Layers of Fear 2 Review: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

As an actor working with an eccentric director on an ocean liner, walk through unsettling memories in a psychological horror game that unfortunately takes one step forward and two steps back.

Layers of Fear 2
Developer: Bloober Team
Price: $30
Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One
MonsterVine was provided with a PC code for review.

Layers of Fear 2 puts you in the shoes of an actor who has been cast in a movie being filmed on board an ocean liner. After receiving brief instructions from the mysterious, unseen director, you find yourself exploring the closed-off ship. What starts out as a normal ocean liner, however, soon shifts into a nightmarish landscape filled with memories from the past.

How is the player character connected to these memories? Who is the director and what is he truly after? These questions drove me through the game’s slow beginning, but by the midpoint I was more interested in unraveling the somber story from the past, while questions about its connection to the present lingered in the back of my mind.

Gameplay largely involves walking through environments and picking up objects, either to read a document or hear a short snippet of dialogue that will help you piece together the story, or to solve the game’s occasional simple puzzles. The environments are beautiful, although the game has an unfortunate habit of switching to monochrome or sepia tones on a regular basis, and the voice acting is good–the director’s sinister musings build the unsettling atmosphere better than anything.

Now, while there are some side paths with collectibles, the game is pretty linear; if you walk into an area with three doors, chances are good two of them will be locked and the third will be where you need to go. The original Layers of Fear made me feel as though I was attempting to explore a normal house with everything being filtered through an increasingly-unreliable perspective, but here it feels more like being transported to other locations and times, following a set path from beginning to end while piecing together events that happened elsewhere. That’s not necessarily a bad thing–a psychological horror game probably isn’t the place to question how you ended up in a specific location–but it does make the game’s acts feel more disjointed.

Like its predecessor, Layers of Fear 2 makes great use of the technique where the environment changes behind you, leading to some of the best moments in the game. And where the original struggled with an overuse of jump scares, making them so predictable they lost their effectiveness, scares are placed more effectively here. On the other hand, Layers of Fear 2 also introduces scripted chase sequences where you run–again, usually along a linear path–from an unstoppable enemy. While the chases do add more tension and danger, their scripted nature made them a bit tedious after a while.

At certain points in the game, you’ll reach certain key decisions that determine which of the game’s three endings you’ll get. These can be as vague as being shown two mannequins and told to shoot one. It really comes down to whether or not you want to obey the director’s instructions or not. Layers of Fear 2 has three different endings, each of which implies something different. None of them really wrap up the story in a solid conclusion.

I enjoyed the snippets of dialogue from the past and I loved my growing unease as the pieces started to come together, but the ending just left me underwhelmed. Layers of Fear 2 might have fixed the biggest criticism I had of the original, but it ended up less compelling overall.

The Final Word
While holding true to the same basic gameplay formula, Layers of Fear 2 takes great steps toward distinguishing itself from the first game. Unfortunately, while this pays off in some respects, Layers of Fear 2 struggles to be as cohesive as a psychological horror game should be.

– MonsterVine Review Score: 3 out of 5 – Average