The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

It's hard not to end up in a place where you as a reviewer, review the game we didn't get, rather than the one that was actually released. I find myself there a bit too often and I know I shouldn't, because there's no real value in reading about my own fantasies and dreams of what this could have been if the developers had chosen a different path, genre, and production process. Still, I find myself in exactly that pointless position, again. I'm currently dreaming about what The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (2023) game could have been.

I'm thinking Resident Evil 7: Biohazard atmosphere with extreme violence and bloody torture from The Evil Within and Outlast, with hints of Amnesia and Resident Evil 4. Imagine a super dark, ultra-scary, violent, atmospheric single-player adventure in the horror genre where you try to escape from the Texas Chain Saw ranch with the psychopathic family and the iconic Leatherface hunting you down. It could have been the most unpleasant horror experience of all-time for the lone gamer. Resident Evil on steroids if you will. Instead, we get a buggy, unfinished multiplayer game that, in my opinion, adds nothing to an already over-saturated genre.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a shameless Dead by Daylight copy with all that entails. This is an asymmetrical multiplayer game where four "survivors" try to escape a team of three killers on three different maps, all inspired by the locations from Tobe Hooper's 70s horror film. For the survivors, of course, it's all about well...survival. Hiding, sneaking, running away, and for the killers it is of course about searching, tracking, hunting and killing to remain successful and win the game. It works exactly like Dead by Daylight with the only real difference being that there are three killers. On top of that, the British game developer Sumo Digital and co-developer, Gun Interactive, has nicked everything from the camera placement/player perspective, the basic game mechanics, the overall design or "look" of the game, the inventory system, quick time event moments, and pretty much every other 'unique' feature that the title contains.

Of course, I understand why Sumo and Gun did it this way. We all do. When a game comes from absolutely nowhere and becomes wildly popular, it's only natural that most developers and publishers will copy it to the letter to try and ride the same wave of success. Naughty Dog copied Tomb Raider in Uncharted and became mega successful, as did Rare when they copied Super Mario 64 in Banjo-Kazooie, Turn 10 when they copied Gran Turismo, or Volition when they copied Grand Theft Auto. There are plenty of examples, and in many of the cases I listed, the inspired game might even be better than the original, but that's not the case with this Texas-based murderfest.

The first thing I want to note here is how horribly intuitive and downright confusingly weird this game starts out. The developers have added layer upon layer of different small systems that form an intricate whole and the tutorial is so poorly styled that I as a player during my first 90 minutes did not understand the most basic functions, which in this case leads to pure and concentrated frustration. I die, die again, die again and die again before I've even had time to understand what all the little mini-systems and functions are and what they should be used for or when they need to be activated during the match.

It also doesn't help that the skill tree system for XP and upgrades is ridiculously unbalanced right now, which has forced me to play with heavily upgraded characters - something that has left me with no chance in many fights. I can appreciate that Sumo and Gun has tried to make something a little more detailed in terms of upgradable characters than what we see in Dead by Daylight, but it has to be balanced properly if it is to work in the actual game, especially online, against other gamers.

Another aspect that is hard to appreciate in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is how clumsy the game mechanics are. Clumsy, awkward and clunky in a way that some fans might associate with the setting and sub-genre, while I think it's just a matter of sheer carelessness. The hitboxes are poorly placed and the animation feels janky, meaning the violent, bloody murders are not cool or grotesque, but mostly strangely ugly and frustrating.

There are a ton of bugs in every other aspect of this game as well, that has left me more annoyed than amused during my ten hours with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The game freezes, crashes, the matchmaking seems partially broken and getting the online matches started has been a disaster since I started playing. Once again, we have a long-awaited major title based on a beloved licence that should not have been released in the state it was rolled out in, at all.

I'm also not particularly fond of the design which, minus the basement under the house where the film was set, looks too cheesy. It's too bright overall, and the characters look like those in Dead by Daylight which is no compliment at all. It looks like a bunch of poorly animated mannequins running around in daylight with poor shadows and dull lighting effects rather than scary darkness, with all that entails. The three different levels are also a bit too different graphically and while I like the map inside the house (it's nice), I don't have much else positive to say about how this game looks.

As with Evil Dead: The Game, this feels, to me, like wasted potential and an iconic film licence used in the wrong way, for the wrong kind of game. I have nothing (basically) against asymmetric multiplayer, but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre does not fit in here, and the condition that Sumo Digital and Gun Interactive has chosen to roll out the game, I cannot accept. With only three measly maps, a single game mode, horrible matchmaking, tons of annoying, game-destroying bugs, stiff animations and monotonous game mechanics, this is not something I can recommend.