In the wake of Hideo Kojima’s PS4-exclusive ‘P.T’ demo, Polish developer Bloober Team unleashed its tackle an identical idea with 2016’s Layers of Fear. At the time, we fairly loved our expertise with Bloober’s slender journey – its targeted nature prevented the idea from getting stale over a roughly four-hour runtime. However, the sport’s return on this 2023 remake-of-sorts would not hit the identical because it did again then, and despite the fact that the included sequel holds up higher, this nonetheless seems like a pointless remake of a collection finest left within the final technology.
For these unaware of P.T or this type of sport generally, you are mainly making your approach by way of more and more bizarre and trippy environments from a first-person perspective – with these environments warping and bending to characterize somebody shedding their thoughts. You’ll typically transfer the digital camera in the identical path a few instances and see fully totally different scenes as the sport shifts and tries to play along with your perspective. Most of the mechanics right here revolve round exploration and lightweight puzzle fixing as you are tasked with discovering your approach and progressing the storyline.
Naturally, we began out 2023’s Layers of Fear by taking part in by way of the primary sport; which is the best way the remake’s ‘story’ mode lays issues out. On first loading it up you may discover simply how beautiful this new Unreal Engine 5 model of the sport is, and it is definitely a glow-up for the unique sport specifically. We truly opted to play by way of all of this model in ‘Quality’ mode at 30FPS — the sport does comprise a efficiency mode on Xbox Series X — however the sport seems to be excellent with all of its ray tracing options enabled and we did not discover the body charge a lot of a problem as a result of sport’s slow-paced nature.
Once the brand new visuals had completed wowing us and we settled again into the collection’ purposefully uneven rhythm, we rapidly realised how a lot of a one trick pony the primary Layers of Fear is. Don’t get us fallacious, it is a psychedelic horror journey most likely value taking in case you’ve by no means skilled it earlier than, but it surely simply would not work very effectively on a second playthrough. Most of the expertise is opening doorways, getting ready your self for leap scares and discovering the fitting technique to progress, and it is all a bit repetitive in case you’ve performed it earlier than. There’s an opportunity its gimmick may not maintain up even for first-time gamers in 2023 both, however all we all know is we felt the fatigue fairly rapidly on our second runthrough of LoF – even when our first playthrough got here greater than six years in the past.
Once your four-or-so hours of the primary sport are carried out although, the story mode rolls proper into Layers of Fear 2. Yep, this confusingly-named 2023 remake comprises each principal Layers of Fear titles and a few DLC extras, with Bloober Team working the 2 principal video games back-to-back to kind the core marketing campaign of this remake. And truly, Layers of Fear 2 holds up lots higher in our opinion.
This LoF2 run marked one other second playthrough for us as effectively, having performed quantity two again in 2019, however generally the sequel simply has just a few extra methods up its sleeve to make it a way more pleasing expertise to replay. Layers of Fear 2 introduces extra puzzle components, some chase scenes, and extra intricate degree design that make for what feels like a much less linear affair, even when each video games are pretty slender in scope. The first sport follows a mad painter’s descent into insanity, whereas quantity two switches out the canvas board for the massive display screen and a filmic theme – and is simply extra of an fascinating journey total.
Both remakes introduce a brand new ‘mild’ mechanic — including extra of an precise gameplay ingredient to the collection past strolling and opening doorways — that wasn’t accessible within the originals. The first sport has you sometimes extinguishing foes with a lantern, Alan Wake type, whereas the sequel mixes in segments the place you will have a ‘movie reel’ flashlight used to make mannequins transfer and kind film scenes. Again, the latter feels prefer it suits the collection extra – Layers of Fear has by no means been about truly preventing enemies and we discovered the movie reel flashlight a reasonably distinctive spin on horror’s love of messing with mild and darkish.
Another addition on this new model of the Layers of Fear collection is a brand-new interstitial storyline that crops up in-between principal sport chapters, supposedly stitching the entire story collectively. To be fairly frank we hardly understood the story of Layers of Fear within the first place – it is a sport extra about bizarre & summary scenes and leap scares greater than the rest, so it is most likely finest to not count on a very coherent story right here. Oh, and the brand new story-stitching segments do not assist with that in any respect, actually.
You can hop into whichever sport or DLC add-on you would like by way of the sport’s ‘Chapters’ menu as a bonus function, though you may must play by way of the story first anyway to entry later chapters on a whim. We caught to the story mode for this remake playthrough although, with the credit rolling proper after Layers of Fear 2 wrapped up.
Conclusion
All in all, Layers of Fear 2023 is an odd remake and is in the end one we do not actually suggest. This new bundle is gorgeous little doubt, however the first sport simply would not actually maintain up today, and whereas the sequel marks a good enchancment in our eyes, the 2019 model is a significantly better trying sport than 2016’s Layers of Fear anyway – making the remake really feel a bit pointless. If you’ve got by no means performed the collection and are fascinated about a few one-time trippy horror experiences this bundle could possibly be value a shot as soon as it enters your supreme worth vary, however the Xbox One variations typically go filth low cost on sale and stay a really perfect technique to face your fears – particularly when you will have the choice to only seize the superior sequel by itself.
