Layers of Fear 2

Genre: First-Person Walking Simulator / Horror

Players: 1

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Review:

Layers of Fear 2 is a First-Person Walking Simulator and Horror game released on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2019, then ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021. While this is the sequel to the first Layers of Fear, and has some gameplay elements carried over, the plot and themes are pretty much all new this time – this game puts players in the role of a Hollywood actor who has taken a role in a film set on an ocean liner, being directed by a mysterious and eccentric filmmaker.

As with other games developed by Bloober Team, Layers of Fear 2 looks gorgeous on Nintendo Switch. The environmental detail in the game’s 3D environments, the lighting, the way glass warps the look of things behind it, the way water looks, it’s all excellent here. And the sound design is quite good here too, though I feel like it’s misused far too often.

What do I mean by that? Ah, well that brings me to my first complaint regarding Layers of Fear 2 – it relies far, far too heavily on jump scares, and it gets to be tiresome very quickly. Tense music plays, you turn a corner, and then… suddenly the music grows in intensity as you hear a… very non-threatening child’s voice. And then a bit later, you’ll see a creepy mannequin. Will it move unexpectedly like you’ve seen at least a half dozen others do?

The thing is, apart from these jump scares and one other thing I’ll get to in a moment, Layers of Fear 2 just isn’t scary. The mostly well-lit corridors are empty save for the increasing mess, and the way the layout of everything is constantly re-arranging while you’re not looking is a trick taken straight out of the first Layers of Fear, and it’s one that has worn out its welcome – now it means that you can never count on anything being where you saw it, so you might as well not bother paying attention to where anything is, or even caring about it. And there you go, Layers of Fear 2, you’ve just created apathy, the anathema of fear.

What’s worse, when moving through an environment no longer means anything, but the game expects you to do so anyway, it just ends up feeling like busywork. After all, if nothing is going to stay put, why should the player even have to move through door after door to get where they need to go? If the layout doesn’t need to make sense, just move the next set piece to the next room and let the player skip over all the shoe leather.

The one moment here that’s actually scary without suddenly striking up the dramatic music and trying to startle you is when you encounter an oozing, flickering monster of some sort that chases you through corridors. However, while scary, this brings with it another problem – the gameplay here was never designed to be conducive to chase sequences. Your turning is sluggish, the controls for opening doors is clunky, and due to these control and gameplay issues you may well find yourself repeating these chase sequences multiple times, robbing them of their scariness and just making them annoying.

As if that wasn’t enough, this game’s story is all jumbled and difficult to parse, something that wasn’t nearly as much an issue in the original Layers of Fear. It doesn’t help that from the very instant you start the game, everything seems surreal and reality start shifting, meaning the sense of “I guess I’m not supposed to care about this since it doesn’t mean anything” extends beyond the corridor layout to the entirety of the game.

I really wanted to like Layers of Fear 2 much more than I did. The presentation here is excellent, but everything else is simply a mess. The gameplay is tedious, the story is incoherent, and what few scares there are to be found here feel cheaply earned, the videogame equivalent of someone jumping out from behind a corner while shouting “boo!”, where it might scare you, but the more the game does it, the more you’ll be frustrated with both the game for falling back on the same cheap trick, and with yourself for getting spooked by it again.

tl;dr – Layers of Fear 2 is a Walking Simulator and Horror game following an actor taking a mysterious gig on a ship at sea. This game looks absolutely gorgeous, but the only scares to be found here are cheap jump scares and annoying chase sequences, and even the story is a bit of a mess. This game might be worth checking out for the visuals, but otherwise I think it’s a disappointment.

Grade: C

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