Layers of Fear Reviews
A beautiful and potentially fantastic horror story squandered by cheap scares presented at a breakneck pace.
Beautiful setpieces and a great atmosphere don't make up for the same old gameplay. While it doesn't need to reinvent the wheel, Layers of Fear should at least aim to do the same old thing as well as it can. It would seem that "as well as it can" is very much a "means justify the ends" approach, and the ends are stale mechanics done just well enough that they work.
Layers of Fear is Scary Beautiful But Scary Boring!
Team Bloober's horror game piles on its attempted shocks so heavily you'll grow numb to them before the adventure is half over
Layers of Fear is well made, but commits a potentially greater sin than a game that's simply bad. It's dull. It's dreary. It's got as much bite as a beach ball. Perhaps for those who have only the lightest experience with horror games, it could be seen as authentically and astutely terrifying. For me, it's nothing new at all, and its presentation is so railroaded it might as well have been a ghost train.
If you like jump-scares, this is for you. If you like horror titles that effectively establish an atmosphere, this is not for you
Wonderfully mischievous visual tricks and grim environments can't stop Layers of Fear from falling flat with its hellish pacing, framerate issues and scares you can spot a mile away.
Layers of Fear lacks the surprises and subtlety needed to keep things interesting all the way through. It makes a strong first impression, but quickly exhausts its best ideas, making it hard for them to really shine as scary or meaningful moments. It's hard to be terrified when you can see what's coming at the end of every long dark hallway.
Layers of Fear has a great atmosphere, but you may have to overlook a lot of design choices to immerse yourself in what ends up an experience just over three hours long.
Creepy location, poor pacing
Layers of Fear almost feels like two different games smashed together to make up a single experience.
Layers of Fear is an unsettling and occasionally frightening game that succeeds in keeping you on the edge of your seat, though it doesn't deliver up to its potential and ends up feeling a bit lacking.
Layers of Fear is an intriguing experimental haunted house, but without a proper sense of pacing, it fails to scare.
What Layers of Fear lacks in complexity, it more than makes up for with atmosphere. It's a bizarre and thrilling ride that doesn't even considering letting up as you traverse a truly broken mind. The concept is incredibly novel and well portrayed, the wellbeing of your limping vessel never coming into debate as he works on his masterpiece. It's just a shame that, even with all the literary influences, the phenomenal and thought-provoking ambience isn't backed up by the writing or voice work that can both feel flat and uninspired more often than not. The dodgy frame rate that's becoming depressingly synonymous with Unity on PS4 adds to the issues here and pushes it that bit further away from truly hitting the mark P.T seems to dominate, even if it's now starting to pass into gaming mythology.
Moments like these make Layers of Fear worth playing. Yet as beautifully disorienting as the game can be, it ultimately has little interesting to say about artists and less to say about art. Stomaching the jump scares and heavily recycled horror imagery will earn you a handful of mesmerizing vistas, but Layers of Fear fails to challenge or transform its central trope.
Layers of Fear is a competent demonstration of jump scares compressed tightly into an ever-changing and dark mansion.
Despite the abundance of clichés, you can see that a lot of effort went into setting the right tone and atmosphere. There are some downright mind-blowing scenes and unique uses of audio and color. Great work on that front. Although do try a bit harder next time, because you guys definitely have something going here.
Layers of Fear's psychedelic atmosphere manages to mess with your mind for a few hours. But after that, It's all jump-scare after jump-scare.
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Overall Layers Of Fear is a creepy game that misses the scary mark. The experience is worth going through if you have the extra cash but don’t expect to be scared out of your mind by it.