The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Review (Bernkastel)
This is one of those moments where I wish steam had a mixed review option, because honestly - the game is pretty damn fun to play. It serves its purpose very well as a party game, with a decently difficult learning curve to do well in consistently.
You have brutal executions, tense-ass gameplay, and of course everybody's favourite Bubba! The game, at its highest is genuinely some of the best fun I've had in a while.
Problem is, when the game is NOT at its high - it's downright frustrating. Right now, the performance/lag spike issues on kill animations are completely awful. The time a decent victim can take to escape is a smidgen too low right now, but one could argue that most Family players just suck atm, so that's not really a game issue as it stands; more of a skill issue :P
However, there are some things that cannot be overlooked. First of all, the Slaughterhouse map is awful. Genuinely downright awful. I have not heard of a single person praising this map, which is a big shame because the other two maps are creative, and genuinely enjoyable to play in. Slaughterhouse suffers from a myriad of problems from map size, to map safety, to really inconvenient escapes for both Victims & Family.
Secondly, the leveling system is a creative, yet odd choice. Every time you level up, you receive skill points. That's amazing! But the problem is; early levels, you'll breeze through. However, once you hit the double digits, this leveling up slows down to an utter crawl. I get the incentive is to respec your entire character to dump points in another, but this ultimately comes down to being an inconvenience/annoyance since you can't do this while waiting for a match.
Thirdly, the connection & matchmaking issues (which thankfully should be getting resolved soon!) are awful. Every 2nd/3rd game, someone in the party has an issue. Either they have a network error, the game just boots them out or their supplied credentials are invalid. The matchmaking is another problem entirely. Once someone leaves your lobby, it's a complete coin toss whether you will get that lobby filled up again. Also, the timer is too long - having to wait nearly a full 8 minutes before getting into a match that could last a minimum of 30-45 seconds if you're unlucky is just not good.
Fourth of all, Sissy. Her strength right now isn't her poisons, it isn't her chasing capability. It's the fact she brings down your FPS to a spike of utter lag & nonsense as well as inverting your controls. It's super unhealthy this needs to be addressed asap. Most people just leave a Sissy lobby purely because they just can't run the game decently enough to actively combat her.
Last of all, no key mapping/motion blur options on release in 2023? Seriously? I know you can lower your post-processing for motion blur, but what's the excuse for the lack of key mapping - the same thing happened with Friday the 13th and people complained then, as well.
To conclude, this entire review highlights what I believe to be the issues with the game, but with that being said - I still absolutely think it's a fantastic game. I just can't recommend it at full price on steam for what it is; if you're interested and want to play it for yourself, snag it on game pass for much cheaper instead!