Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Chainsaw Good / Video Games

Go To

Examples of Chainsaw Good in video games are as follows:

  • Abyss Crossing: The Farewell Chainsaw is an accessory rather than a weapon, and it grants a skill that deals 5 hits, which is similar to how a chainsaw cuts.
  • With infinite ammo and no reloading, the chainsaw in Alien Swarm is a great weapon, especially for characters with a melee bonus.
  • In Amateur Surgeon, a chainsaw is used by the main character as a makeshift bonesaw.
  • AMC Squad features a chainsaw as a temporary weapon as a reference to Doom. The game also features a case of Chainsaw Bad in the form of Chainsaw Cultists, big dudes in masks who charge at the player and saw them to death.
  • The Aqua Teen Hunger Force golf game, Zombie Ninja Pro-Am, features a chainsaw pickup on certain levels. While it is slow and unwieldy, it does a lot of damage.
  • In the game Armored Core-For Answer, there exists a number of Arms Forts which act as the main adversaries, which include a six-legged aircraft carrier, a giant hydrofoil...and a gigantic tank named Cabracan that has 4 multi-story chainsaw blades on the front!
  • Armored Core 5 features the "Grind Blade", six flaming chainsaws that form a drill. Not just any weapon; it is classified as an Overed (Ultimate in the US/EU versions) Weapon, and once activated, completely replaces the left arm and purges the right arm weapon, and one hit will kill any AC it comes into contact with. Steep requirements make this weapon situational at best, but Mech-mounted gigantic sextuple rotating superheated chainsaws!
  • Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon has the RaD Double Trouble, a Grind Blade downsized to fit as a regular (albeit heavyweight) melee weapon, used by "Invincible" Rummy. It's slow, has an awkward hitbox and requires you to get within hugging distance of your target, but when the charged attack lands, it racks up a ton of damage and stagger over multiple hits.
  • Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia gives one of these to the Wrench Wench, Krusche.
  • A new class in Atlantica Online uses chainsaws, despite the modern chainsaw not having been invented until the early 20th century — there were chainsaws earlier, but they were quite different from the device we know and love today — and the game seeming to take place in the 19th century at the latest. This only adds to the already bubbling Anachronism Stew of the setting. The Chainsaw person has ridiculously high stats, save for Dexterity, and can only be made by someone with a level 100 character already made.
  • David and his nemesis Judgement from Battle Arena Toshinden 3 fight with chainsaws.
  • Bayonetta features dynamic, special kills called Torture Attacks. When killing the angel Harmony with a Torture attack, Bayonetta jumps onto its back and produces a huge demonic chainsaw out of nowhere, which she proceeds to cleave the enemy in half with. She then retains this chainsaw as a pick-up weapon. Until it breaks (as all pick-up weapons do), it's the strongest weapon in Bayonetta's arsenal. The only downside is that it's slow. It'll even cleave apart an Ardor or two in just a few swings. If she manages to keep it until the end of the current chapter, she gets extra Arcade Bullets for Angel Attack.
  • In Bayonetta 2, Rodin breaks his promise to not attach chainsaws on Bayo's arm and sells you Salamandra — chainsaws forged from dragon scales that you can equip on your arms AND your feet for potential quadruple chainsaw action. They have a short attack range and lack Wicked Weaves, but when used correctly with their Charge Modifier slashes, they're among the best weapons in the game, capable of raking in combo points something fierce while tearing through even bosses like a hot knife through butter.
  • Bloody Zombies allows you the chainsaw as one of the game's last melee power-ups, and it can slice up zombies like no tomorrow just by holding it near your undead foes. It's slower than bats, katanas, or your trusty knuckle-dusters though.
  • The Bloodborne DLC The Old Hunters adds the Whirligig Saw, a circular saw on a stick, to its already crazy arsenal. It can either be thrusted into mooks spinning until they die or your stamina runs out, or swung around like an axe. It's as awesome as it sounds.
  • A chainsaw is one of BLOODCRUSHER II's possible starting melee weapons.
  • In Bloody Battle, the Chainsaw is one of the primary weapons, deals a heck ton of damage and is an execution weapon on top of that.
  • In Borderlands, Psycho enemies wield buzzsaw axes, though these are usually left unpowered. In Borderlands 2, however, Krieg, the playable Psycho character, has a buzzsaw axe that is both powered and can potentially be loaded with dynamite, making it a fusion of this and Stuff Blowing Up.
  • Broforce is a run and gun game where the player controls affectionate parodies of badass movie characters from the 80s to today. The one of Ash Williams uses his chainsaw as his special attack. Mooks run away screaming in terror at the sight, it deflects bullets back at those who fired them, and is a great way to get through an area in a hurry.
  • Car Battler Joe's weaponized cars can use these to attack opponents, though they're obviously not great long-range weapons.
  • One of the weapons in Cel Damage is a chainsaw.
  • The Chainsaw Incident was a failed Kickstarter horror fighting game developed by ORiGO Games, featuring designs by Masahiro Onoguchi from Tekken and Virtua Fighter. The game involves combat between various supernatural creatures who are all packing a chainsaw-related weapon somewhere on their bodies.
  • Cube chainsaw is mostly there to serve as your Emergency Weapon in the single-player modes, although it is more damaging than the pistol and has enough range to serve as a semi-useful crowd clearing weapon if you're out of grenades or rockets.
  • Dead by Daylight
    • As an expy of Leatherface, the Hillbilly has a chainsaw as his killer power. When it's ready and revved up, the Hillbilly launches into a dash forward that can cover a lot of distance and will instantly put down any survivor he hits as well as break doors and dropped pallets, but it's somewhat hard to control.
    • Leatherface himself was added later, also with the chainsaw as his power. When running the chainsaw, he swings it around side-to-side in front of him while moving at a speed between a running survivor and Hillbilly's dash; just like Billy, hitting a dropped pallet or breakable door will instantly destroy it, and hitting a survivor will down them immediately, but unlike Billy, hitting a survivor extends the chainsaw's power timer. Just be careful to not miss and hit a solid surface, as if you do, Bubba will throw a frustrated tantrum similar to the end of his first movie and become almost uncontrollable by the killer player until the power runs out.
  • Studio Nanafushi's Dead or School makes chainsaw-type weapons an impressive find. They have a medium-level base damage but if you hold down the attack button they hit constantly at an incredible attack rate. Chainsaws also boast an impressive durability (broken weapons do a fraction of the damage). Their value really goes up if the chainsaw has abilities like Slash Wave, Thunder and other powerful attack powers.
  • Dead Rising games:
    • Although it's one of the best all-around melee weapons in the original, being incredibly powerful without the extreme clumsiness of weapons like the sledgehammer, and possessing dangerous 360 degree spin and charging attacks, the chainsaw is too heavy and clumsy to store in your inventory, has to be started up before use, and its fuel supply only lasts a fairly short time after starting. The game also features a smaller, slightly weaker, but far more portable version... which, barring the Infinity +1 Sword, is commonly recognized as the best overall weapon in the game.
    • The sequel takes this further, with a zombie-killing reality game show were the climax involves riding through hordes of the undead with motorcycle-mounted chainsaws. And that's just at the beginning of the game. You may later have double chainsaws◊ mounted on a kayak paddle (which is just the cover art example).
  • Dead Space also has a weapon called the Ripper: it takes it up a notch by being a buzz saw that projects a spinning blade about a foot in front of it. It can then shoot the blade at a distance.
    • Dead Space: Downfall has the Plasma Saw, a more common-looking chainsaw, except that the blade is made of glowing hot plasma.
  • Devil May Cry 5 introduces the Cavaliere as part of Dante's arsenal, a demonic motorcycle than can split off into two giant buzz saws capable of taking down large groups of enemies.
  • Die2Nite has chainsaws. They're about as powerful as you'd expect, but come with some hefty drawbacks. First of all, they're an extremely rare item that most towns will be lucky to find a single one in their entire existence. Secondly, they are found broken and need several parts to fix up. Lastly, they have limited uses and need batteries (thankfully, a very common item) to power them.
  • In the Acorn Archimedes game DinoSaw, you play as a caveman who mauls dinosaurs with a chainsaw.
  • In Disgaea 3, Ax-Crazy Princess Sapphire threatens to open Mao's heart with a chainsaw to save Almaz from being turned into a demon.
  • The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai features a chainsaw used like a heavy sword. It's not used to cut through enemies, only to hack and slash at them, though cutting through an enemy is an optional finishing move. There's also an especially relentless miniboss, the Cyborg Pumpkinhead, who cackles maniacally and barrels at you, rapidly and dextrously swinging a very large chainsaw about. He stops periodically to rev it back up again, and that should be the only time a player would risk getting near him, Teleport Spam or no.
  • The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile: Yuki gets her arm cut off early in the game and replaces it with a chainsaw that can also turn into a chaingun or a shotgun. Also, the cyborg pumpkinhead enemy shows up again, this time downgraded to a recurring enemy, but still wielding his chainsaw. Yuki can have chainsaw duels with him.
  • All the games in the Doom franchise feature a chainsaw:
    • In Doom, Doom II and Doom 64, the chainsaw replaces your fists as the Emergency Weapon once you find it, works like a melee-range chaingun and works quite well as a way to save ammo when dealing with lesser enemies. The weapon proved so popular in the original game that it's the first available weapon in the sequel, so long as you remember to look behind you. That said, in high-level play it's very unfavored by players due to two characteristics: one, it pulls the player into the monster he's sawing, jerking his aim every which way; two, the blockmap bug from the original games and preserved in the more faithful source ports makes hitboxes unreliable for hitscan attacks, which melee counts as. Doom 64 gives the chainsaw two blades, which is more than just a cosmetic upgrade; the hit range and damage are doubled and hitbox detection is much better, making it quite effective against low and mid-tier enemies.
    • The Beavertooth chainsaw in Doom³ deals very high damage per second, and can wipe out even some mid-tier demons as long as you're fleet-footed enough to avoid their melee strikes. Similarly, chainsaw zombies are some of the most formidable former humans and can drop your health to nil in a second or two of contact. As to why there are chainsaws on Mars, a log you can read in-game mentions a delivery error — somewhere on Earth is a group of lumberjacks wondering why they got a shipment of jackhammers instead of the chainsaws they ordered.
    • In Doom (2016) the chainsaw now kills any non-boss enemy you use it on in one hit, and is a great way to get an ammo refill, but each use consumes fuel. Chainsaw fuel is quite rare, and bigger enemies require more fuel to take down, the biggest (the Baron of Hell) requiring all of your fuel. Its presence on Mars is explained as being imported by a black market for unusual weapon enthusiasts.
    • In Doom Eternal, the Chainsaw is an essential part of the Doom Slayer's kit, and is used frequently to restock ammo. It now recharges one stock of fuel over time, but without extra fuel it can only kill the weakest enemies. With three stocks, it can kill stronger demons like a Mancubus, but it lost its One-Hit Kill potential against super-heavies.
  • In DRL, the chainsaw makes an appearance. It has the effect of a berserk pack the first time you pick it up, with the pickup message "BLOOD! BLOOD FOR ARMOK, GOD OF BLOOD!" It is absolute murder in the hands of a proper melee build, and is particularly powerful when modded for damage and the player is berserked.
  • Dusty Raging Fist have albino crocodile enemies who carries chainsaws as their weapons.
  • Another Circular Saw Good example: the serrated metal discs in Dwarf Fortress, which are used in weapon traps. Each disc hits three times per trap activation, and each trap can hold up to ten weapons, so an enemy stepping on a trap entirely loaded out with disc will be hit 30 times by razor-sharp discs in the blink of an eye. Entertainingly, their usage usually triples the amount of dumping required to get rid of each goblin, because of the small body pieces scattered everywhere.
  • In the browser-based game Earn to Die 2: Exodus, the first armour upgrade for all three vehicles brings with it a circular saw mounted on the front. The police car adds a second one poking out of the bonnet like the world's most violent hood ornament, and the van has two small saws mounted on the front instead of one big one.
  • True to its source, the games based on Evil Dead films feature a chainsaw as the main melee weapon. Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick ups the ante with an upgraded one with extended guide bar and diamond-tipped cutting chain.
  • Evil Night, an obscure horror-themed Rail Shooter released for arcades, features zombies resembling Leatherface who attack with drills and weedwhackers. The end boss for the first stage is also a butcher wielding a chainsaw.
  • Fallout has the Ripper, which is another version of the chainsaw sword, which is used one-handed. In the third game they even name one 'Jack'. It's very... effective, as the trope implies.
    • The Pitt DLC for 3 adds the "Auto-Axe" (with its own unique variants), which scales things up to industrial strength.
    • Fallout: New Vegas adds a regular Chainsaw in addition to the Ripper. Since all melee weapons are considered "silent", the Chainsaw is therefore an amazing weapon for stealth kills. The Gun Runner's Arsenal DLC allows the Courier to buy chainsaws and attachments that give +50% to condition (they wear out fast), carbide teeth to add +15 to damage (chainsaws ignore armor so this makes a good thing better), and an alloy frame to decrease weight (from a rather hefty 20 to 12).
    • Lonesome Road, the DLC expansion of New Vegas, adds the Industrial Hand, a cross between a buzzsaw and a Power Fist.
    • The Ripper returns in Fallout 4, sometimes with legendary effects. A Wounding Ripper will pretty much destroy EVERYTHING!
  • Fear & Hunger: Termina: The Meat Grinder, an angle grinder modified with a circular saw blade, and to run on batteries instead of having to be plugged in. Used by an enemy, it's simply a scary weapon. Used by the player, however, it's the best weapon in the game.
  • Final Fantasy:
  • If you choose the Revelation route in Fire Emblem Fates, the Avatar's Yato evolves into the Omega Yato, a mix of chainsaw and Flaming Sword once it reunites with the other four legendary weapons the male royal siblings own. Omega Yato is also Corrin'x weapon in their Super Smash Bros. appearances, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
  • In Freedom Wars, the EZ Falke II is a light melee weapon taking the form of a chainsword.
  • Fruit Ninja has a chainsaw as one of the unlockable blades, which has a higher chance to crit watermelons. This blade was made in response to a MythBusters episode, where the myth of "Can you easily slice through large amounts of thrown fruit, as in Fruit Ninja?" was busted with a sword, and then tested again using a chainsaw.
  • Gears of War features the famous Lancer, an assault rifle with a chainsaw bayonet. Interestingly, while it is as lethal as one might imagine — essentially an instantaneous kill for the poor bastard on the receiving end — it takes time to rev up. The sequel has chainsaw duels. A boss named Skorge wields two chainsaws at the ends of a staff. The chainsaw is a Justified Trope, as it was shown in the Expanded Universe novels that Locust skin is so tough that it often broke the bayonets on the old model of Lancer. Indeed, the Retro Lancer needs a fairly long running start before its bayonet can One-Hit Kill an enemy in-game. It's also mentioned in the novels that Gears have to be careful when slicing with the chainsaw otherwise it could get caught on bone.
    • Gears of War 4 adds the Buzzkill, a heavy weapon that rapid-fires spinning buzzsaws that ricochet off surfaces. Firing one into an enclosed room can easily create Buzzsaw Hell.
  • The Grand Theft Auto series between Vice City and Chinatown Wars has a couple of chainsaws scattered around the map. As the guns dealer from San Andreas would say: "works best in a crowded area".
    • Vice City features it in a revenge mission and gives out other Shout Outs to Scarface (1983).
    • Fittingly, one was in an out of the way hick-like town.
  • .hack//G.U. has angsty Anti-Hero Haseo Dual Wielding short swords (some which are mini-chainsaws, some have spikes on them), a Sinister Scythe and, because he is cool enough, a big Chainsword. In fact, he tries to be so cool he cuts off an opponent's head during a skirmish. That all happens in the Virtual World, so he can do it as many times as he wants with impunity. It's just a game after all.
  • This is the signature weapon of Mika from the Daiku no Gensan video game series — better-known in the US as Hammerin' Harry. The manual for Hammerin' Hero even mentions that her nickname is "Chainsaw Mika"... despite the fact that she actually uses a fan in that game. The cover art has a nice picture of her using a chainsaw, though.
  • Chainsaw Man in Mega Man fangame Hard Hat 2: War Ensemble doesn't use mere chainsaws. He uses explosive chainsaw missiles, which you can acquire for yourself.
  • Haunting Starring Polterguy: In the garage, poltergeist Polterguy can activate a chainsaw a scare the crap out of the family members (mostly main antagonist Vito Sardini, because he hangs around here a lot).
  • Heavy Metal FAKK2 lets Julie wield the mighty chainsword. Unfortunately, you can't use it with the game's Dual Wielding / Guns Akimbo system. Plus, the damn thing gorged fuel like crazy.
  • Alex of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number wields a bright orange chainsaw as her sole weapon, capable of ripping even the heftiest of enemies apart.
  • The first Hunter: The Reckoning game included a chainsaw. It's a terribly devastating weapon and the most effective tool against the Final Boss, but not for the obvious reason: it can cut through the boards over the windows, allowing the sunlight to destroy the master vampire.
  • Infinite Crisis introduces an Atomic Wonder Woman from a ravaged world all but destroyed by nuclear warfare. Her weapon is a chainsaw tied to a long metal pole.
  • In Jables's Adventure, the first boss is the lumberjack, Lumber Jacques, who attacks you with his mighty chainsaw.
  • There are logger-bot enemies in Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier with chainsaws. A boss, the Uber-Bot 888, comes with circular saws about the size of Jak's torso.
  • Killing Floor gives us Chainsaw Good and Chainsaw Bad: the melee-specialist Berserker class can use and get discounts on the chainsaw, which is easily the best melee weapon in the game, dishing out hideous amounts of damage in short order. However, the flip side of this is the enemy Specimen type known as the Scrake, who resembles a psychotic surgeon clad in a butcher's apron with a chainsaw for a hand. He happens to be one of the most lethal types of Specimen.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 features a chainsaw that, unlike normal melee weapons, has a limited gast tank, but you can just hold the fire button down and walk forward and wipe out everything in your path. The character wielding the chainsaw will also taunt appropriately as they lay waste to the Infected, most often while turning a horde of common zombies to paste. And it does pretty heavy damage to everything, even a Tank: you can kill him in about 5 seconds if you can stay close that long. Suitably, it's a good aeapon for drawing aggro, as the engine's noise alerts almost every zombie within render distance. One of the game's "Mutations"note  involves all the players having no weapons except for chainsaws with unlimited fuel.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has the Ancient Bladesaw, which is a laser chainsaw with a hilt. It has one of the highest damage ratings out of all two-handed weaponry, although some of the parts required to make them are hard to come by.
  • The Sawtooth Sword in Lemegeton is actually an unpowered chainsaw. "Unpowered" meaning it works like most other swords.
  • Lollipop Chainsaw has a cheerleader wielding a pimped out chainsaw that could cut through adamantium.
  • In Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, the PTX-class Vital Suit has one of these mounted to its left arm.
  • In Marco & the Galaxy Dragon, Rakka Isezaki is shown wielding a chainsaw on some of the loading screens. It is revealed to be her weapon of choice during the Love arc.
  • Aya gets a mini-chainsaw in Mad Father about a third of the way through the game. Unusually for this trope, it's not used to attack enemies. Aya can only break barrels, crates and other weak objects with it, so it's used more to explore the environment and solve puzzles. The titular mad father also gets a chainsaw, only this one's the real deal. Which he'll try to use on Aya in the final part of the game.
  • Madworld more or less eats this trope for breakfast. The main character has a mechanized arm with a retractable chainsaw built into it. The first miniboss carries a giant dual-bladed chainsaw, which you can pick up as a weapon of your own after you beat the game at least once. Revolving buzzsaw blades are a common environmental weapon. Some of the tougher gangmembers in the Downtown stage carry chainsaws. The Shogun boss uses a spear that consists of a huge staff with two massive buzzsaws at either end. And then there's Kojack, who also has a retractable arm-chainsaw.
  • In the old adventure game Maniac Mansion, you can find a chainsaw in the house but there is no fuel to make it run. In Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders you find a can of gas ("For chainsaw use only!") in a locker on Mars as an in-joke, with the player character refusing to pick it up because "It's for another game".
  • In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, quadruped robot LQ-84i carries a chainsaw on its back, which it picks up and swings around with its long prehensile tail to devastating effect (as do its cheaper, non-sentient knockoffs). It sadly loses this when it's rebuilt into the recon-focused Blade Wolf. Khamsin's Mini-Mecha also carries around a giant axe with a chainsaw blade. Both these chainsaws quite literally clash in the Blade Wolf DLC, resulting in a lot of Sword Sparks and grinding.
  • In Mutant Football League the Chainsaw Massacre dirty trick equips the ball carrier with one. Spinning around while attempting to evade a tackle will result in the tackler getting severely injured, if not outright killed.
  • The world of Nexus Clash is strewn with chainsaws and fuel cans that have little other imaginable purpose. One iteration of the Seraph took this absolutely literally with the Clockwork Blade, a chainsaw powered by literal goodness.
  • Some machine lifeforms in NieR: Automata take advantage of this trope by strapping a circular saw to their torso and rushing you. The building-sized Engels also invoke this trope in a different way by having arms ending in bucket-wheel excavators (which resemble circular saws in design.)
  • The most expensive purchasable weapon from the Nightmare Vending Inc. in A Nightmare on Elm Street (PC) is a chainsaw. It grants you an ability to go though walls until it breaks.
  • In Ninja Gaiden II for the 360, one type of enemy is a zombie with a chainsaw for one arm and a cannon for another. Ya rly.
  • Not Dying Today have the chainsaw as one of the game's later, and best melee weapons, capable of grinding zombies in a pulp just by holding it in front of zombie mooks (without attacking!). It work wonders on bosses as well.
  • Noita has the Chainsaw spell. It has quite high DPS and often gibs enemies, but you must get close to them. It's also useful for cutting through wood.
  • The chainsaw is used fairly realistically in ObsCure II. It's not a weapon, but a tool, meant for cutting through downed trees and other obstacles that lay in your path. It even holds this utility during a boss fight, the player using the chainsaw to cut off a giant plant monster's vine-tentacles when it lays them down on the ground. Jedidiah, on the other hand, uses a chainsaw as his primary weapon — appropriate, given that he's a walking Shout-Out to Leatherface. The final scene where Jedidiah is taken down involves a chainsaw duel between him and Corey straight out of the aforementioned Gears of War (the two games came out the same year).
  • PAYDAY 2
    • The OVE9000 industrial circular saw as a weapon. It's actually not much good for fighting and is meant to be used as an Utility Weapon, to saw open stationary items such as doors, deposit boxes and ATMs.
    • The Lumber Lite L2 chainsaw comes with the Scarface Character Pack as a melee weapon. Like the OVE saw, it's also considered a poor weapon, though for different reasons. It does 70 damage without a Charged Attack, and charging it to full throttle takes a whopping four seconds, dealing 450 damage, and leaving you very vulnerable to attack by the police.
  • Persona 5 gives us a hilarious version of this trope. Within Shin Megami Tensei history, there is a chance a Fusion Dance between two demons/personas could go awry. This leads to humorous scenes enough, but Persona 5 ups the ante in this regard: if a fusion accident happens (with the fusion taking the form of an execution), your two assistants, Caroline and Justine, will break out a huge freakin' chainsaw to lop off the demon's head! Seriously, the results need to be seen to be believed.
    • And in Persona 5 Royal, in the Superboss Fight against Lavenza, if she decides to melee attack you, she does it with a chainsaw.
  • Phantasy Star Online has a hidden weapon known as the Chain Sawd, which is a lightsaber-toothed chainsaw BFS. In practice it's not as effective as the trope would indicate, but its HP-steal special, along with the fact that it IS still effective in combat, mean it has a lot of fans.
  • Phantasy Star Nova has Galation, a gigantic winged machine-beast hybrid unicorn-esque thing. The chainsaws? That's what the wings are made of. There's also one on its tail.
  • In PlanetSide, Terran Republic infantry get a knife with a built-in chainsaw as a melee weapon - in the first game it's very loud when spun up for a stab attack, though the sequel makes it much more quiet, with the loud activated mode reserved for the One-Hit Kill-capable "Ripper" knife.
  • Primal Carnage: The Pyromaniac's main weapon is a "flamesaw", which is a flamethrower with a chainsaw attached to the bottom for melee use. While the flamethrower does a small amount of continuous damage at close or moderate range, the chainsaw is great for tearing through small dinosaurs that get too close (it's generally much less effective against big dinosaurs).
  • Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?: In the sequel, as a reward for collecting all 120 Lucky Dolls, a Female Samurai will appear at the base, with the option to deliver a Chainsaw weapon to the upcoming stage. For Hero Prinny, it replaces his usual daggers, and while it has auto-fire and increased damage, as a trade-off your aerial projectiles are disabled. For Prinny Asagi, it replaces her default junk toss, and is a purely melee weapon. You can ditch it through picking up either the Guitar or Cat item.
  • Quake: The Ogres use chainsaws as a melee weapon against you.
  • The Quake II Mission Pack Ground Zero introduces the Chainfist, which can kill an unarmored player in one or two swings and has unlimited ammo.
  • While the chainsaw was eventually reintroduced in a number of quasi-official mods for Quake, the default melee weapon in Quake III: Arena was the gauntlet, a wrist-mounted circular saw. Along with Quake's nailgun, this raises the question of which powertool Id will weaponize next. The game would yell "Humiliation!" to all players whenever someone scored a kill with it (except the killer, who hears "Gauntlet!" as they score a Medal for a Gauntlet Kill).
  • Rebuild has chainsaws as lootable and usable items. They do give a bonus in combat, but are equally efficient as construction tools... and the best weapons are actually rifles, shotguns or machine guns, meaning their use for killing zombies is limited.
  • If there's one series that has a wet spot for chainsaws, that'd be Resident Evil.
    • In Resident Evil 4, there are chainsaw-wielding Ganados that can kill Leon in one hit. (Though it is worth noting that there are many things in RE4 that can kill Leon in one or two hits, especially during boss battles.) Capcom clearly thought the chainsaw was so cool that the limited edition RE4 game controller was a chainsaw, even though the player never uses one in the whole game. Moreover, one piece of official artwork◊ shows the player character being killed with it. Just for overkill, the Waterworld level in the Mercenaries mini-game features an exclusive enemy who wields a dual-bladed flaming chainsaw and swings it around nonstop while advancing at decent speed, which will automatically decapitate your character at any opportunity.
    • Chainsaw-wielding enemies also return in Resident Evil 5, and while they are still lethal, there's a chance that they may just deal very high damage to the player instead.
    • Resident Evil: Revelations has Scagdeads, bloated, two-headed (more like two-mouthed, really) Ooze with a giant buzz-saw in place of its right arm. Although its standard swinging attack isn't a one hit kill anymore, it does possess an instant death attack where it will grab the player by his/her legs and then brutally grind them to death on their buzzsaw. This attack has a quick animation windup and is always fatal, even with full health. Despite not being electric or having any machinery in their bodies, the Scagdeads's saws sound like electric buzzsaws. This doesn't stop the Comms. Officer-turned-Scagdead from asserting his humanity, which would be funny except for the extremely creepy way he says it.
    • And then Resident Evil 6 brings us the Ubistvo, a gangly monster that has had its ribcage and right hand merge into an organic chainsaw powered by its heart. The name is Serbo-Croatian for "Murder", and it is ''very'' well-named.
    • Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is actually the first main series title to avert this in its main story since Resident Evil 4. However, Scagdeads show up in the Raid Mode, so the trope is still at least present. The main story uses This Is a Drill instead this time, to the same effect.
    • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard has a chainsaw duel for one of its boss fights. The player (Ethan Winters) has a regular chainsaw, while Jack Baker has what only be described as giant chainsaw scissors.
      Jack: Groovy.
      Ethan: That is not groovy.
      • If you completed the game under 4 hours, you'll get electric circular saw, which deals very high amount of damage to the enemies, even bosses.
    • Resident Evil Village has an odd example with Heisenberg's Self-Propelled Artillery. There's a chainsaw mounted on it but it's not for offense. Instead it's used to guard Ethan from Heisenberg's attacks.
  • A Chainsaw is a regular fixture in the SaGa series:
    • The instant-kill Chainsaw is extremely powerful The Final Fantasy Legend: while intended to work only on low-level enemies and not bosses, a bug in the code makes it do the exact opposite, which leads to a rather anticlimactic final battle. This was also incorporated into an axe in Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song (it turns into a chainsaw). The aforementioned final battle even gets a mention as a story in the Library.
    • The Bilqis technique (Fury of Bel'kwinith) actually uses the same stat as the Saw (Agility) in The Final Fantasy Legend. However it will not insta-kill certain enemies/bosses, mostly because of their immunity to instant death and LP damage skills.
    • In Final Fantasy Legend II, you can first obtain the Chainsaw midway through the game. It's an equippable weapon which kills any one mook instantly. Depending on how you plan your stat growth, it continues to be effective all the way to the final dungeon.
  • Saints Row 2 has chainsaws as an available melee weapon, though as you need to complete a very difficult challenge in order to unlock the most players would only see them when they were handed out for certain diversions. Hitting someone with one causes an automatic One-Hit Kill (actually an animation of you cutting the person in half), but it's a fairly slow weapon so whether using it or not is actually a good idea in timed events is questionable.
  • In Scarface: The World Is Yours, the chainsaw is indeed the most powerful weapon, able to one-hit-kill targets and sever extremities. The same also applies if used against Tony by enemies. Hear a chainsaw? Run. They will catch you and decapitate you faster then you can reload.
  • Scarlet Nexus: Arashi's weapon is a chainsaw which she uses her Super-Speed Psychic Powers in order to climb on an enemy hold it against their weak point. The name of her line of chainsaws is "Innocent Rabbit Hug X".
  • Sengoku Basara, as usual, throws out historical accuracy for Rule of Cool and Rule of Fun. The latest installment gives us Muneshige Tachibana, a noble and just samurai who might just be the game's Only Sane Man… who happens to be armed with dual lightning chainsaws. It is every bit as awesome to see (and dangerous to fight) as it sounds.
  • The chainsaw found in Serious Sam has its fuel problem Handwaved by the existence of an advanced fuel cell. Due to how it works, it's an excellent defense against homing fireballs and Zerg Rushing suicide frogs. There is also a type of enemy mook, the Curcubito, that uses a chainsaw and is suitably deadly if allowed to get close.
  • Sharpshooter 3D has a chainsaw as one of the many weapons you can collect to chew up mooks with effective ease. In normal gameplay you obtain it only halfway through, but there's a secret area that allows you to grab it in the first 20 minutes.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey has a chainsaw weapon, with a chance to inflict the fear ailment if you perform a regular attack with it.
    • Shin Megami Tensei IV has the Chainsaw return. This time, however, it can inflict instant death on whatever it hits (which, naturally, will always exclude bosses).
  • The chainsaw weapons in Silent Hill are generally useful weapons . . . except they're all New Game Plus-only. The first game's protagonist, Harry Mason, holds his forward when in ready stance, meaning some enemies will just run right into it (Though not as many as with the Rock Drill, since he holds the saw lower and thus enemies that do a leaping attack are still problematic). James from the second game is not smart enough to do this; he holds his chainsaw to the side, meaning to actually do damage he has to swing or thrust with it. As well, if he gets hit he's stunned out of it and has to rev the thing up again... Which he'll likely get hit again trying to do... The Lying Figures' attack pattern and the tendency of ankle-biting Creepers to share a room with other enemies nudge this one towards Difficult, but Awesome, as it's harder to hit baddies but it puts a bigger hurting on them if an attack does connect. Fun Fact: it's too blurry to see in-game, but the chainsaw as it appears from SH2 onward has the word "BADASS" written down the bar. Yes, really!
  • The Skeleton: In the appropriately-named "Chainsaw Mode", the skeleton trades its sword in for a chainsaw with which to strike you down.
  • Skylanders:
    • Chain Reaction dual wields chainsaw swords. That's not all he does with chainsaws, though. He's also able to create machines that combine a turbine with four chainsaws, charge his chainsaws with electricity and use it to power his machines or call down lightning bolts, and his Sky-Chi lets him operate what basically is a mobile version of his aforementioned chainsaw/turbine hybrids.
    • Chainsaws and buzzsaws are also used by villains quite a lot.
      • There is the villain Shrednaught, a pair of trolls who operate a tank armed with a chainsaw, and it can perform a Spin Attack to slice opponents around it.
      • Another villain by the name of Shield Shredder has a circular saw that he uses as a shield. He is also capable of summoning two giant saws that can be used as makeshift barriers.
      • Trolls, in the first game, acted as lumberjacks (due to the Irrational Hatred Kaos holds to trees) and operated chainsaw mechs during his hunt for the Eternal Life Source.
  • S.L.A.I.: Steel Lancer Arena International has a traditional chainsaw as the melee weapon option for OMSK's кит models of SVs. Kojima one-ups this by supplying their Protons with chainsaw katanas.
  • The GUN Military Truck in Modern City Escape from Sonic Generations is equipped with three circular saws.
  • Splatoon 3:
  • Splatterhouse 2 is the only game in the Splatterhouse series to date to feature a chainsaw as a weapon that Rick gets to use, in any case. The infamous "Biggy Man" boss from the original game has two chainsaw blades in place of his hands.
  • The very selling point of Splatter Master, being that your default weapon is your trusty chainsaw which can slice and grind through hordes and hordes of enemies and even does massive damage to bosses. More often than not each level will have entire acres of dead enemies sliced into half thanks to your chainsaw. You'll need to refuel it regularly at the start of each level, though.
  • While most of the mecha in Sunrider are armed with swords or Laser Blades for melee combat, the Havoc is armed with a gigantic chainsaw.
  • Super Meat Boy eschews Spikes of Doom (found in every other Platform Hell) in favor of Buzzsaws Of Doom. Dr. Fetus also favors using chainsaws with some of his Humongous Mechas, generally in the boss levels.
  • The Assault Blade weapon in Super Robot Wars Original Generation is a Humongous Mecha-sized Chainsword. Quite a number of mecha feature it as a weapon, even the cute Elegant Gothic Lolita Fairlions. In the Original Generations Videogame Remake, Ryusei uses the ART-1, a mecha armed with chainsaw tonfas. In MX, the Garmraid has buzzsaws for knees.
    • In SRW Z, the Gunleon carries a pair of chainsaws on its shoulders, which it can use in combat to brutal effect, as demonstrated when, upon scoring a Dynamic Kill with them, it stabs both into the target and then tears it in half. (And this is one of the least mind-blowing things it does.)
      • Just in case you missed/forgot it in that surge of craziness there: Gunleon does Chainsaws Akimbo.
  • There's a chainsaw in Survival Crisis Z. However, it's one of the worst weapons in the game, only slightly above the knife. It inexplicably doesn't require fuel, but it's clumsy, not particularly damaging, and you have to get in close, easily allowing the Infected and zombies to mob you, or counterattack if you don't line it up right. Even low-end guns like the revolver or SMG are better than it if you have the choice.
  • Bebop in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants In Manhattan wields a chainsaw in his boss fights.
  • Alisa Bosconovitch from Tekken 6 has a retractable chainsaw hidden in each arm. She uses them in throws and some attacks, and can switch to a chainsaw stance that changes all her attacks to strikes with the chainsaws. However, this stance is difficult to maintain for any amount of time as she'll automatically end it if she blocks or takes damage.
  • Terraria features chainsaws as an alternative to axes, similar to how drills are an alternative to pickaxes. They chop trees really quickly, but otherwise aren't good for much; the sole exception is the Butcher's Chainsawnote , that works well as a melee weapon and as a tree cutter.
  • In the Fighting Game Time Killers, the 21st-century fighter Rancid uses a chainsaw as a weapon.
  • Tremulous has a human weapon called the Painsaw, a chainsaw with a blade made of electricity.
  • Johnny Overkill from Turbo Overkill has a built-in, compact chainsaw installed in his shins. Used as a melee attack, it allows him to halve enemies with a single kick. Eventually he also gets chainsaw arms and a chip that allows him to have another chainsaw leg.
  • ULTRAKILL has a weapon called sawed-on shotgun which constitutes a chainsaw attached to a shotgun. It can be used as a normal chainsaw, launched with a returning tether, or punched free from it, resulting the chainsaw bouncing around.
  • Paul Chuck from Um Jammer Lammy has a song about cutting a tree down with a chainsaw, and how his chainsaws are better than those of his rival, Joe Chin.
    NEVER USE JOE CHIN'S CHAINS FOR THEM!
  • Unreal Tournament features one, though normally only through the "Chainsaw Melee" mutator, which replaces the normal Impact Hammer with one. It can be used the same as most other chainsaws with primary fire, or a side-to-side swipe with Secondary Fire that can instantly take off someone's head. It also pays homage to Doom with the pickup message: "It's been five years since I've seen one of these."
  • Unturned is a Wide Open Sand Box Zombie Apocalypse Survival Horror title, so of course it has a chainsaw. It's noisy and individual hits are weak but it attacks very quickly when you hold the button. Unturned gives it a special power rarely seen in video games: its intended purpose of cutting wood, which you use in crafting and construction.
  • In Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga, chainsaws are one of the numerous weapon types.
  • Versus Umbra: The M.O.D. Device is a weapon that places two portals and 20 chainsaws moving between then infinitely, harming all enemies which make contact. It's even described as "The 2 very best things combined into one multidimensional organic dismemberment device."
  • Warframe has the Ripkas, a pair of hand-mounted chainsaws with decent critical hit chance and focusing on Slash damage. Their original purpose was stated as cutting through metal and overgrown wildlife. It even has a unique mod made for increased critical chance and dismemberment of enemies.
    • While the Panthera usually fires vertical sawblades, its secondary fire can hover a sawblade out in front of the player, dealing continuous damage to whomever it hits.
    • Out on the Plains of Eidolon, the Rictis Ghoul can be seen carrying an oversized circular sawblade weapon, known as the Ghoulsaw. After a certain update, the components for this weapon could be acquired by the Tenno.
  • The little-known Xbox game Whacked! has a commercial for a toy called "My First Chainsaw", showing a baby revving up a chainsaw. The Christmas Tree map even has a box of the toy.
  • Wild ARMs 4 has an anti-tank chainsaw. Considering it shreds a train cart to itty-bitty pieces and overkills your characters many times beyond their max Hit Points, it likely does what its name implies. It avoids the usual depiction of the chainsaw though; the character that wields it is one of the slowest bosses in the game, and he needs to waste one turn to start up the chainsaw every time he uses it.
  • The Rip-Saw in WildStar serves a dual-purpose, being a shield and a massive, monster-munching circular saw.
  • In Wolfenstein: The New Order, B.J. employs a chainsaw as a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique by threatening to use it on a Nazi he captured unless he offered up the location of captured resistance fighters. He then saws off his head anyway (albeit with the scene fading to black just beforehand).
  • X-Kaliber 2097 has a boss called "Chainsaw". Who attacks you with a chainsaw (who knew?) that's grafted to his arm.
  • Chainsaw is the most effective weapon inYo! Joe! Beat the Ghosts, although unlike other melee weapons it requires fuel.
  • In Yume 2kki, the collaborative fan tribute to Yume Nikki, the player character Urotsuki's choice weapon is a chainsaw in supplement to Madotsuki's knife in the original game.
  • In Zenless Zone Zero, Corin Wickes of Victoria Housekeeping Co. uses a circular saw on a pole as her main weapon against otherworldly monsters, the Ethereals. Unlike most other examples, she relies on Death of a Thousand Cuts due to her poor per-hit damage or filling an enemy's Break Meter and switching out to a teammate who does more damage. Talents can improve her damage output by increasing the amount of total damage she can do the longer she shreds into an opponent, though.
  • The chainsaw in Zombieville USA kills quickly at close range and stuns them as long as you are attacking.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top