Release Year: 2019
Developer: Bloober Team
In this sequel, the player takes the role of a famous actor who is filming a movie aboard a luxury ship. To help the character fulfill his part, you must explore the ship, solve puzzles, avoid monsters, and stir the main character towards the path they think is best. You can play this on most platforms: Linux, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, macOS, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The game uses binaural sounds and it is recommended that the player uses headphones. However, I found the background music to be incredibly annoying, and turning it off made my gaming experience much better.
The goal is, much like in the first Layers of Fear, to help the actor finish his masterpiece, except that, instead of a painting, it’s a movie. Everything is very similar to the first game, there are five ‘acts’ that the player must complete (“film”) to finish the movie, however, at the end of each “act,” the player has to make a choice. The actor must either follow or reject the instructions from the movie’s director. The ending will be dependent on which course of action the player chooses to take.
Although this sequel was released in May 2019, the graphics are not that great. Overall, they’re pretty mediocre, nothing spectacular but they don’t take away any of the game’s enjoyment either. As I mentioned in my last review, I have an issue with games that are in the 1st person's POV, they make me incredibly dizzy. This issue was exacerbated by the constant sway of the camera which is supposed to emulate the motion of the ship and there was no way to turn it off. My motion sickness was so bad that I could only play for thirty minutes at a time before getting so nauseous I had to turn it off. As usual, I turned the brightness up to be able to see the collectibles and to minimize my visual discomfort.
As with the previous game, the jumpscares were timed well and never failed to startle me, but the best element for me was the collectible movie posters. As the player explores the ship, they come across many types of collectibles (film reels, children’s drawings, notes, etc), including posters for all of the movies the main characters stared in. They’re a little easy to miss, seeing as the player can mistake them for regular decor, so keep your eyes open.
The controls are easy to master and identical to the first Layers of Fear, the only new command is ‘crouch,’ but it’s not needed that often. The puzzles are similar to the ones faced by the player in the first Layers of Fear, such as finding the combination for padlocks and figuring out how to trigger action sequences. However, a couple of the puzzles were more complex and trickier to navigate, some to the extent of me getting frustrated and just googling what I was supposed to do.
On top of the added puzzle complexity, Layers of Fear 2 also added more monsters, several times throughout the game the player is chased by them. There are also some “stealth” segments, where you must avoid detection whilst getting away from the monster. In case the player gets caught, the character dies and you must restart the chase sequence from the beginning, that quickly got annoying for me. There’s the option to turn off death by the monster, the player still gets chased, but if caught they won’t have to start over again, which saves a lot of time and frustration.
Although it’s still a mainly story-focused game, the sequel has a lot more action and chase sequences than its predecessor. I think this will appeal mostly to people who are fantasy fans, like pirates (as weird as that may sound), and/or enjoy games that rely heavily on stories. There’s a huge otherworldly feel about the game as it mixes the character’s “real life” with their fantasies and flashbacks.
As a huge fan of the first Layers of Fear game, it pains me to say this, but I don’t recommend this. It sits in a weird spot where it has too many action sequences (chase, running, ducking, etc) for those who enjoy more story-driven games and too much story for the ones who like action games. The story was also less interesting than the first one, at least for me, I found myself bored through most of my playthrough and couldn’t force myself to care about the characters. That, combined with the huge motion sickness and the swaying of the camera caused me to abandon the game after act three.
Originally written in 2022
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