![]() ![]() The series that defined narrative-focused first-person psychological horror is back to tell its last spine-chilling story with Layers of Fear. And it’s a technical marvel I’d like to see reproduced in other games, albeit with more restraint.The canvas awaits its final brushstrokes. The way rooms twist and turn in on each other like a hellish labyrinth, an impossible house full of impossible things-it’s unsettling. The pacing in Layers of Fear is numbing, with “scares” coming at you so often they quickly lose their potency.īut approach Layers of Fear as low-key psychological horror like House of Leaves and I think there’s a lot more to be impressed by. Five, ten, fifteen minutes of excruciating emptiness makes the eventual jump scare effective because we’re lulled into complacency. Suspense is an important tool, in horror. Still, some scenes (particularly one involving a record player) are among the best the horror genre has to offer-in terms of artistry at least, if not raw terror. In a perfect world where people didn’t complain about short games, it could’ve been edited down to probably half the length. Layers of Fear is a bit one-note, insofar as you start to understand and expect its tricks long before its three or four hour running time is up. Aside from the two games I already listed above, we can draw obvious parallels to both Lovecraft’s descriptions of non-Euclidean architecture and Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves.īut it’s expertly done here. We’re used to constructing mental maps, to remembering “This door leads back to the kitchen, which leads to the front hall, which leads to…” Now imagine the mansion in Resident Evil constantly rearranged itself, shuffling rooms like a deck of cards, creating impossible hallways and staircases that go two floors down but somehow leave you in an attic and rooms that change shape when you turn your back. It’s an unsettling idea, and I think doubly so to those who play a lot of games. You switch on the light, turn back around, and it’s been relocated to the floor. You leave a third time, and now the room is in shambles…and all the objects are floating.Įnter a room and you realize all the furniture is on the ceiling. Again, the same room-except this time the furniture’s a bit more decrepit. Or you walk through a door and find yourself walking back into the same room from a different doorway. The irony being that Layers of Fear is a game built on subverting expectations, in every way except for these stupid jump scares. If it’s been more than five minutes…well, that never happens. If it’s been more than a minute since the game’s tried to nab you with a need-new-pants screamer, it’s guaranteed to happen soon. A light explodes! A lady screams in your face! A ceiling fan embeds itself in a wall! These are the most traditionally “scary” moments in Layers of Fear, and also the worst moments in large part thanks to an unwillingness to subvert your expectations. ![]() The gimmick/hook is that you’re an insane painter, so the parade of tropes is occasionally broken by a room full of spilled paints or what have you, but by and large Layers of Fear is content to deal in well-trod imagery.Īnd there’s a methodical repetition to its jump-scares, a disturbing proclivity for lowest-common-denominator YouTube fodder-the stuff of high-pitched screaming Let’s Plays. ![]() The game is full of horror genre cliches, from dolls to rats to creaking floorboards to thunderstorms to more dolls.
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