It would be impossible to choose the best or most famous horror slasher of the last century, but without a doubt the film that left a huge impact on that genre of films is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
With almost every such slasher making its way into the video game world, it was just a matter of when we'd be able to do some chainsaw carnage in person. We got this opportunity in August 2023 when a company called Sumo Digital released The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for PC, PS4/5 and Xbox consoles. It is an asymmetric multiplayer horror, which means that it is about the same gameplay concept as games like Dead By Daylight or the now defunct Friday The 13th. So, you have two teams, in one there are victims whose goal is to escape from the killers, by doing tasks with which they will open the gate, repair the car, etc., which will provide them with a way to escape. On the other hand, you have hunters, whose task is to catch and kill their victims in very brutal ways. What makes Texas Chainsaw different from other games of this genre is that here you have 3 hunters and 4 victims, which means that the game requires teamwork, whichever team you are on. The game has a total of 6 maps and each of them has 4 exits, which means that there is a solid amount of variety and dynamism in the game itself. It is important to say that this is an exclusively multiplayer game, and it does not have any mode for independent play, nor bots. This is important to point out since the amount of players is low, and it is very possible that within a year you will hardly be able to find players to start a match. One thing that is also a significant problem is perks and leveling. Since the game doesn't have enough players to put you playing with people of your or at least a similar level, you will often be thrown in with people who have been playing this game for a long time, and have many more perks and have much more experience, which means that, as a new player, you won't have much fun. Of course, aggressive microtransactions are also present, and in order to unlock some more interesting characters, killing animations, and even skins, instead of grinding, you will have to take out a credit card.
When it comes to visuals, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre disappointed me a bit. The maps themselves look quite solid, they are detailed enough, the vegetation is colorful and, especially during sunset, the game can offer some really beautiful scenes. On the other hand, the textures are quite low resolution and the character models look like they came out of a PlayStation 3 title. The positive thing is that in performance mode on the PS5 platform, the game maintains a stable 60FPS and runs at 1440p resolution, and for this title you will not need to play in quality mode, because the jump in resolution is not worth the loss of performance.
Now, the biggest problem with this game, and the reason why I still can't recommend it, is that the developers completely gave up on this game and gave up on updates. The last important update came last year, and the publisher Gun Interactive stated that the game will no longer receive DLCs or updates. Although the game has switched to a peer to peer matchmaking system, which means that the game can theoretically stay alive forever, because there are no servers that can be shut down, it is devastating that the creators decided to bury this game so quickly.
You can get The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, and on Steam it is currently at a 50% discount as part of the so-called Scream IV event.
A copy of the PlayStation 5 version of the game was provided by publisher Gun Interactive for review purposes
