Tripping over itself to share horror pastiche and homages - Psycho, The Shining, Se7en, The Ring, even Amityville's infamous flies - Layers of Fear 2 struggles to establish its own identity, and while Bloober Team cites exploration as one of the game's key pillars, in truth Layers of Fear 2 intentionally hinders your exploration whenever it can, silently locking doors and dissolving exits to prevent you from backtracking. And while their solutions are rarely "difficult", most of Layers of Fear 2's puzzles lack effective signposting, so even a veteran puzzler may struggle to decipher them. The shifts from full-colour to black-and-white start off impressive, but - like so many aspects of this game - it loses its potency each time it's used. The frequent film motifs are overused and ineffective. You'll learn to read the jump scares before they arrive - oh look, there's a spooky mannequin, I bet it'll move just as the light splutters out - and while there's no denying Layers of Fear 2's capacity to pull them off from time to time, the cheap instakills, unbalanced pacing, and unnecessarily long run-time whittle away all the good points. Its initial unpredictability becomes the antonym of what it sets out to achieve, and an over-reliance on horror tropes and jump-scares pokes holes in the tension crafted by the game's superb environmental storytelling. The problem is Layers of Fear 2 recycles many of the same devices of its predecessor, but the extended playtime - double the four/five hours of the original title - is too long. With no internal monologue or external exclamations, it's impossible to ascertain what they're feeling, which irrevocably damages Layers of Fear 2's intensely emotional story if my character doesn't care about this deeply personal story, why should I? Here you play a Hollywood actor who's following a curious casting call - but you're nameless and voiceless in that special way that makes it nigh on impossible for the player to forge any meaningful connection. Layers of Fears 2 hasn't taught you to be cynical just yet.ĭeveloper Bloober Team has taken the spectacular spooks from its original haunted house tale and reframed them in this mysterious ocean liner. You jump as the room trills with the metallic thump of the door swinging shut behind you, panicking as you realise the room has quietly shifted when you looked away, doors dissolving into thin air, trapping you in a dark, tight space with no obvious means of escape. Here, though, in the beginning, your desire to know more will trump your hesitation, tempting you onwards through the reinforced steel archways. Later, when the game pulls you elsewhere and even the jumpiest of players - a group in which I include myself - will become oh-so-acclimatised to the scripted scares, you'll feel the weight of repetition and the poor pacing pull fretfully at the edges of your enjoyment. The disquieting - and deliberate - similarities to Titanic are strongest there, and the low-key sleight-of-hand horror at its most effective. The further you explore, the more you'll notice its once majestic suites are now crumbling and decaying, leaving you with just scraps of notes and musty memories to piece together the unsettling puzzle of double-u-tee-eff happened here. While first-class tables have been set for dinner, decanters left to breathe and napkins fanned in anticipation, the dining hall is empty - everywhere across the Icarus Transatlantic is empty. Layers of Fear 2 is never better than when it ramps up this cloying, almost paralysing atmosphere, leading you through claustrophobic corridors and dank, damp interiors where once fine furnishings lie in sodden, mouldering heaps. Availability: Out now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.Something knows you're there, and it's waiting for you to move first. The silence is a knowing silence, now a watchful one. You're just hearing things, you admonish yourself - it's only the drip of a pipe or the creak of a floorboard you're on edge and have been for ages - but then it happens again and this time, there's no mistake. As the door swings shut behind you - instantly snuffing out the meagre light - something shifts in the darkness. The atmosphere sticks like a sweet, damp odour. A slick psychological horror plagued by poor pacing and infuriating instakills
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