Nostr notes by realrobertherr

Nostr event nevent1qqs2v4d2plfz5e4av72hsgzwa7eza7n7uvw383hkj2fvnrc7hmvrkfczyr58lcdpgpaw5myd244rfw7tz465255urltah32v6jlt3mgnplhv2s9l00n

2026-10-25T20:18:14Z

Season 2 of The Terminal List is fucking fantastic

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2026-10-23T21:11:56Z

Family Guy’s Halloween special absolutely sucked this year.

My first of 2 Halloween game reviews! Look for the second one ...

2026-10-22T21:50:49Z

My first of 2 Halloween game reviews! Look for the second one around Devil’s Night 😉😈🎃

GAME REVIEW - Hellraiser: Revival
The most faithful Hellraiser in decades takes the gore and sex further than the films ever did, but clunky combat makes you suffer for it.
Check it out:
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Hellraiser: Revival understands Hellraiser. That sounds like a low bar, but this is a franchise that spent decades buried under direct-to-video sequels that seemed embarrassed by what Clive Barker created. Saber Interactive's game is not embarrassed by anything. It goes straight for the blood, the hooks, the leather, and the uncomfortable marriage of pain and pleasure that made the original films so disturbing, and then it pushes all of it further than the movies ever dared.

In spirit, this is exactly what Hellraiser should be. The problem is everything you have to do with a controller in your hands to experience it.

## A World That Looks Like Hell Should

Let me start with what Revival gets right, because it gets a lot right. The aesthetic is perfect. From the opening scene, where Aidan and Sunny's night with the Genesis Configuration goes about as badly as you'd expect, the game makes it clear that it has no intention of holding back. The Cenobites look like they stepped straight out of the 1987 original. The hooks and chains tear flesh with a sickening weight. Every corridor of the Scarlet Church's complex is slick with something you'd rather not identify.

The gore is relentless, and it's meant to be. Bodies don't just die in Revival; they come apart. Executions with the puzzle box, where Aidan jams it into an enemy's mouth and drives nails through their skull, are grotesque enough that I winced more than once, and I've been watching horror movies for most of my life.

\ Then there's the sexual content, which is where Revival is going to lose some people, and where I suspect it will win over the fans who have been waiting for a Hellraiser that remembers its roots. The sex club sequence is the moment the game shows you exactly what it is. You're sent on a scavenger hunt through a bondage club, fetching equipment like a leg spreader, paddles, and, I quote, the "biggest thickest dildo" you can find. There's a paddle-spanking scene you actually participate in. Later, a combination lock asks you to arrange the positions of couples in an orgy. It's crude, it's ridiculous, and at times it's genuinely uncomfortable, but it's also unmistakably Hellraiser. Barker's work was always about desire taken past the point of reason, and Revival commits to that idea without flinching.

\ The Labyrinth deserves its own praise. Every trip there is a visual feast: endless, impossibly configured stone, walls that rearrange themselves around you, and Leviathan looming on the horizon. In the back half of the game, the line between the Labyrinth and the real world starts to blur, and that's where Revival is at its most confident. When the game is just being Hellraiser, it's fantastic.

## Where It All Falls Apart

The combat is clunky, and there's no way around it. Revival plays like a first-person survival horror game in the mold of modern Resident Evil, with scarce ammo, breakable melee weapons, and a cramped inventory, but it lacks the polish that makes those games work. Gunfire has very little impact. Enemies soak up bullets without much reaction, so it's hard to tell how much damage you're actually doing. Melee swings feel inconsistent, dodging is stiff, and switching weapons mid-fight because of the limited equip slots kills whatever momentum an encounter has built up.

Stealth doesn't fare much better. There's no way to peek around corners, and enemies have a habit of spotting you the moment you lean even slightly out of cover. Some stalker sections end the instant you're seen, which turns tension into frustration in a hurry.

\ The Genesis Configuration is the game's best idea, and it's good, but it isn't enough to save the combat. Using the box to telekinetically grab sawblades and spikes and hurl them through a crowd of cultists is satisfying, and the powers do grow over time, eventually letting you collect fire and fling it back at enemies. The late-game Hellchains, which shackle groups of enemies together and tear them apart, are the most Hellraiser thing you can do in the entire game. The catch is that they arrive so late in the story that you barely get to use them. For most of the campaign, the box is a welcome break from the gunplay rather than a replacement for it.

\ The boss fights expose the combat's weaknesses most of all. The Sister of Mercy, a flying horror who fills her arena with blood mist and darts at you through the haze, is a genuine highlight. Too many of the others come down to circle-strafing and emptying your clips, and some of them overstay their welcome. The final fight against Marlowe, now transformed into a hulking monstrosity in the church's cathedral, is more of a puzzle than a test: shoot the glowing growths on his back, pin him down with the Hellchains, and hit him while he's exposed. It's fine. It isn't the climax a story like this deserves.

The Chatterer chases through the Labyrinth are tense the first time. By the later chases, the same chains and obstacles start to feel recycled, and what should be a terrifying pursuit becomes a routine.

## Technical Torment

I played on Xbox Series X, and Revival was buggy. Frame rates dipped regularly, textures and objects popped in and out of existence, and audio dropped out at moments where it really mattered. Nothing robs an execution of its impact quite like a body being ripped apart in total silence. Over a roughly 10-hour campaign, the technical problems never let up, and they seemed to get worse as the game went on. A patch or two could fix a lot of this, but at launch it's a rough ride.

A Story Held Up by Its Pinhead

The story is mixed. Aidan Lynch, a doctor turned biker-gang enforcer, is a hard protagonist to care about. His one-liners land with a thud more often than not, and much of the plot is delivered through long stretches of exposition from secondary characters rather than drama you actually see. The Scarlet Church, a cult that worships the Cenobites and believes its Rite of Rebirth will turn them into gods, is a strong premise, and Marlowe makes for an appropriately sleazy cult leader. But the story often stumbles where it needs nuance, particularly in how it handles the intersection of sex and violence.

What carries it is Doug Bradley. Hearing him return as Pinhead, the Hell Priest, is worth the price of admission for any longtime fan. Every line he delivers has that same unnerving eloquence that made him an icon, and whenever he's on screen, Revival feels like the true sequel to the first two films that it so badly wants to be.

\ The Labyrinth's flashbacks are another bright spot. The farther Aidan travels, the more the game reveals his past addictions and shows that his relationship with Sunny was never the romance he wants to believe it was. It was volatile, toxic, and abusive. That slow unraveling is the best writing in the game, and it sets up an ending that, for all the story's flaws, actually works.

Spoiler Warning: The Ending

The following section discusses the ending of Hellraiser: Revival in full. Skip to the verdict if you want to go in fresh.

After Aidan collects the final heart from Marlowe and Sunny is fully restored, the Cenobites come to collect on his bargain. Aidan lets Sunny consume his hand, and the Hell Priest reveals that the Scarlet Church had the Rite of Rebirth wrong all along. The Genesis Configuration was never looking for a cultist to ascend. It was looking for a Revenant Mother, and Sunny, pregnant by this point, was the one it chose. She gives birth to an ascended incarnation of the Priest, and then comes the twist: Sunny made her own deal with the Cenobites from the very beginning and manipulated Aidan into resurrecting her. When he accuses her of using him, her answer is that they used each other.

\ It's a cold, bleak gut punch, and a fitting one. Everything the Labyrinth showed you about their relationship pays off here. Aidan was never a hero rescuing the woman he loved. He was an addict chasing his next fix, and Sunny knew it.

Sunny and the Cenobites leave through Leviathan into the Void, and the Fallen offers Aidan a place among them, while Zora urges him to believe he can change. The choice isn't a dialogue prompt. You either walk through the closing gap and become a Cenobite, or you stand still and let the wall seal, staying human, maimed and branded, but free to start over. Neither ending gives Sunny back. I appreciated that the game doesn't let Aidan off the hook either way. My one complaint is that both endings come from that single moment, so you can reload and see the other in minutes, and once the credits roll, there's no New Game+ or anything else to bring you back.

## The Verdict

Hellraiser: Revival is the most faithful Hellraiser adaptation in decades. It nails the look, the sound, and the depraved spirit of Clive Barker's world, and it takes the series' gore and sex-filled savagery to a level the films never reached. Doug Bradley's Pinhead is as commanding as ever, the Labyrinth is stunning, and the ending lands with the cruelty this franchise demands.

The execution, however, wasn't great. Clunky combat, forgettable bosses, recycled chases, and a long list of technical problems make actually playing it a chore far too often. The Genesis Configuration shows what this game could have been if Saber had built everything around it.

Fans of the franchise will find plenty to love here, as long as they're willing to suffer for it. Somehow, that feels appropriate.

Score: 6.5/10

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As a gamer, I don’t take what I’m about to say lightly, ...

2026-10-17T15:04:28Z

As a gamer, I don’t take what I’m about to say lightly, especially given the franchise’s downward slide over the last few years.

Infinity Ward just dropped the greatest Call of Duty campaign since 2009. The Modern Warfare 4 campaign is an absolute masterpiece.

Full review incoming soon.

I just published a new read on Nostr! If AI Is So Dangerous, Why ...

2026-10-14T19:46:31Z

I just published a new read on Nostr!

If AI Is So Dangerous, Why Don’t Its Builders Slow Down?

The companies racing toward the frontier don’t need Washington’s permission to hit the brakes. But getting Washington to control everyone else’s speed could be very good for business.

Check it out: https://highlighter.com/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzp6rluxs5q7h2djx42635h0932a2922wpl47mc4xdf04ca5fslmk9qq75je3dg9yj6jtn94fk7t2yv9hxwetjda6hxt2hdpuj63r0dckhgt2fw3ej6sn4d9kxgetjwvk4xmr0wuk5gmmhdckksu3ew4cxsm8c60x

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There is something strange about watching the companies building the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence warn that the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence is moving too fast. Their researchers are raising alarms. Some are resigning. Others are publicly challenging their employers. Meanwhile, the race continues.

My question is simple:

If you believe the technology you are building could become uncontrollable, why are you waiting for the government to tell you to stop?

You control your training runs. You control your release schedule. You decide which capabilities to deploy and what access your systems receive. You are not spectators watching the frontier approach. You are building it.

\ In September, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and accused Anthropic and his former employer, OpenAI, of “gambling with our lives.” OpenAI safety researcher Julie Steele subsequently wrote, in her personal capacity, “I also think we need to slow down.” Those statements were part of a growing wave of public warnings from researchers inside the industry.cnbc

These are assessments from concerned employees, not established predictions about what AI will do. But they deserve attention precisely because they come from people working on the technology.

The dispute intensified in October when OpenAI fired researchers Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni. The researchers said communications surrounding their dismissals had left former colleagues afraid to speak. OpenAI disputed that characterization, saying the dismissals followed violations of policies governing sensitive information—not the researchers’ decision to raise safety concerns.cnbc

That distinction matters. A disputed dismissal is not proof of retaliation. Public warnings are not automatically leaks. And employees criticizing their companies should not be lumped together with executives lobbying on those companies’ behalf.

But their warnings raise an unavoidable question: If the people building these systems believe the pace is dangerous, what are their employers actually changing?

\ The obvious response is competition.

If OpenAI slows down, Anthropic might move ahead. If Anthropic slows down, another lab might take its place. If American companies pause, foreign competitors might keep going. That is a legitimate coordination problem. A unilateral pause cannot guarantee an industry-wide slowdown.

But it is not the same as having no choice.

A company can decide that a training run is premature. It can withhold a model whose safeguards are inadequate. It can limit an agent’s permissions. It can give its safety team the authority to delay a launch rather than merely document concerns.

None of those decisions requires Congress to pass a bill. Government could make restraint more widespread or enforceable. It does not make voluntary restraint possible. That power already sits inside the companies. Competition explains why slowing down could be commercially painful. It does not explain why slowing down is unavailable.

And if executives genuinely believe their systems pose extraordinary dangers, accepting some competitive disadvantage should be part of taking those dangers seriously.

Otherwise, the message becomes: We believe this is too dangerous to continue at this speed—but not dangerous enough for us to surrender our lead.

We should be precise about what company leaders are proposing.

\ Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for “more serious and binding regulation of AI.” OpenAI has put forward a governance blueprint, while Sam Altman has also advocated a “lighter touch regulatory stance.” Their positions are not identical, and it would be misleading to describe every major AI company as endorsing the same government-imposed pause. Those differences are explored in Michael Hiltzik’s examination of the industry’s preferred regulatory arrangements.latimes

But whenever an established company supports new requirements for entering its market, there is a question worth asking: Who can afford to comply?

Imagine a regulatory framework that requires expensive third-party evaluations, recurring audits, extensive legal documentation, or government authorization before certain models can be trained or released.

Those are possible policy designs—not a claim that every company has endorsed every requirement. The point is the economic structure.

For a large incumbent, compliance can become another department. For a startup, it can become the reason the product never launches.

The same fixed expense that barely dents a giant company’s budget can consume a small company’s runway. Rules built around the infrastructure and procedures of established labs could force challengers to operate like established labs before they have the resources to do so.

That is how safety becomes a moat.

The concern is not simply that regulation might slow innovation. It is that regulation could preserve the current hierarchy, protecting the companies that reached the frontier first while making it harder for anyone else to challenge them.

The public gets promised guardrails. The incumbents get a guarded entrance.

\ An employee warning that safeguards are inadequate may be acting against their employer’s commercial interests. An executive helping shape a regulatory framework occupies a very different position.

Both can talk about safety. That does not mean they are doing the same thing. Nor does it mean we can prove that OpenAI or Anthropic wants regulation specifically to bury smaller competitors. Their public statements do not establish that motive.

But we do not need access to an executive’s private thoughts to examine who benefits from a proposed rule. Safety concerns can be sincere, and the resulting policies can still favor incumbents. Those possibilities are not mutually exclusive. A company can genuinely fear the consequences of an unchecked AI race while also preferring a solution that preserves its position in that race.

That is why the details matter more than the branding.

Does a proposal target specific dangerous capabilities, or impose broad burdens on developers regardless of what they are building? Does it give independent authorities meaningful oversight, or leave the most consequential decisions with the companies?Does it reduce risk, or simply make competing more expensive?

“AI safety” is not an answer to those questions. It is the beginning of the discussion.

\ None of this requires pretending AI cannot cause harm or that every government intervention is illegitimate.

There is a difference between holding companies accountable for harmful conduct and requiring new competitors to obtain permission before they can build. There is also a difference between a small developer creating a specialized tool and a frontier lab pursuing increasingly powerful, general-purpose systems. A credible policy should recognize those distinctions.

If new requirements are necessary, they should address identifiable risks and actual capabilities. They should not assume every startup needs the same compliance machinery as the largest labs. And the companies most likely to benefit from expensive entry requirements should not get to define those requirements without serious independent scrutiny.

Before executives ask the government to slow everyone else down, they should demonstrate what restraint looks like inside their own organizations. Delay the launch, restrict the deployment, give safety staff real authority, and accept that taking your own warnings seriously might cost you something.

\ The leading AI companies do not control the entire industry. They cannot single-handedly guarantee that every competitor will behave responsibly.

But they do control their own decisions. They can slow their own training schedules. They can change their own release plans. They can refuse to deploy systems they believe are insufficiently understood. If their answer is that doing so would let someone else win, then we should recognize what they are telling us: maintaining their competitive position is part of the calculation.

That does not automatically invalidate their safety concerns. It does mean their preferred solution deserves scrutiny. There is a meaningful difference between asking the government to protect the public and asking it to reorganize a market in ways that protect the companies already leading it.

The frontier labs do not need Washington’s permission to hit their own brakes. They need Washington if they want everyone else’s brakes connected to the same pedal.

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As someone who has a strong disdain for “woke” video games, ...

2026-10-11T21:41:25Z

As someone who has a strong disdain for “woke” video games, I’m gonna make a controversial statement.

The hate around the narrative for Gears of War: E-Day is completely undeserved.

Was the writing lazy? Sure, in some areas yeah.

But the cries of “woke” are just retarded.

It wouldn't be spooky season without some creepy content! ...

2026-10-11T16:09:12Z

It wouldn't be spooky season without some creepy content!

Watch the latest episode of the Spin State Podcast now!

https://youtu.be/nE1avjTgDv0?si=vqcDdzzxbh1EsCGu

Nostr event nevent1qqsvkf3gwtq8fddxvzfcqrznje8syc7cxer2g9xsnkcnfv0ka85dpyqzyr58lcdpgpaw5myd244rfw7tz465255urltah32v6jlt3mgnplhv2yn6d8k

2026-10-09T19:06:00Z

What Nostr app do you use and why?

The lead riff in Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” is ...

2026-09-29T20:21:30Z

The lead riff in Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” is still one of the hardest and heaviest riffs of all time and you’ll never convince me otherwise.

This is so fucking sad man 😭 RIP Chad 🙏🏼 ...

2026-09-20T21:15:16Z

This is so fucking sad man 😭

RIP Chad 🙏🏼

https://mol.im/a/16146641

Un-fucking-believable. The party of empathy and tolerance, ...

2026-09-13T18:05:03Z

Un-fucking-believable.

The party of empathy and tolerance, everybody.

These people are sick.

https://nypost.com/2026/09/13/us-news/new-charlie-kirk-statue-vandalized-outside-tpusas-phoenix-hq/

Part of making America great again is admitting that Nickelback ...

2025-02-03T17:10:57Z

Part of making America great again is admitting that Nickelback had a ridiculous amount of bangers and that “hating” them was never actually justified.