Yesterday I was up early enough that I did a rare Saturday stream which included randomly picking a game from my PC TBP pile and firing up.
The winner? Layers of Fear 2!
The loser? Me! 🤣
Okay, it wasn’t THAT bad, but it was not a game I can see myself finishing either. Graphically, it’s quite well done and the sounds were well done as well. It started out decently, setting a horror scenario of being an actor stuck on a cruise ship with a messed-up director and some really great mechanics of a constantly changing environment. Like you’d open a drawer then turn around to find the entire room had changed to a hall, and it was all VERY well done!
Where things quickly started going downhill was as the story starts getting established. The game has five chapters… I played through about halfway through chapter two. By then, you have the entire story pretty much figured out (I confirmed this Googling after I DNF’d it). So what the heck is the rest of the game even doing??? Like seriously, the resource I read had absolutely nothing else story-related happening for the next three chapters, until the apparently ending.
Now y’all know I don’t mind a slow burn story, but I do like an actual story worthy of that, and this just doesn’t hold up. It’s tragic, yes and I get how it plays into the “monsters” you encounter in the game, but yeah, no… need more depth, more reason for existence, more something.
Speaking of the monsters, you have the option to turn off them being able to kill you when you start the game (no idea how that works considering the gameplay). The game teaches you the run command a little they appear, but it wasn’t really clear where you were supposed to go so I died. Then I died again because I tried to crouch and hide. And later died because the game also will go “rawr, monster, run!” but when you turn around, the scene has changed so you still facing the monster, so then you have to try to get reoriented while running. Oh, and then having one that didn’t have the warning static around it, so it looks like one of the harmless mannequins and yep, dead. I finally noped out in a segment of running from the monster (which is fast), while you are apparently supposed to also stop and turn off a bunch of gas and flame pipes??? Wut??
All that said, some of the creepiest elements weren’t even the monsters, but the mannequins, rats, constantly reappearing pictures and the like, but their touch and the great graphics just couldn’t take away the mix of boredom and frustration the rest of the game created.