Layers of Fear (2016)

I've become so very tired of horror games with great potential which squander it on pandering to the OCD generation these days. Just when you think you've found that great horror experience you've been searching for since the good old days of atmosphere and great design over "OMG I need combat or things to shoot at least every five minutes" and you feel you're in for a terrifying ride, along comes another combat section. Along comes another chase scene. Along comes another quick time event. Yawn. Layers of Fear is just fantastic. You know what sold me on the game? The negative reviews. The ones that complained there was too little to do, or it's a walking simulator, or there's not enough in the way of good scares. To me, all I read was "I don't have the attention span for this, where's the monsters, where's the guns, where's the health bar, where's the challenge?!?!?" Perfect. Beautiful. This one's for me, without question. Layers of Fear has been accused of running out of ideas in the later chapters. I disagree - it's an exhausting game, almost mentally draining as you approach it's conclusion. But the journey - the things it gets right, it gets SO very right, and it's a completely unique experience, unlike any other to be found anywhere in the current gaming landscape. Comparisons to the Silent Hills demo are apparent for me - the game is just beautiful in the way it moves through the twisted corridors and bizarre rooms. It's smooth, and gorgeous. You can imagine this being the type of game that could single handedly sell VR; it's just a magnificent experience. You will walk around, and you will not die. You need to isolate yourself playing this, in the dark, ideally with a pair of headphones. You will not fight anything, you will not face any QTE's. You will pick up notes, you will piece together the story bit by bit. You will be scared. And not like the dogs through the windows in the Spencer mansion type of oh my god I did not expect that, but the old Silent Hill, holy **** followed by a relieved laugh at how brilliant the thing you just witnessed was type of jump. It's choc full of great ideas, and in my opinion, far far from as cliched as some of the reviews have made out. Yes, you'll be familiar with the type of scare tactics used in Layers of Fear - but it uses them so very well, they will have the desired effect every time. I would go so far as to say, this is one of the finest horror experiences of the past ten, maybe fifteen years. I simply cannot think of a single instance of breathing a sigh of relief after an incredibly predictable yet somehow still superbly tense scare punches you in the gut playing any other game than I have with Layers of Fear. it's a short game, granted. But it just does it's own thing so very well. If you can play this on a big screen, and shut the world out, you'll enjoy a remarkable experience. It has it's flaws, of course, and it's far from perfect, but having found myself frustrated for more years than I can think of waiting for a great, simple, well designed horror game which relies on atmosphere and great sound design to unsettle you and make you jump (but still feel confident you will be able to progress knowing there are no silly chase scenes or unnecessary monsters) this has restored my faith utterly. Perfect? No. Brilliant, stupendous, ingenious, one of a kind? YES YES YES. PLAY IT.

This game, though flawed, still stands head and shoulders above anything else in its genre. The graphics and sound are a tour de force, the concept is brilliant and well fleshed out, the puzzles and the mechanism for triggering the different endings well considered. There are, however, two problems. First is the voice acting for the narrator - he sounds way too much like he's doing a hammy impression of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Maybe you can tolerate this, maybe you can't. The infinitely more serious problem, as another reviewer has noted, is that the game's pacing just isn't right. Instead of slow, creeping unease, stealthily creeping into apparent normality, gradually but fitfully and unpredictably ratcheting up to a dreadful, harrowing crescendo, which is how one does a classic horror tale in any medium, this game accelerates to full speed after about ten minutes and then never lets up until finally settling down a bit towards the end, by which point you're more relieved and exhausted rather than frantic and terrified, because you burned up all your adrenaline too early and now you're just used to it, and frankly glad of a break. They should have waited MUCH longer to really start turning the screws. You shouldn't be able to know with near certainty that everything you're seeing isn't real halfway through the first chapter, and you shouldn't be able to easily guess the bulk of the entire backstory (which is, nonetheless, really quite good) by the end of that first chapter, but that's exactly what happens. Instead, you should be slowly uncovering dark hints of the past, and having just occasional moments where you doubt your own senses, for much of the first act. Pacing is everything in horror, it's the hardest thing to get right, and this game, like so many others, unfortunately missed its mark. Nonetheless, it still earns four stars because, despite the rushed delivery of its content, every last bit of that content (barring the accent) is gold.

I'm still washing my underpants from the first hour of playing this game. This game is scary unlike any other horror game I have played, and it does not let you rest or feel safe and easy at any point, the terror comes in layers and is constant. Play this game.

You liked the decidedly artsy type of horror that "Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs" was aiming for and ultimately failed to deliver? You thought that "The Stanley Parable" was the very pinnacle of cleverness? Then you might want to give this creepypasta mashup between the two a try. Go explore the mind/mansion of a tortured artist and watch as reality and insanity coalesce in a heavily scripted, visually impressive walking simulator! Things get off to a good start: Environments evoke a feeling of dread, the occasional jump scare is well executed and navigating the constantly shape-shifting mansion is very creepy and unnerving - for a while at least. Unfortunately, the novelty wears off rather quickly and it‘s all downhill from there. No mad painter horror trope is clichéd enough to go unused and the conclusion felt unintentionally hilarious - almost pythonesque. Things that felt fresh and exciting at first are rendered mundane and redundant. This is aggravated by frustrating puzzles that have little rhyme or reason and usually reward the most blunt-force approach. Layers basically shuffles the order of rooms, places items in different spots and so on. This procedural generation makes the already poor puzzle design feel all the more insultingly lazy. For instance: Early on I encountered a room with a locked safe in it. There was no way for me to go back, so the clue to the combination had to be in that room. I checked all the drawers and lo and behold, a newspaper clipping about the protagonist getting married, chock full of dates. One of those had to be the combination. I gave up after several unsuccessful attempts at figuring out the correct number. Turns out the newspaper clipping that the game had randomly placed in that room had nothing to do with the puzzle. The correct solution? Light a candle and the combination will magically appear on the wall. This game will punish you for thinking.