It’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre Day, which also happens to be the release date for Gun Interactive’s asymmetrical multiplayer game, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
A launch trailer was released this morning, as planned, displaying the gameplay and the absolute mayhem you’ll be unleashing (and avoiding) in the game, as well as revealing information regarding map time variants and game objectives. The Chain Saw debut trailer is shown below.
In this third-person asymmetrical horror experience based on Hooper’s innovative and legendary 1974 film, you can play as a member of the renowned Slaughter family or one of their victims. As a victim, you must use your wits and cunning to avoid the Family’s grasp and locate the equipment that will lead to your final escape. Meanwhile, Slaughter Family members must track down, apprehend, and stop their guests from fleeing.
Asymmetrical survival horror game Texas Chain Saw Massacre is well-mapped and atmospheric, but not scary. Texas faithfully recreates the 1974 film, down to the birdsongs in the game’s terracotta image of Texas (as developer Gun CEO Wes Keltner told me earlier this summer). Texas is an amazing living homage to one of cinema’s most iconic horror masterpieces, but it lost its appeal by focusing on its original material.
It aims to stand out in its prequel to the slasher franchise.
“April 1973. As you load the game, scrolling burned gold text announces tragedy and sorrow in Central Texas, exactly as rolling gold text introduces Texas the movie. A young college student called Maria Flores has vanished […] However, Maria’s disappearance would pale in comparison to [her friends’ search party]’s anguish and despair.”
This tale is irrelevant to my one hour of gaming (many more hours were wasted checking Quick Match the week before the game released on August 18—there are no bot games, and it was hard to fill 3v4 matches with only reviewers).
Texas Chain Saw’s asymmetry, dissected
You can play one of four Victims (five-character options) or one of three cannibalistic Family members (five more-character options). Each character has unique defensive and offensive skills. I liked Donny Osmond-looking-ass Leland’s full head of hair and brute strength as the Victims, and Sissy’s ability to craft and release herbal poisons on her victims as the Family, a more delicate way to kill than Leather face’s skin mask and chainsaw.
Victims and Family members automatically exchange dialogue that reveals additional story when they meet in-game. By unintentionally running into players in the black, humid basements where every match starts, I learnt which characters were dating and how little they knew about their dire position. When they hit a roadblock, victims lecture themselves, saying “this looks promising” and “dang it, gotta pay more attention.”
However, with an average match lasting five minutes, I never had time to care about the details. Match time would improve if all players knew more about each of the game’s three maps (all replicas of the movie set) to strategize better, but Texas only offers an hour of dry video clips as a tutorial, making it impossible to learn the game before playing.
In five minutes, you’re stuck with the game’s simplest premise. The victims must leave the Slaughter Family’s homestead, and the family must slaughter.
From their power position, Family members don’t need to worry with quick time-adjacent minigames (albeit they must complete one to rev up Leather face’s twin flame chainsaw), but these events determine practically every Victim action save running and hitting.
To squirm off the meat hook—an obstacle that permanently wounds Victims—you slowly press a button on your keyboard or controller until a half-circle metre is filled. No amount of healing liquid will reverse your deteriorating state, but it will stop blood trails from forming behind you like a weird snail.
Getting tools from locked boxes or opening crawl areas is the same. Fill the metre slowly or the thing you’re interacting with will generate too much noise, causing furious red lightning bolts. Noise can wake up the Family’s withering Grandpa and alert them to your location.
Grandpa highlights victim locations and unlocks talents as a Family boost when awake, especially when Family members force animal and victim blood down his throat to fortify him. However, victims can momentarily incapacitate him with rescued bone debris to lower him.
Texas’ moving components will please tactical multiplayer players, but I’m dissatisfied as a fan of the movie’s horrible, skin-breaking, unfathomable fear. I like all of the game’s 1974 facsimiles at first, but after a dozen games, the premise becomes too restricted. I’ve seen recumbent carcasses on the Family’s property too often to be shocked, and I’ve heard Leather face, a match requirement, let his weapon roar too often to be bothered.
Not working for me. Texas Chain Saw is good for carving up greed and selfishness and serving it out like chicken liver, not for its characters or set pieces.
Blood is not enough
In a cross play-compatible multiplayer, an Xbox username like xFartSupreme1989 interrupting your sorrow makes it difficult. The game is still frightening and unexpectedly beautiful—I played it on PC and PS5 and enjoyed marmalade-colored sunsets from both, then screamed when I saw a Family member monitoring me.
I hope new material and competent players will make Texas, as grim as it is, more fun. Death and rebirth under a blazing, neon sun are rare opportunities; I’d like to enjoy them from my console.
The genre-defining movie works because it’s self-contained and doesn’t set genre expectations like an online game. Its story, violence for the purpose of generational violence, is fucking horrifying. Visceral, you can understand it, but you may not want to. Texas the game straddles its own scary story and worshipping the movie from afar, reproducing it with quick, formulaic gameplay.
