It's golden hour on a Texas homestead, and I'm limping away from a dilapidated house towards a dirt road. The Slaughter Family is at my heels, taunting me with japes and revs of a chainsaw engine. My friends are dead after being stabbed repeatedly in the driveway. Worse still, I've run out of stamina and have already been slashed several times across the face by a rangy, greasy man determined to finish me off. As I get closer to the main road, Leatherface catches up, shoves a chainsaw through my gut, and drags it straight up to my chin. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre devs scream in despair, and I can hear the yells of other team members not on game chat echoing in the background.
This new 3v4 asymmetrical horror game from Gun Interactive (the studio behind the asymmetrical Friday the 13th game) is as raucous and macabre as you'd expect, but it's certainly not a carbon copy of other games in the genre – or even their own. "We don't want to do the same thing twice," insists brand strategy lead Matthew Szep. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is its own murderous beast, one that handles its source material with a special kind of reverence; one that favors stealthiness over brashness. The encounter above was one gruesome highlight during my hands-on time with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it was far from the only one.
Developer: Sumo Nottingham Publisher: Gun Interactive Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC Release Date: 2023
I play my first round of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as Connie, one of four Survivors. Connie's adept at lock-picking, and though skill trees are off-limits in this build, there'll be plenty of opportunities to shape her character when the game launches in full. Connie's lock-picking skills
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