Layers Of Fear 2 - Layers Of... Oh Dear (Jimpressions)
Added 2019-06-14 14:49:50 +0000 UTCI really want the Layers of Fear series to be good, but Layers of Fear 2 pretty much wallows in the same mediocrity its predecessor barely kept its head above.
Though they've added tangible threats and a little more variety of gameplay, this sequel feels more like a retread through a bargain basement, severely outdated horror structure. The genre needs a shakeup, and this ain't it.
Comments
I'm so glad you did a Jimpressions vid on this Jim, as I've just finished playing it and needed somewhere to vent my spleen (i.e. "I agree with everything you said..." ;p) I have a real fondness for the first Layers of Fear game despite it's limitations. If I were to ever make a "Top Ten Walking Sims" list it would almost certainly make it on the roster. I say this as somebody who is admittedly an easily-pleased fan of the genre, despite how oversaturated the market is with underwhelming games of this type. Because they rely so heavily on atmosphere and narrative alone without the usual "gaming" element, they have to work harder than a more typical game to get the player invested in it's premise. I'm one of the few weirdos who really enjoyed Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. For me personally it's limitations and minimalist approach to game mechanics never got in the way of my enjoying the story and piecing together the events leading up to the disappearance of everyone in the village of Yaughton. I wanted to bring up a much maligned title like that to emphasize that I can appreciate a walking simulator/interactive narrative experience/etc. It may have a lot to do with me being a huge art nerd (certainly more so than any self-identifying gamer) so for me personally a good walking sim is almost akin to visiting an exhibition or art installation. I can get heavily invested and block out external distractions if the game in question draws me in. As I was saying before I really like the first Layers of Fear game despite it's unfortunate timing in a market done-to-death with first-person horror games. The danger with walking sims is that the game has to "work" immediately. Mystery and ambiguity are great, but the player needs to actually feel that it will lead to some sort of pay-off. That their curiosity will be rewarded and validated with a worthwhile story. When that goes wrong the player is left with the glaringly obvious bones of the games engine and mechanics, which can lead to the player feeling his/her efforts are futile or not worth the effort. If it feels like I'm over-egging the pudding in regards to explaining how much of a filthy non-gaming armchair art critic that I like to think of myself as (as well as making clear that I usually bum the livin' daylights of a good walkin' sim) it's just that I feared without prefacing my feelings about Layers of Fear 2 without an a acknowledgement that I'm a avid supporter and admirer of the first one, I risk coming across as some rube who simply didn't get it. With that out of the way, I'm sad to say that I was a disappointed with Layers of Fear's sequel as you are - maybe more so than you, because I actually gave a jot about the debut game! There are ideas and images in this I like, images that have lodged themselves in my imagination and I'm glad I got to experience them. You showed one in your video, the part where you appear to be walking over a mountain of golden doubloons and other treasures, only to pick up that film grain inflected grail in a flash of light that reveals you were climbing a pile of dead fish instead. A very memorable moment in the game. I also really liked the warped and angular architecture of the house in chapter 3, clearly inspired by German expressionist cinema and the gothic props and setpieces of films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. There were other great visuals and nods to various 20th century art tropes and ideas that made me really really want to like this game. Unfortunately the most pertinent thing I'll take away from this is a feeling of total univestment and frustration. I played the first Layers of Fear game in one sitting, so invested was I in the experience. I don't even mind that the ending wasn't all that original, I'm kind of easy to please in regards to psychological thriller plot-lines and I felt it had earned it. But for this sequel I had to play it over the course of about four days between bouts of playing another frustrating (but oh so much better) game in the form of Sekiro. Whereas that game is hard to progress through because I'm utterly rubbish at FromSoft titles, Layers of Fear 2 got on my nerves so much that I could barely make it through a chapter without my internal voice saying "I could be playing literally anything else". A lot of the clever and surreal imagery, subtle scares and even anything resembling interesting content just disappears by the time we get the final chapter. In particular the amount of lazy screen distorting effects and LOUD NONDESCRIPT NOISES that accompany every opening of a door or picking up of an seemingly innocuous item is almost parodic. I seriously began to wonder if by the latter stages of the game Bloober Team were just taking the p*ss. And ohmygod the instadeaths! I really resented the way that most deaths occurred seemingly because the game just decided that I'd gone the wrong way. "You went down this corridor and should of gone down this one, you went left instead of right, you looked at the one bit of interesting content in the room, etc" all resulting in that exact same animation of that faceless Not-Pyaramid Head shambling towards making BIG NOISES. I really could go on on forever so I'll stop myself now. It's utterly tragic, but your line for horror fans who might be interested in giving this one a go that they "will miss precisely nothing" is all too true.
Freakish Uproar
2019-06-17 10:28:19 +0000 UTCJimothy, I know you're into films of the horror variety, so may I suggest you check out the film "Velvet Buzzsaw" on Netflix also deals with a mad artist and the depravity of the commercialization and consumption of art and is...just great. Like if you took something that COULD be incredibly cliched (like...for instance Layers of Fear the First) and took it in a far more human direction.
Dr. Judge, Private Eye
2019-06-14 18:27:28 +0000 UTCI remember running into one of the things that "kill" you in the original Layers of Fear and just thinking: "...Okay...? Was that bad? Should I have been trying to avoid that? *Could* I have avoided that? " (There are so many places where the route to progress is unclear in the name of pulling their "ooh, the paths have changed while you were looking away, spooooky" business that it's really less than obvious if trying to move past a ghoulie is a legitimate option.) I think there's room for a horror game that makes the player feel that death has consequences without going the usual "and now you're back to a checkpoint after seeing the same over-long sequence for the fifteenth time". Imagine a game where the world degraded slightly after every death, like the passage between the "real"/"fog"/"rust" worlds in Silent Hill. That could do an excellent job of making the player feel a genuine sense of dread.
Kraken
2019-06-14 15:58:40 +0000 UTC
