Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game

 Based on a true fantasy

So there's a certain breed of video game out there that exists just outside the all-encompassing confines of the 'mainstream'. A game type that wiggles it's wily way into every single viable horror property of all time and slowly delineates all video game horror into exact clones of itself so that it's hive-mind infection can gestate and spread. I am talking about the Dead By Daylight disease which has become all and every multiplayer horror game now. Of course, the type of game I'm talking about technically reaches further back than Dead by Daylight, and is actually more appropriately known as 'asynchronous multiplayer games', but DBD is arguably the most successful game in the context I'm talking about. Whilst no horror fans actively ignore this game like the plague it is, these types of games have enjoyed acceptance and reverence, to the point where even other independent properties are bowing down to the DBD formula supremacy. Hence, bizarrely, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre game that was recently officially announced at the Game Awards.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an old classic cult horror movie that pushed a style of presentation which took advantage of rough techniques and grungy film making in order to simulate a sense of authenticity and, ideally, conjure some genuine peril from the audience. (Or at the very least, make them feel uncomfortable and/or unclean from having watched this.) Helped along this goal was the assertion made by the film that it's events were based on a true story, which it now seems was such a close-cut line-riding exercise in technicality that it would be lambasted if that same director tried to say that today. No actual murders involved a man wearing a human skin mask hunting down people and feeding them to pigs our whatever, that's a total fantasy. But there are various cases here and there, some related to murders other to just various injustices of the day, which the director drew creative fuel from. So in an abstract sense, yes the movie was based on true events, in any real sense: No, stop lying.

So it's a little disingenuous off the bat for the game to be declaring the same bold claim in their trailer, just as it's questionable how they think any originality can be claimed when you're making another bloody asynchronous multiplayer horror game! Because how else can you feasibly think of making a game off a movie franchise like this? The equation works like this: you have one player in the match who is granted the all-powerful ability of the killer and the other members of the match are merely their fodder who's job it is to come together and work out how to escape or overpower their assailant. This has been done in Dead by Daylight, Friday the 13th, Evolve, the popular Gmod game Prop hunt (and the recent new release 'Prop Night'), Predator: Hunting Grounds, Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood's optional multiplayer mode, and a crapton of indie multiplayer horror games that I can't pull from the top of my head right now. This isn't exactly the 'swansong' of creative horror concepts.

And what's more, it's really hard to try and imagine what any newcomer to this type of game can do which Dead by Daylight hasn't already done. As it exists, Dead by Daylight is sort of a framework for horror franchises to be thrust upon it, constructed as a small arena of miscellaneous escape tasks thrust upon one team of players and interrupted by a singular enemy monster controller by one lucky killer player. And this groundwork for the game has proven to be incredibly versatile for the sorts of franchises this game wants to work with. It's seen crossover characters from Nightmare on Elms Street, HALLOWEEN, Scream, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Stranger Things, Hellraiser and, oh look at that, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That's right, Leatherface is already in Dead by Daylight, so why did he need his own game again? (Asking for a confused friend.)

What we've seen so far regarding the game is lean as far as trailers go. Even going so far as to call it a 'teaser' seems generous, as it's mere existence makes up the bulk of the trailer's weight and we'd have come away just as satisfied from a tweet of the logo. Or heck, just a screenshot of the legal document confirming the trademark filing. They gave us nothing to work with. So aside from the multiplayer angle we've heard confirmed, this game could be an asymmetric monster versus LA Noire detective style game. Which would be... actually that sounds relatively cool. Can we have a game that does something unique like that, rather than one that's going to have us running through endless cornfields whilst chased by a chainsaw wielding man with a weird run cycle? And why is the automatic answer to that going to be no? 

This game is being fronted by the same developers who made Friday the 13th, which in their defence was a slightly more complex version of the Dead by Daylight formula, but one by a hair's breadth. As in, there was bit more exploration, the maps weren't so formulaic, (or at least: Not formulaic to DBD's standards but their own) the survivors had multiple options for their overarching goals, and balancing was a chief concern throughout the game's entire life cycle. Well, that and connectivity. I just can't help but wonder if the team isn't perhaps going backwards with the properties they've acquired, because surely Friday the 13th has more legs to it than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I mean, discounting the fact that I'm fairly sure Jason has more differing appearances for skins, Friday the 13th had movies set all over the place and the team never even got around to covering his brief jaunt into space! (They were planning to but a lawsuit ruined that chance before the big day.)

What new idea could Chainsaw bring to the table to prove itself a worthy successor and not just a replacement brand for the whole Friday the 13th debacle? Right now I'm genuinely asking because all I can pull from the top of my head is that they could make the killer less scary by stripping the supernatural elements that Jason players enjoyed. Admittedly, I've not see the wider Chainsaw Massacre franchise, so Bubba could later transform into a voodoo super deity for all I know, (I have been informed that the game is creating it's own killers for the universe, so there's your diversity) but the grit and warped believability of his presentation is what made this character scary to begin with, and I just do not see how that will translate into a video game at all. Usually, when a game wants to try and mess with it's audience on that level it's required to break the confines of the magic box and start actually being a pest with meta files, as is the case for games like 'Doki Doki Literature Club'; but something tells me the team aren't going to be going that path with this. Maybe the idea of wider maps and daytime action will be a breath of fresh air on this exclusively night-themed genre game type- or maybe this was a bad idea from conception.

I know it seems like I'm actively hostile towards this game's existence, and that's because I kind of am. The horror genre in entertainment is one that has been besieged ceaselessly over the years by endless barrages of low-effort copy-paste trash for it's many sequels and spin-offs. It's practically the calling card of horror franchises. I don't want gaming used as a new vehicle to continue this destruction of the horror genre! I want better for our horror franchises than this! But then, who am I against the overwhelming numbers of multiplayer horror fans who don't care they're buying the same game with different skins over the face because it's this particular skin that they want to see. Heh, from that perspective maybe this game is more in tune with the legacy of Leatherface than I'm giving it credit for...