Games worth discovering

A bloody good take on Dead by Daylight-style horror game - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Quick Review

5K View2023-08-22

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

8.3

HorrorEditors' Choice

Get

SHOULD I PLAY THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE?

Play it. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is an asymmetrical horror game that’s based on the popular 1974 film of the same name. While it suffers from a few technical and balance issues, it’s still a lot of fun. For someone like me who’s played hundreds of hours of Dead by Daylight, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s extremely gory take on the genre definitely satisfies any bloodlust that wasn’t already taken care of.

TIME PLAYED

I played The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for four hours. Each match took between seven and fifteen minutes to complete. I leveled up Leatherface to level 11 and got the survivor named Sonny to level 3, as well as testing out two other characters.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE?

• Spilling guts and scaring other players. There’s something exhilarating and sadistic about hunting down other players that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has managed to nearly perfect. As someone who’s always preferred playing the killer in Dead by Daylight, this game filled me with joy when I was terrorizing survivors and relishing in the ensuing bloodbath.

• Running away from killers. I cannot stand getting chased in horror games, which is partially why I dislike being the survivor. But this fear is also one of the reasons why I love games like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It’s a game about willpower, intelligence, and making split-second decisions, all while feeling vulnerable and scared. And although it sucks going against three killers (see below for more details on that), getting past them and escaping feels unbelievably good.

• Perks are fantastic. After playing a couple of matches, I got enough resources to unlock stuff in the skill tree. Perks offer a variety of improvements, such as boosting melee damage or increasing the stamina bar to allow for sustained sprinting. I was able to customize which perks I had equipped before a match, which helped keep the gameplay fresh.

• Buckets of blood and hanging bodies. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre doesn’t hold back at all when it comes to its gory visuals. There’s buckets of blood everywhere, animal parts, hanging bodies, and ritual symbols smeared across walls. The game’s horrifying rural setting is beautifully rendered in all its disturbing glory.

WHAT SUCKS IN THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE?

• Too many murderers in one match. I think having more than one killer in this type of asynchronous multiplayer game is a great idea, especially since The Texas Chain Saw Massacre sports such large, complex levels. But three killers in one match is at least one too many, and the overkill ruined the experience for me at times. Not only is it tremendously hard for survivors to escape, but individual killers tend to encounter less bloody action in each match because they have two other players stealing their kills. Experimenting with two killers in a match may help balance the odds give survivors a better chance at escaping, and make murdering them more way more fun.

• It’s way too dark. At the start of the game, I could customize my brightness for the perfect experience. But after hopping into a match, I quickly realized that everything was way darker than I’d expected. I could barely see anything and I ended up bumping into a bunch of walls, doors, and people. I had to raise the brightness to maximum settings on both my PC and in the game to fix this problem.

• Technical issues. From server disconnects to lag to game crashes, I encountered a myriad of problems while playing the game. Most of them usually ended up happening after a match or in the middle of one, causing a lot of frustration. If technical issues drive you crazy, you may want to hold off for some patches before jumping in for yourself.

💬 Will you play The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or are you going to skip it? Tell me down in the comments below!