Based on an old horror franchise of the same name, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre bring a new addition to the asymmetric multiplayer genre of games. Surely a welcome release to fans of the franchise (of which I am not having not watched any of the movies) but will the game be able to stand as a cult classic, or its own or will it be cut down.
Attempting to set itself apart from Dead by Daylight, the dominant asymmetric multiplayer game on the market today, TCSM opts for team based on both the killer and survivor side, as well as a non player character occupying one of the killer slots known as Grandpa. Grandpa must be fed by players using blood found throughout the level, granting the killers powerful abilities as well as map awareness. It makes for an interesting risk reward mechanic for the killers; do you sacrifice time you could spend hunting the survivors to make your game easier in the late game, or rely on your own strengths to find them early?
Similar to DBD, the killers in TCSM have different innate abilities, and every team must have at least one Leatherface (or Bubbah for the DBD players out there). You're tasked with finding survivors who start in the basement, work their way up to the surface and attempt to exit through one of the many extraction points in the level. Many of the killers have a weak attack that they can use, with the exception of Leatherface who has a skill based one hit kill shot using his iconic chainsaw.
In my opinion the game is very interesting but fails in that it is very survivor sided. Compounded with the fact that queue times can take forever and auto-targeting being too aggressive (lost many kills to survivors that just ran in tight circles), I say this is a good diversion from DBD for a week or so, but as is so often the case fails to fully pull me away from the king in the genre. Maybe if they buffed killers a bit I could see myself coming back and giving it another shot.
--Ruckus