The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review

Player versus player asymmetrical horror games have become increasingly popular in recent years, due in large part to the perennial success of 2016’s Dead By Daylight, where a team of survivors attempt to fend off the threat of burly masked fiends, by desperately scurrying to safer pastures whilst occasionally hiding in wardrobes and powering up generators. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the latest film franchise to delve into to the PVP horror arena after 2017’s Friday the 13th and 2022’s Evil Dead, but would you want to experience the adrenaline-tipped thrill of being chased away by a chainsaw-wielding psychopath, or would you rather the chainsaw be used to trim hedges instead?

As with similar multiplayer experiences of its kind, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn’t contain a story mode, only a condensed multiplayer experience where you either play as a member of the insidiously ruthless Sawyer Family, or one of the hapless Victims clawing to escape their evisceration and potential vivisection. There’s a bit of a backstory that delivers context to what’s going on in this PVP horror experience, but for the most part you’re left to set up matches by picking which survivor or family member you want to take control of, and then waiting for the matchups to begin.

The brief premise of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is ripe for splendiferously pulse-leaping thrills, as you’re either filling the boots of a dangerous psychopath hellbent on adding its prey to a meat wrack, or you’re madly rushing through the Sawyer Family’s compound, avoiding their feisty clutches and trying desperately to remain undetected. It all sounds really captivating like a blood-soaked game of cat and mouse, but the promise is unravelled by by-the-books PVP design that drains a lot of its zest, despite being a good slice of horror-drenched fun for a spell.

The strength within the multiplayer premise, along with a simplistic multiplayer structure, gives The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a gratifying sense of immediacy you’ll no doubt find magnetic at first. If you’re a seasoned PVP multiplayer horror game fan though, there’s not enough here to distract you from the bug-bundled banalities of the game’s core design.

Every game starts you out either tied up by the legs in the basement as a victim, or outside in the fresh country air as a Family member. Your task is to either escape the compound and prevent getting mutilated, or hunt down the victims and perform those sickening mutilations.

There’s a good hunter versus hunter dynamic at play here, and thrills can be felt when you’re shrieking with panic rushing as far away from a killer as possible if you’re a survivor.

The first time you encounter the burly brute with a mask and a chainsaw is genuinely terrifying if you’re a victim. Make sure you grab a fresh pair of undies after you gaze into his bleeding eyes, and remember his name is Leatherface! That’s if you survive his visceral chainsaw-ripping rampage of course.

You’ll want to slither between tight spaces, be vigilant with every step you take, and hide in chests and closets to steer clear of detection. Granted, the spine-sizzling frights aren’t as anywhere near as petrifying as you’d find in Alien: Isolation, but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre does a good job at instilling fear into proceedings keep you on your toes.

Sadly, the intensity and initial terror of encounters and resulting soiled undergarments whittle away as the game settles into its unsophisticated groove. With only a single mode at your fingertips and every session taking place at the same compound with no time limits, there’s a sense of drag to proceedings.

There’s no doubt The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is faithful to its source material, but the dearth of imagination hurts its appeal in the long run, especially when you discover there’s not much to offer outside of levelling up the characters and plunging points into the meta-game, where all the delicious character perks and skills can be upgraded, though upgrade trees pad the experience more than meaningfully contributing to it.

The bugs, general performance issues and the occasional hardships of attempting to get into a multiplayer session are a downer too.

On the bugs front, there are moments where you can become stuck between walls you’re trying to wall hug. Seeing your character helplessly stutter can put a halt to your game session because there’s no ability to pause or unstick yourself, so you’re left with no choice but to find another game.

Another buggy foible The Texas Chainsaw Massacre possesses comes when chasing down victims. You could be closing in on a victim preparing to embed a knife into them in a gory display of catharsis, but for no reason your murdering intentions come to a train-grinding stop when the victim slows you down somehow out of nowhere, leaving your weapon-wielding psychopath to agonizingly recover from this out-of-nowhere mishap.

Sure, multiplayer-centric games can be riddled with game-sucking leeches, but the state of this one seems to echo a half-hearted effort that cashes in on the phenomenon of the PVP craze spawned by Dead By Daylight, leaving players with an exoskeleton that’s familiar and comforting for horror fans and fans of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film franchise, but refuses to innovate or bring anything new to the table. It’s like eating bread for sustenance; yes it’ll satisfy your cravings, but it’s bland and floury, except The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s flour is bloodstained.

Fortunately, if your expectations aren’t demanding, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is still a good time and the main reasons for this are the distinctive traits of each character and the perks you receive for levelling up.

You get to pick from five survivors and five family members, all of them carry their own distinctive perks and abilities. These abilities can be levelled up and the more you use an individual character, the more they’ll level up too. This allows depth to be added to playing as each survivor and Sawyer Family member-they each feel equally important and worthwhile as a result.

On the Family side, Leatherface can obviously utilize his chainsaw to tear apart traps and rip open doors, The Cook’s audible perceptiveness can help him find survivors making the most racket, Sissy can concoct poisons and contaminate consumables, The Hitchhiker can lay traps and become alerted when a survivor steps on one, and last but by no means least, Johnny can use his adept hunting prowess to survey footsteps that can lead him to survivors he can pillage.

There’s no busywork as a Family member, but you’re required to keep feeding Grandpa blood so victims have nowhere left to hide. Buckets of innards contain the claret you need to drip-feed and satiate the chair-stricken geriatric, and it’s best to keep him satisfied, you don’t want any of those survivors to go unvictimized do you? 

A quintet of extremely surly stalkers, The Family are a consistently dangerous threat, and they’re viscerally violent psychopaths who want nothing more than grab their prey and shank them gruesomely. Taking up the role of Leatherface is as deliciously barbaric as it should be and he’s easily the most enjoyable to play as, but if you opt for the other far less powerful members of the brood, you’ll likely grow bored of their limitations and lack of a mean streak, despite each member bringing their own unique traits to the fore.

Meanwhile, the victims come with their own individual backstories and their experiences bleed into the fabric of the multiplayer experience. For example, Julie has a history as a sportsperson, so her physical gifts can become integral her survival thanks to the Ultimate Escape perk exclusive, which ensures she remains undetected by the Family.

There are satisfying reasons to keep dipping into PVP sessions, and it’s commendable that the character levels and your general multiplayer level are separate. This way, you are rewarded for both playing the game, but also playing as each individual. The only question is whether all the perks and abilities can wash away the taste of tedious repetition and the ailing sense of terror.

The soundtrack and ambiences of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are as you’d expect, as its efforts audibly mirror the intensity of the 1974 classic, but those wanting to hear something new maybe left disappointed.

Visually Texas Chainsaw is passable. Credit should be given for how dingy and cramped the underground torture chambers are, and there’s a suitably vibrant-yet-hostile exterior with plants to hunker down in, but it would be difficult not to grow tired of seeing the same environment in every game session.

Conclusion

If you enjoy a good slice of PVP horror then Texas Chainsaw fits the bill moderately. There’s a good sense of horror early on, and the different skills and abilities of every single character is a very good way to keep you invested. Playing as any of the victims is a tough gig as you desperately try to flea from the savagery of the Sawyer Family. When you decide to play as the flesh butchering psychopaths, tracking down the escapees is gratifying, especially when you get to wield a chainsaw as Leatherface. Unfortunately, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre loses its appeal gradually when you find yourself performing the same actions over and over again, where every match plays out in the same way, refusing to change things up to keep the drama ticking along. The lack of time limits can make matches drag on laboriously too, so it’s easy for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to wear out its welcome. Ultimately it’s a cool PVP game, but it doesn’t have the fresh ideas to contend with its contemporaries.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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Good
  • Compelling horror PVP thrills
  • Different perks and reasons to play each character
  • Faithfulness to the horror film classic
Bad
  • Rote one-dimensional multiplayer sessions
  • Environments are too samey and claustrophobic
  • Bugs and glitches can force you out of games
6.7
Okay
Written by
Although the genesis of my videogame addiction began with a PS1 and an N64 in the mid-late 90s as a widdle boy, Xbox has managed to hook me in and consume most of my videogame time thanks to its hardcore multiplayer fanaticism and consistency. I tend to play anything from shooters and action adventures to genres I'm not so good at like sports, RTS and puzzle games.

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