Texas Chainsaw Massacre PS5 Review

When The Texas Chainsaw Massacre game launched back in August 2023, it felt electric. The atmosphere was suffocating, the sound design was a masterclass in tension, and the new 4v3 setup delivered something genuinely fresh for the asymmetrical horror genre. For a few weeks, it looked like we finally had a new heavyweight to stand beside Dead by Daylight and Friday the 13th.

I remember thinking that Gun Interactive and Sumo Digital had captured lightning in a bottle, and for a moment it seemed the genre had a real competitor again.

Two years later, I have a much clearer picture after spending time with the PS5 version, revisiting the game’s troubled updates, and watching the community rise and collapse. The real question now is not whether the game launched well it did. The question is whether Texas Chainsaw Massacre is worth playing on PS5 in 2025.

A Brutal 4v3 Formula that Still Hits Hard

The core gameplay remains the best part of the entire package. Three killers known as the Family face four victims trying to escape the property. The structure adds tension that other games in the genre have struggled to achieve because teamwork matters on both sides, and every match pushes you to play cautiously and think two steps ahead.

I still find playing as the Family the most enjoyable role. Cutting off escape routes, setting traps, and feeding Grandpa blood has a certain chaotic fun to it. Hitchhiker remains one of the best designed characters in the roster because he can squeeze through tight gaps and harass victims with relentless slashes. Even now, the ragdoll physics collapse into weird positions that are more comical than frightening, and the long standing bug where Grandpa drinks floating blood vials still appears. It has been in the game since day one.

Playing as a victim is stressful in all the right ways. Your controller thumps like a heartbeat and the chainsaw noise grows louder as Leatherface draws near. It creates genuine panic. The moment you slip through a tight corridor or hear the Family above you is always tense. I will admit that I am a lazy victim who tends to hide until someone else has handled the hard work of gathering tools. It does not make me proud, but it is honest.

Match pacing is something players often overlook. Most rounds last between ten and fifteen minutes, and the structure encourages careful movement rather than pure chaos. There is a lot of tension during those moments between encounters because you are never quite sure who will find who first.

Rush Week improves this dramatically and remains the most exciting mode in the game. The tighter map, the larger pool of victims, and the police timer turn every session into something more urgent, which is something the base game often lacked.

A Strong Launch Followed by a Content Drought

Looking back, the issue was never the concept. The problem was the complete absence of long term support. The game launched with only three maps and no offline modes. That content shortage crushed the replayability almost immediately. Within a few weeks, people had memorised every hiding spot and item spawn. New players struggled because they had only short video clips for tutorials rather than guided practice. It created a steep learning curve and match after match with confused teams.

This content drought began draining the community quickly. On Steam, the game lost well over ninety percent of its launch players. PlayStation held on longer, but the decline still showed. The foundation was strong, but the roadmap simply did not support the player base that was willing to invest their time.

Four Months Later – New Content Arrives, But Not the Right Kind

The first real update arrived with a new map and two new characters. Exciting, right?

Well, only partly.

The map was free.

The characters? £10 each.

At a time when players were begging for core content, bug fixes, and balance updates, the decision to charge such high prices for new characters felt tone-deaf. Especially when players had only recently paid full price for the game.

What made this worse was the fact that, unlike other games in the genre, you can’t grind for characters. If someone selects that DLC character before you, you’ve just wasted your money. And with cosmetic kill animations going for £7 and premium Leatherface skins hitting the £16 mark, the community felt like they were being squeezed dry rather than supported.

The game needed more content to survive, not pricey character packs, especially when you could not guarantee you would even get to use the character you had paid for.

This approach made the remaining players feel as if the priority had shifted toward monetisation rather than long term support.

The result? Even more players left.

A Mid Development Studio Switch and Slow Patches

In early 2024, things became more complicated when Gun Interactive quietly replaced the original developer, Sumo Nottingham, with Black Tower Studios. The community was told there was nothing to worry about, but the slow patching and persistent bugs told a different story. Animation glitches, clipping issues, broken kill interactions, floating objects, and match pacing problems all lingered for far too long.

Even worse were the balance problems, such as stun locking, which had already been solved in Friday the 13th but somehow resurfaced here. Some patches even introduced new issues that had to be addressed in later fixes. It felt like support was slipping away rather than stabilising.

PS5 Performance: Surprisingly Solid

The PS5 version is one of the more polished builds, and it avoids many of the technical issues seen on other platforms. You get two graphical modes: Performance and Resolution.

Performance Mode targets 60 frames per second at roughly 1440p, and in my experience the frame rate was stable throughout every match with no noticeable dips. The lighting, reflections, and general atmosphere look excellent at this setting, and it is the mode I recommend for nearly everyone.

Resolution Mode appears similar to the Xbox Series X on paper with its 4K target, but the PlayStation 5 version runs with an unlocked frame rate that floats around forty frames per second. This gives it a smoother feeling than the Series X equivalent, which is locked at thirty frames per second in its high resolution setting.

Honestly the only interruptions I ran into were the occasional stutter or brief lag spike during online play, which seems to be tied more to server behaviour than to the console itself.

The game’s image quality is strong, and the outdoor areas look particularly clean and vibrant for a horror title built on last generation hardware. Characters and foliage can still look flat during close inspection, and the game’s animation glitches often undermine the art direction, but the core technical performance on PS5 is stable and responsive. It is easily one of the best platforms to play on.

Loading times cannot be fairly measured since this is an online only game, and most of your waiting happens during matchmaking rather than level transitions.

In terms of responsiveness, my button inputs on PlayStation 5 feel fine in both Performance and Resolution Mode, but online latency is a different story. Living in the UK, I’ve noticed a slight delay when grabbing items, triggering prompts, or slipping through tight spaces, especially during busy chases. It is not input lag from the console, it feels more like server delay, and other European players have reported the same thing. Several community threads point to the possibility that matches still favour US-based servers, with people in EU seeing higher ping, delayed prompts, and killers landing hits during transitions where you should already be safe.

It doesn’t make the game unplayable, but the network latency can definitely affect certain encounters.

Rush Week: A Glimpse at What This Game Could Have Been

Rush Week deserves its own mention because it fixes nearly every pacing issue in the base game. The sorority house map is tighter and easier to navigate, the larger victim count keeps the action flowing, and the police timer creates proper urgency. It shows how strong this game could have been with better foundational structure.

I still return to Rush Week now and again because it feels like the complete version of the experience, even if the rest of the package does not match that quality.

The Final Update and the End of Support

In May 2025, Gun Interactive confirmed that Texas Chainsaw Massacre would receive no new content or patches after one final update. Development was finished. The explanation given was that the game had reached its natural creative end.

Players were disappointed because it did not feel like a completed project. It felt more like an early exit. The plan to eventually move the game to peer to peer matchmaking only reinforced that impression. A project that launched with promise had been cut short before it ever reached its full potential.

Final Verdict: Is It Worth Playing on PS5 in 2025?

There is still enjoyment to be found here, especially with friends. The tension is sharp, the atmosphere is chilling, and the 4v3 formula still feels clever. Performance on PS5 is smooth, and Rush Week remains a standout mode that almost justifies returning to the game on its own.

The bigger picture is hard to ignore, though. The lack of content, the aggressive DLC prices, the steep learning curve, and the end of development all weigh this game down. Even with a strong concept, the mishandling of the project ultimately prevented it from becoming a modern classic.

I for one, will be heading straight back to Dead by Daylight until something meaningful comes along to knock it off its throne. The upcoming Halloween Game has the potential, but that doesn’t release until September 8, 2026, so we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre never failed because the gameplay was bad. It failed because the potential was not supported.