie companies do this, so video game developers need to start thinking the same way.’ With that bee out of his bonnet, Willits is happy to tease some details about another potentially huge upcoming Saber Interactive game, John Wick: ‘I told the folks working upfront at Gamescom that if anyone comes asking if Keanu is here to say you just missed him ‘But we’re really excited about our John Wick game. Working with Lionsgate has been great, working with Keanu and Chad Stahelski, the director, directly is amazing – those guys are so awesome. Chad is a big video game fan, and if you watch a John Wick movie, it kind of feels like a video game.” It’s definitely early doors for the John Wick game yet, to the extent that it doesn’t have a full name: ‘We’re trying to come up with some little subtitle, but it takes a while. As it shows in the image we’ve put out, Wick will be a little younger in the game than the movies, so there’s a little mystery for you.’ The John Wick trailer looks good but the game is a long way off (Saber Interactive) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. 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