Layers of Fear Review

thesixthaxis.com:

There’s a gag in comedy show Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace in which the fictional author encourages you to buy a complete edition of all of his novels – the joke being the book is so large you need a ladder to turn the pages. The tagline is if you only buy one of my books, then buy this one because it is all of them. I’m not saying that Bloober Team get their ideas from niche early 2000s Channel 4 telly, but Layers of Fear is a remastered collection of the two main previous games and their assorted DLC content sharing, while confusingly sharing the same name as the original game in isolation. What we actually have are not just ports to newer consoles, though, as the new versions have been refined and streamlined to offer up the definitive experience of each and are wrapped up in a new framing narrative.

The main themes of Layers of Fear are concerned with the trope of the suffering artist. In the first game this a tormented painter, whilst the DLC offer alternative perspectives via his musician wife and daughter. Layers of Fear 2 shifts the focus to acting and the framing narrative introduces a horror writer who seems uncannily connected to the original stories. This narrative cohesion does make the new format for the games an effective one, especially since they were both relatively short experiences. The end result is a title that feels surprisingly like a complete game rather than a collection of previously separate ones.

With Bloober Team hard at work on their Silent Hill 2 remake, they’ve collaborated with Anshar Studios to give these games a fresh lick of Unreal Engine 5 paint. The increased fidelity is welcome, but the real star of the show is the use of lighting and raytracing. I played on PS5 and went back to compare