The Texas Chainsaw Massacre | Review in 3 Minutes

The Escapist 3 Minute Review The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an asymmetric PvP horror game developed by Gun Interactive. As one of the four victims, the immediate tension is great since you start off wounded in the basement with your health slowly draining. Gameplay mostly consists of avoiding detection as you find items to help you escape or momentarily defend yourself if a member of the family finds you. Since you don’t have the same number of possible side objectives at the start like in Dead by Daylight, the tension wanes after a few hours of play since every match

begins nearly the same way. As a member of the family, your goal is to kill the victims before they can escape the level. Each family member starts in a different area, allowing you to either immediately hunt for victims in the basement as Leatherface or lay traps and prep the rest of the level as two other family members. Each villain has distinct powers like Sissy being able to poison items but none were especially remarkable or thrilling. Victims springing your traps doesn’t have much flair and hits with your weapon feel limp, cushioning the impact of everything you

could do to victims. Each run has the potential to capture the feeling of a slasher movie such as when you successfully escape a member of the family or when you can coordinate with the family and cut off a victim.

However, there is a lot of downtime between those moments. For victims, searching for items and hiding from the family can be a long process with little happening that’s scary or fun. As the family, you can only check empty chests and tall grass for so long before the thrill of possibly finding someone wears off. Doing things like

feeding Grandpa blood so he’ll do a sonar sweep of the level to find moving victims, stabbing a family member to stun them, or using your character’s abilities can help some but all of those actions are limited or circumstantial. The gameplay loop tries to differentiate itself from Dead by Daylight by having victims focus much more on stealth and family members on coordination. However, both sides feel slow and repetitive due to long stretches of waiting before you can do anything productive. Each level blended together since they appear to be made out of the same modular pieces of

bush, old metal, and crumbling walls, making the gas station farm and house feel look and play nearly the same. Places like the school or ski resort in Dead by Daylight help change up the visuals enough to keep modular pieces from making every level the same. While each attempt plays out like a slasher movie, it lacks the pacing and editing those movies used to keep the tension strong. After waiting long enough for something to happen, stress just transforms into annoyance. While there’s some depth in what you can do, I spent too much time waiting for something

interesting to happen to fully enjoy it when it did. I’ll likely pick it up again out of curiosity or to play with a friend, but I don’t think it’ll keep my attention for long. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is available August 18th for $39.99 on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, and is available on Xbox Game Pass. REVIEW COPY PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER WRITTEN & EDITED BY JESSE GALENA Closed Captions by @willcblogs