Layers Of Fear 2 Review

Platform: PC

Rating: 3.5/5

Masters of suspense and abstract horror game design, Bloober Team return with the sequel to their 2016 magnum opus, Layers of Fear.

Layers of Fear 2 delivers around 5-6 hours of pure, heart-stopping terror, broken down nicely with simple puzzles and disorientating, labyrinthian hallways full of audio and visual cues ready to make you jump out your skin.

It’s genuinely a delight, and well worth checking out for anyone interested in horror, or just impeccable environmental storytelling.

Where the first game focused on an insane portrait painter obsessed with creating his finest work yet (even to the point of using his beautiful wife’s body parts to create the piece), the sequel puts you in the shoes of a famous Hollywood actor undergoing an unconventional test from his director, in order to get into character for his latest film role. Set aboard a rocky cruise liner, the game switches between ‘reality’ and distorted flashbacks to create a very opaque, heavily symbolic story that leaves much to be interpreted, and is incredibly fun to puzzle over.

Layers of Fear 2’s stand-out quality is absolutely its expert grasp of unsettling atmosphere. Those who allow themselves to become fully immersed in the experience will encounter subtle visuals that will stop you dead in your tracks, and rapt sound design that can make you jump and look around your room for that whisper you heard beside your left ear.

Using headphones is absolutely the way to play, as Layers of Fear's less-intense portions are where the atmosphere truly gets to shine. Allow yourself to look past the thinly explained story and completely blank, emotionless protagonist, and you'll realise this game’s strengths are in environmental design, alongside overarching feelings of dread and mystery.

Gameplay-wise, there is only really one main mechanic, and that is opening and closing doors. However, it's done by clicking and sliding them open, as seen in the likes of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. While this definitely adds to immersion, panic and urgency during some mid-game chase sequences, playing on a PC with a gaming mouse resulted in some fumbling - and even struggling - to open a door in time to avoid an instant death.

Hopefully a console controller doesn’t have this problem.

As mentioned above, the game does have some simple puzzle designs, and others that are simply bizarre that you solve simply by seeing what you can interact with in any given room. There is one instance that sees you locked in a room with a desk fan and a tap, and the combination of which tap is running actually helps you escape the room. While this may initially frustrate some players, it is actually yet another strength of the game. In sharing with the hopelessness and confusion, we are truly experiencing the protagonist’s journey as if it were our own. In this world, nothing makes sense, and when you start to walk into a room expecting things to happen, it’s often the complete opposite.

However, I cannot ignore the blatant interruption that this places in the way of the pacing, preventing the overall experience from being in any way smooth.

New to Layers of Fear 2 are optional collectables in the form of photographic slides and movie posters, that will gradually begin to decorate your quarters, and give an extra bit of incentive to continue replaying the game even after finishing it once - a nice way of making the £25 price point a little more worth it.

Featured also are multiple different endings, giving each new game plus run some new opportunities as you try and unlock them.

There are several subtle references to the first game, also, that will delight those who played and enjoyed it. Early on in the game you will find a room full of artists equipment, and throughout the story you are encouraged by rats, and plagued by creepy portraits - as well as that one amusing sequence that involves a kitchen full of exploding fruit, a particular favourite take-away from the first game for myself.

But what does it actually do different, and is it an improvement over the first one? The short answer is: Absolutely.

While the mechanics remain largely the same, and the visuals and sound design are stellar as ever, I was delighted to find that the sequel also contained obnoxious and frightening changes to the environment while you weren’t looking. You can enter a hallway that is seemingly empty, and then turn around to discover that the path you’ve just walked is now blocked by a terrifying mannequin holding a gun.

Alas, yes, the game now has mannequins. Because everybody is scared of mannequins.

Not only mannequins, but also a distorted, supernatural spectre that will pursue you relentlessly, subjecting you to a hugely drawn-out, loud instakill sequence that does start to become ever so frustrating after the 6th time you’ve fumbled a door handle.

To summarise, it is far from a perfect video game. While it offers a much wider range of puzzles and sequences to play through than its predecessor, it suffers from being a too obscure too often, and that leads to the loss of some of the weight in the story that most players will probably not forgive. Those who will enjoy becoming completely immersed will take delight in puzzling over the situations that plague our protagonist throughout the story, and theorising over the heavy symbolism even after the game has long since revealed its ending.

Definitely one for the jump-scare adrenaline junkies, Layers of Fear 2 offers a hearty mix of slow, calculated suspense, and intense, terrifying chase sequences. In the end we've got a solid few hours of entertainment, and more than enough heart palpitations to go with it.