Christmas Massacre (PC)

Powah Dunk | January 11, 2022 | Review | No Comments

Christmas Massacre is Puppet Combo’s Christmas gift to you all, much like a puppy though the game isn’t just for Christmas but for life too. Bring on the Grindhouse.

Christmas Massacre unlike the studios previous title Murderhouse takes a different approach, instead of being the hunted you are the hunter. Larry the mentally fragile mass murderer to be exact.

The game starts out as young Larry being scolded and told you can’t enjoy the Christmas party. Larry isn’t about that life and after a brief section explaining how stealth works sees you cutting down an asylum full of nuns.

Skip forward and Larry is an adult, it’s Christmas time and his tree Bill has just told him to murder everyone, Larry is a rational and nice guy so takes his kitchen knife and heads out to give his tree the Christmas present it asked for, a Christmas Massacre (eh, you get it?!).

Christmas Massacre is essentially a budget, bite size, psychopathic version of Hitman. You hide in the shadows as your only form of stealth and for the most part you only have your knife, each stage is trial and error figuring out the best way to murder the innocents and stop them escaping which results in a fail.

Controls are fine, the knife swing is a little jarring at first until you get used to it being attached to where you’re looking instead of the direction you are facing.

Visually Christmas Massacre is the same standard as Muderhouse with all that gritty VHS/PSX charm intact, it’s just as tweakable too allowing you to create your ideal homage experience.

Christmas Massacre clocks in at around 2 hours long and while that doesn’t seem much it’s all killer and no filler. It’s a cheap and charming title and more proof that Puppet Combo are able to provide bite size, fun and worthwhile Grindhouse experiences from both horror and slasher genres.