A true horror classic spawning countless sequels and remakes, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has the right kind of setting to be recreated in a terrifying videogame. Until now, its members have remained quietly sheltered from prying eyes in their terrifying family house, but Gun Interactive decided to follow up on the bloody shoes of its Friday the 13th adaptation and is now releasing another asymmetrical horror game for horror buffs. Just as we hoped for, it’s bloody, brutal at times, and above everything else, a nail-biting experience that will get you on the edge of your seat.
Blood Spilling Runs in the Family
A strong contender to the title of the most asymmetrical multiplayer game of all time, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is designed and optimized around 4v3 player matches, and anything below that wouldn’t have the desired effect in terms of tension and consistency. You’re not only playing in deliberately unbalanced teams; each element of the Victims and Family comes with very specific mechanics that provide extremely different approaches to each match, and you’re going to find your favorites after many botched attempts at not becoming Leatherface’s new skin.
Gun Interactive scored the rights to the 1974 movie that shocked generations, so we won’t see any characters or locations from subsequent films, although that isn’t entirely ruled out for the future. Instead of delivering a by-the-numbers recreation of the movie’s cast and lore, they decided to take it up a notch by setting the game a few months before the events everyone knows all too well and by adding five new victims and a couple of unique villains, Sissy and Johnny.
The core gameplay can be described in just a few words, but the impressive detail is that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is way more than a cat-and-mouse game or a bloody vicious hide-and-seek activity. As a Victim, you will have to escape from the basement and navigate several areas by unlocking doors and moving on to the next challenge. Your goal is to flee the property and finally escape the nightmare, something easier said than done when all players start learning the in-and-outs of the three maps available at launch: Family House, Slaughterhouse, and Gas Station.
Sounds and shadows play vital roles in the outcome of the challenge, with urgency and nerves of steel going hand in hand if you want to escape the Family’s grasp successfully. Move slowly, crouching, hide in shadows and vegetation, and avoid any actions that may result in noise, both visual and audio cues alerting the chasers to your whereabouts. Opening a toolbox to find a valuable unlock tool is one of several stressful situations, as is picking a bone scrap to cut down those rudimentary bone chimes, but these actions trigger a minigame where rushing through will cause noise, temporarily giving away your position to the thirsty cannibals. The same goes for lockpicking, a different kind of minigame but also a stressful one, where a few seconds seem to last for an eternity, the thought of not being able to watch your surroundings an unsettling one. Rush through chickens, and the little feathery fiends will start clucking, drawing attention to your movements, but deal a swift blow, and they’re no more – an act that can be excused when survival is at stake.
Hide and Seek and Die
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is all about the spine-chilling atmosphere. When playing as a Victim, it’s remarkable how the feeling of oppression becomes so noticeable, how the air becomes so thick that you’re almost tempted to hold your breath when you hide inside a trunk or a freezer, hoping that you have gone unnoticed by the skin of your teeth, an oddly fitting description. Or when you have no option but to hide in plain sight, crouching amidst the waist-high foliage, heart racing when Leatherface passes in front of you, almost bumping his knee on your face. These moments are of genuine terror, quite a feat for a player-versus-player game where players go through all the motions in a roughly 15-minute match: thrills, humor, and scares are all part of the deal.
As a Family member, it’s not so much about anxiety and careful steps but more about searching the area, securing the premises (keeping the generator on, for example), and destroying potential escape routes. Since both sides have different navigation possibilities, from sneaking into tight spaces to climbing a crate with barbed wire right above it, Leatherface, in particular, is hindered by these locations and can use the chainsaw to destroy them. Exploring every nook and cranny of the map is paramount to discovering where the Victims are hiding, the same as listening to sound cues.
But there’s another twist to playing as the Family, thanks to the terrifying Grandpa. Every member must be on the lookout for blood in buckets or even from Victims, regularly feeding Grandpa to improve his ability to highlight Victims on the map if they don’t stand perfectly still. The stronger he gets, the smaller the cooldown is, making it easier to use this ability to your advantage.
It’s straightforward to see how differently both sides have it, with unique gameplay mechanics asking for completely distinct approaches. Learning the plus points of each character, Family and Victims, is key to making the most of their abilities, extraordinary game changers. Take Leatherface, for example, a hulking brute with great endurance and the ability to crash through some blockades in a relentless chase. The Cook, on the other hand, is a tired old man but with an amazing earing ability, capable of pinpointing the location of any victims who are just a little bit noisier than they should be. Johnny can look for footprints and track his prey easier with this cunning ability.
Victims have their tricks up their sleeves too, with Connie being extremely valuable to unlock doors almost instantly, but with the caveat of impacting Family proximity warnings. Leland is the strong type, capable of stunning most family members for brief seconds, giving everyone room to escape. Then you have perks that you unlock via the skill tree. Each character can pick from three perks and customize them in various loadouts for more intuitive use, and perks level up too.
Finally, attribute points can be unlocked and assigned to characters of both parties, increasing Victims’ toughness, endurance, strength, proficiency, and stealth, while Family comes with Savagery, Blood Harvesting, and Endurance.
Even new Family execution moves can be unlocked and switched, each one more brutal and agonizing than the previous one – although this isn’t the bloodiest horror game in the books, it surely delivers with some quite shocking and often graphic depictions of the takedowns, such as Sissy’s insistent neck slicing.
Maze Runner
The three maps available in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at launch are truly scary and atmospheric. This is a game where fiddling with the default brightness setting is almost like cheating, the pitch-dark basements being a terrific opposite to the bright sun outside, assuming you’re playing the daytime map. OLED TV/monitor owners will be in for a real treat with how well the HDR and true blacks translate to the screen for this game.
You are bound to find similarities across the three maps, as the design doesn’t seem to differ much between them during the first hours. Slowly, you’ll start making a mental layout of all the main areas, discovering the difference between a car graveyard and a parking lot, and getting to a point where you feel confident that you can start rushing through sections.
In a sense, that’s a shame, as part of the brilliance of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is how the Victims are exploring a new and horrific place, completely disoriented, trying to discover where the exits and crucial routes are by trial and error. That’s where a huge part of the fright and anxiety of the Victims comes from; a dangerous, life-or-death struggle in a location that is unbeknownst to any of them. This would be the perfect game for some procedurally generated sections, adding this hint of unpredictability that plays an important but not exclusive role in exploration, spicing up every game as you would have no opportunity to memorize patterns and rush through it.
Even if the basements specifically and some outside areas feel extremely labyrinthine and confusing, experience and progress will eventually tone this down while killing the element of surprise and uncertainty, the excitement of discovering something new and challenging every single time.
Voice chat is another feature that may end up being divisive. There’s team chat only, meaning you can only speak to party members, but even that sounds like an immersion-breaking option. Sure, you can turn it off, but other players will take advantage of it to align strategies and win matches in ways that don’t feel natural – telling someone in the other corner of the map that they can get an unlock tool in “X” area isn’t in the spirit of the game, which should play more in a more isolated and claustrophobic way – unless, that is, it was to feature proximity voice chat only, something that would make sense, potentially even alerting Family to conversation noise.
Some characters also seem to be nerfed for gameplay reasons alone. It’s odd that some of the slim Family members cannot move through small gaps, even if they fit perfectly. This is one of those situations where a perk is attached to a character when it would make sense to be something natural to everyone except for the bulky Leatherface.
In sheer technical terms, this is a great-looking game, with some stunning rural sights and suitably disgusting areas. The characters are of very good quality, Leatherface being the obvious highlight, but all of them are nice representations of the era where the events unfold, including the deranged Sissy, one of my highlights. On the downside, some of their movements aren’t as smooth as can be and occasionally tend to the clunky side, especially while running, and this can’t be attributed to them being harmed, as it happens in normal situations too.
A Game of Cat and Murderer
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre cements Gun Interactive’s expertise in delivering great asymmetrical multiplayer horror games. Balancing the two sides and the extremely unique abilities of each character sounds like the true nightmare of it all, but so far, everything seems to be working in a solid and engaging way.
It’s not a flawless game, but the anguish and thrills that it conveys are almost one of a kind, delivered with confidence and brutality to match the source. This is one for horror aficionados and everyone else who likes a good old-fashioned game of murderer cat, and stealthy mouse.
Score: 8.5/10
Pros:
- The ominous, grim atmosphere.
- Very distinct mechanics for both sides and characters.
- Great use of lighting and audio cues enhances gameplay.
- Competent progression system.
- Brutal executions.
Cons:
- Some clunky character animations.
- Proximity voice chat would be a better choice.
- Procedurally generated sections could improve replayability, otherwise, expect the feeling of fear to wear quickly.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre review code (PC) was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.
