It’s equal parts thought-provoking, bleak, and deeply unsettling-the best kind of horror. Layers of Fear 2 is a surreal journey through increasingly nightmarish scenes, drenched in atmosphere, with a tragic backstory that puts everything into devastating context, and the occasional escape sequence from a monster made all the more terrifying for its lack of any distinct form. You can question of whether these moments are “real” or representations of the actor’s psychosis, but the far more interesting takeway is how you respond: do you follow instructions or go off script? What does your choice, whichever one you make, mean for the character you’re playing and the actor underneath that mask? Is there even a difference between the two? The line between real and imaginary is already blurred by the film sets and changes in scene, but it gets even less reliable in key moments where a mysterious, disembodied voice tries to direct you. This combination of existential dread and cinematic imagery comes together in the way Layers of Fear 2‘s story unfolds.
Puzzles are built around framing and perspective, solved more through taking a cinematographer’s eye to your surroundings than a process of logical deduction.
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To open a door in Layers of Fear 2 is to cut to a new scene, but in realtime and with full control of your character-the deliberately disjointed outcome only adding to the sense of unease that permeates. Cinematic editing and shot composition inform its level design and the movement from one scene to the next, abandoning expected videogame notions of seamless continuity as the world shifts and warps around you. It’s also a fascinating journey through the history of cinema, drawing on imagery from everything from The Wizard of Oz to The Shining as it delves into this actor’s broken mind. The question of “who am I?” can be a terrifying one, especially when you can’t find an answer to it, and it’s this existential dread that Layers of Fear 2 leans into. A nightmare trip that starts with a seemingly abandoned cruise liner becomes a journey through film sets and disjointed memories, slowly unfurling the story of an actor who so embodies the characters he plays that he loses his own sense of self. To recap what I said of the PlayStation 4 release, one of the things that makes Layers of Fear 2 so effective is the way it uses the imagery of cinema and role of an actor to tell a haunting story about losing sight of reality. And even with the jump to a less powerful, handheld-focused console, the latest release loses none of that impact.
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Layers of Fear 2, originally released for other platforms in 2019, and now making its way to Switch, is an especially potent case study in how the a surreal, eerie atmosphere and the fractured, tragic story of a broken psyche can combine to create something truly terrifying-not just in momentary frights, but in the sort of dread that crawls under your skin and stays there. Few game developers have quite the mastery of psychological horror as Bloober Team.
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