Layers of Fear Once Again Reviews
Our Verdict
Layers of Fear is an intriguing experimental haunted house, just without a proper sense of pacing, it fails to scare.
PC Gamer Verdict
Layers of Fear is an intriguing experimental haunted house, but without a proper sense of pacing, it fails to scare.
Need to know
What is it? A mad artist'southward first-person magnum opus attempt
Await to pay: $xx / £15
Developer: Bloober Team SA
Publisher: Aspyr
Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7 6700K, 16GB RAM, GTX 980 Ti
Link: Official site
Creative blocks can feel truly maddening. To have an idea that exists in an ephemeral infinite just beyond reach is like having your face pressed to the windows of a sweets emporium later on closing. The choice: carry on or throw a brick through the glass.
In Layers of Fear, you lot play as a formerly renowned and unnamed painter whose critical success starts to fade later a series of domestic tragedies. You accept on his perspective as he attempts to consummate his magnum opus while his mind quickly unravels. It'due south a videogame take on the mad artists' Imperial Dissolution of Reality, but I expected more subtlety in a terror and so psychologically driven. Layers of Fearfulness skirted right by the potential of its premise and hitting me over the head with dozens of spooky baby dolls. Information technology's a artistic, excessive haunted business firm without near no sense of tension framed by a curious, simply unsurprising narrative.
Indicate Heave
Layers of Fear is at its best in the opening minutes. A mansion foyer resolves from black, and I'1000 looking through the optics of the creative person. With my crippled leg, I hobble from room to room, opening drawers, reading the occasional notation or newspaper clipping, familiarizing myself with the space and its former occupants (encounter: Gone Abode). Just before I tin emotionally attach myself to the home or its early on history, I'm thrown right into Deed II, where I mindlessly traverse a series of hallways that plough in on themselves and lead to casuistic rooms with locked doors until—Boo! the next jump scare completes. Nonlinear storytelling can be very effective with the proper context, I just establish it hard to be horrified before I knew what was at stake.
There are still plenty of messages, notes, and clippings to detect that fill in the events leading upward to the mad artist'due south plummet. But in that location's less incentive to explore every mind-hallway cupboard and cupboard without a sense or orientation or permanence, especially because listen-drawer #027 only houses a drawing of a winged demon rat for narrative convenience. Found-object and epistolary storytelling feel capricious unless they can speak to the specific space they're in or objects they directly chronicle to. Gone Dwelling's Christmas Goose clued me into an entire family'due south traditions and humor. A winged rat demon drawing tells me something I already know: the mad artist is, well, mad.
The residual of the game rests too heavily on tired horror tropes—baby doll imagery for instance. When they starting time appear, it feels similar homage, a small jumpscare nod to an institutional staple. Boo! Bank check it out, I'm a scary-looking doll! Only then the baby dolls keep coming. A wailing baby cry hangs out for a while. I explore a few more rooms, turn around and, guess what? That empty wall? Full of croaky porcelain baby dolls. At that place'due south twenty minutes of the stuff. One cuts me off in a long hallway in a dead on dart only to slam their caput on a dresser. The incessant percussive string hits announcing the inflow of more than baby dolls first lose their jumpscare PA power. A surreal ride on a miniature carousel leads to some floating doll heads. Another doll stands almost a crib and repeatedly smacks their head on the railing. I'm laughing now. Perchance this is one of those titular layers I'one thousand peeling back.
Paint thinner
Fifty-fifty though Layers of Fear fails to scare, information technology's a pretty short, breezy ride through the mad machinations of the thespian-protagonist's heed. I filled in the necessary blanks to empathize where the story was going early on, but marvel kept me around in hopes of seeing the narrative follow through, peradventure twist and turn along the manner. It didn't. And, if you can run it well enough, the environments and visual effects can look cool, at the expense of spooks and operation. When a however life painting of fruit starts spitting out apples, slowly first, then in massive waves to an orchestral crescendo, I'chiliad not scared as much as intrigued past the physics and visual event. Damn, wait at those apples go.
Even the virtually creative scares hit with the impact of a dime-sized Jason Voorhees
Similar horror gags brand up the majority of the experience. Hallways twist and plow without adherence to logical space, environments change in your periphery, paintings melt and warp and express mirth when you're not looking; in that location's a huge variety in how the game tries to scare, but information technology tries so often—literally virtually every room—that even the most creative scares striking with the touch on of a dime-sized Jason Voorhees. And even if the effects look dainty, the framerate stutters without warning on a powerful PC. Nausea, another layer of fear?
Madness is ripe territory for games; interactivity allows players to take part in creation, perfection, and to barrel up against repeated failure and wild shifts in perspective. But Layers of Fear only wears madness every bit a sleeky narrative glaze to play around in a first-person haunted house. The playful attitude leads to some interesting ideas for the genre, they're just wrapped and so tightly with tropes and jettisoned at the player with enough force to knock out whatever semblance of horror.
Yes, I'm not quite sure what'southward going on here.
Paintings tend to melt in Layers of Fear.
Notes, messages, and the like drop creepy narrative hints.
A jogging porcelain doll.
Put that child in time out.
Unlock your mind.
A baby doll looking dour.
Layers of Fear
Layers of Fear is an intriguing experimental haunted house, but without a proper sense of pacing, it fails to scare.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/layers-of-fear-review/
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