In 1974, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie shocked audiences with its brutality, gore, and realistic depiction of a simple backwoods family protecting their homestead. This year, developer Gun Interactive has released The Texas Chainsaw Massacre game, which manages to recreate the feeling of the original movie in an asymmetrical-style multiplayer game. Players can take on the role of Family members hunting down the intruders trying to escape the house or Victims whose only goal is to survive and find a way out.
It’s relatively easy to compare The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the other popular asymmetrical horror-based multiplayer game Dead by Daylight. Both games provide players with the opportunity to escape the clutches of a killer, or live the killer’s story and decimate the victims. TCM and Dead by Daylight also contain Leatherface, the breakout character of the Sawyer family movies, or Hewitt family in the 2003 remake. Luckily, that’s as far as the similarities go, as TCM provides much more for both Victims and Family to do during gameplay.
A Repetitive Gameplay Loop
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is broken into two different games, Family and Victims. There will be three Family members, with one always having to be Leatherface, and four Victims per game. Players who choose Family will have five characters to choose from, three from the original movie and two completely original additions. Each Family member has a different style to their gameplay: the Hitchhiker manically runs around setting traps throughout the house, for instance, while Sissy can spray poison over an area, drawing out Victims who may be hiding.
The main goal of a Family member boils down to finding, and killing, the Victims. When the game begins they’ll spend some time setting up traps, barricading the house, and feeding Grandpa – the patriarch of the family, and the best resource for spotting Victims that the Family has. The more blood fed to Grandpa, the more Family members will be able to see distant outlines of the victims, stopping them from hiding altogether.
Victim gameplay in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is purely survival and escape. Each player will begin somewhere in the basement, tied to the ceiling, where they will need to escape using a skill-based system that balances activity versus noise. If a player smashes the escape button too much, they’ll start creating noise that alerts the Family members to their whereabouts. This balancing system plays out in almost every task that a Victim does, from lockpicking to searching through piles of questionable cleanliness for a knife-like skeleton bone. Balancing speed, ingenuity, and hiding is the path to victory for a Victim and the system runs very well here.
Each Victim also has a unique special ability that will help in a bind. Sonny can focus and see outlines of everyone left on the map, while Connie can activate her focus to instantly unlock a door or gate. There are a lot more ways to earn an escape compared to the above-mentioned Dead by Daylight, and each subsequent escape as a Victim is as exciting as the first.
Customization & Skill Progression
Progression is where the excitement of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre game comes to a grinding halt. In its current state, there is very little to look forward to while playing the game repeatedly. There are a few color/pattern-swapped outfits to unlock if you play the same Victim multiple times, but the clothing stays exactly the same. There are currently only three levels: the Family House, Slaughterhouse, and the Gas Station. Each level, while beautifully recreating the look of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, feels exactly the same during a playthrough. The Exit possibilities, and tasks required, are the same throughout and in the approximate same areas on each map.
There is a leveling system and a skill tree available for each character from both the Family and Victims. Unfortunately, it isn’t the most in-depth, and each character maxes at level 10. Players earn points to spend based on their overall level, and these points can be put into any character they choose. One noticeable exploit was to boost any Victim character’s Stealth level to 50, which allowed the player to smash the noise button as fast as they possibly could without any noise being created at all. As play leveling progressed, points were spent only on that Stealth stat until most Victims were virtually mute while doing tasks.
There is also an issue with building up a single character. While each match must have seven players to commence, there is no way to repeat a character. If a player has spent all their earned points in Connie but enters a match and someone else has her, they’re out of luck. They can send a trade request, but this is easily denied and that person is stuck picking someone else. As a balancing system and a way to force players to play in different roles this works, but it’s hard to not feel deflated after pumping a slew of points into one character only to be forced into playing another for the next few matches.
Final Thoughts & Review Score
Overall The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a fun multiplayer game. There is a lot to love here and with it being brand new the additional possibilities of DLC are exciting to think about (House of 1000 Corpses anyone?). There were some framerate issues in the pre-release PC build, especially when a Victim was being killed, but these have been noted by the designers and should be ironed out shortly after release. As a fan of asymmetrical horror games, and looking for something new to scratch that itch, this is absolutely a must-play, though it comes with a fair number of issues that might turn off people from returning over and over the way some other online multiplayer experiences actively encourage.
Source: Gun/YouTube
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre game is available now. Screen Rant was provided with a PC code for the purpose of this review.