#Layers of fear 2 clock puzzle trial

If that wasn’t bad enough, even when you ignore the performance issues and graphical hiccups, Layers of Fear 2 is just ugly. Heck, if you turn too quickly you can see reality itself start to tear, revealing nasty stark white lines in doorways. The game also heavily employs post-processing effects that make everything look smeared and unpleasant when in motion. The game cannot maintain a solid frame rate and will judder constantly, making it the most terrifying aspect of Layers of Fear 2. Things go from bad to worse when played on the Nintendo Switch as the game runs terribly from start to finish. It removes a vexatious element of the game’s core design and is made better for it. You would assume this would make the game worse, but you would be wrong. Safe mode keeps the monsters but removes death and chases. Since the game is as horrifying as a sunny day in spring, there is no reason to play the game in any mode other than Safe – I wish I had. It’s not scary and it’s not tense – it’s irritating and can thankfully be turned off.

#Layers of fear 2 clock puzzle trial

It’s trial and error gameplay at its worst. They appear out of nowhere, will likely kill you before you can react appropriately, and then on a second pass, you will bypass them effortlessly before they spawn in. Chases are nothing more than exercises in frustration, not horror. The illusion doesn’t work if the participants know it’s coming.ĭespite its failings thus far, Layers of Fear 2 manages to continue its descent into ghastly design with its use of the aforementioned chase. A prime example is rooms and corridors changing when your back is turned to simulate a nightmare. It also relies heavily on tropes that have existed in the subgenre for so long that, like everything, I could see coming long before they arrived.

Layers of Fear 2 leaves you with nothing but obnoxiously loud noises and flashing imagery and expects you to be scared. This removes any tension from the game and leaves you with horror gaming’s most egregious sin – the jump scare. For the vast majority of the game, if you are not being chased, you are not going to be in any danger. These distinct categories are tangible and left me knowing exactly when I was safe and when I wasn’t. The game roughly follows a pattern of walking walking with spooky stuff happening doing a puzzle getting chased walking, and repeat. Layers of Fear 2 is painfully formulaic to the point you can map the Wiggins out, almost to a tee. However, Layers of Fear 2 falls into a more objectively un-scary category because you can almost see the horror before it appears. Horror is of course subjective – what one person finds pants-wettingly-spooky could fail to phase another. This is a crying shame because the horror isn’t all that great either. It acts more like a set dressing for the horror than anything else. There is a story here, however, it’s neither interesting nor very good. It’s so far in the background, with so little impact, that the only reason I was plodding through the twisted reality that lay before me was because the game told me to – not because of anything particularly compelling. This is amazing considering the game is only 5-or-so hours long.

Layers of Fear 2’s plot takes an age to get going, let alone interesting. After finding an old-fashioned camera – reels and all – the game begins proper, and the “horror” is quick to follow. A few audio snippets in conjunction with some notes scattered around your lodgings give you a basic idea of why you are here, and what it is you are supposed to be doing.

You play as an unnamed, mostly unfaced gentleman who has found himself with a spot of amnesia (in more ways than one) and is stuck on an early 1900’s ocean liner. Capitalizing on the success of the original, and the genre that inspired it, Layers of Fear 2 manages to stumble around in the dark like a sleep-deprived toddler before tripping over its own feet and plummeting down the stairs to an early grave. Those tropes got pretty darn old, pretty darn fast and that’s where Layers of Fear 2 comes in. Guns were on the out, and defenseless protagonists facing off against unspeakable, unseeable monstrosities were in. A little over 10-years ago, the horror genre was given a right-good shakeup with the runaway success of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.