![]() ![]() Some junctures are presented as critical choice-based moments, but most of the time you don’t actually have a choice at all. Multiple endings exist as possibilities in Layers of Fear 2, but the process for seeing each isn’t exactly clear. On multiple occasions, I loaded the most recent checkpoint to listen to the words again to try and fully absorb their meaning. ![]() Coupled with Lily’s doleful lyrical poetry and the earnest performance of her younger brother, Layers of Fear 2 has some of the sharpest writing I’ve seen – not just in horror games, but across all genres. That’s perhaps the greatest strength of the story: its prowess for making me believe, if even for a moment, that the crazy words coming from the void are the stuff of genius. The obtuseness can be a tad much at times, but the delirious diatribes of the director, which are riddled with contradictions and philosophical tangents, frequently border on the profound as well. Each of these superb arcs entwine to create a whole that is both disorienting and, yes, satisfyingly layered.Steeped in such madness, it’s no surprise that a significant portion of the dialogue borders on the nonsensical. And then there’s the tale of you, the actor, who somehow wound up on this ship for this strange role. There’s also the mystery of the crew and passengers who once occupied the vessel. Picking up objects such as a monocular or empty cans of food cues interesting audio logs of the siblings’ own experiences that took place there. You can get more into the mood with the use of a pair of good headphones but honestly, I can’t really see myself wanting to play this on the go, but playing this on the TV with the new Switch controls does feel terrifyingly good! There’s also an option to play with an unlocked framerate, letting you play at higher than 30 fps but personally, I found that the game ran better when locked as the game sometimes got a bit jittery when there was a lot going on.One of the main storylines follows Lily and James, siblings who pretended to be pirates on the ship. The only thing I really noticed that was different when playing it handheld was that the spooks and scares didn’t quite have the same impact as it does when docked. When playing undocked, the scaling back of textures makes sense for the system but the game still looked really good regardless of that. ![]() The few I have played have usually been smaller indie games with either a simplistic or pixel style of art so I wondered how something as detailed as Layers of Fear 2 would do on the Switch. I haven’t had the chance to play many horror games on my Switch yet. Luckily though if you just want the atmospheric spooks and great storytelling without the pressure of being chased down as well, you’ll have the option to turn off the encounters in the games’ “Safe Mode”. This can be frustrating later on as you’ll probably find yourselves redoing the chases multiple times in order to figure out which path is the correct way to go to avoid death. The enemies you’ll encounter chase you down corridors but more often than not, are one-hit kills if caught. Some of the puzzles are almost too easy to solve while others feel almost too impossible to solve due to lack of information or requiring an answer that just seemed way too illogical to figure out. The puzzles we run into are a bit of a mixed bag. ![]() This really freaked me out for some reason as it somehow felt more personal and allowed players to really embody the protagonist further. Holding down the ‘ZR’ button players will have to move the thumbstick accordingly to interact with the said item. There aren’t any items you can defend yourself with and you’ll only be able to interact with doors, objects and levers. When starting up the game, Layers of Fear 2 wastes no time in getting the action started and immediately sets our players towards this nightmare trip of a lifetime. Heeding the directions of the mysterious Director, we find ourselves traversing throughout the vessel where past events begin to unravel, forcing our protagonist to relive past traumas, disjointed memories all while we witness the reality we thought we knew to start to crumble away. Layers of Fear 2 puts us in the role of a Hollywood actor who finds himself on a seemingly abandoned cruise liner. Meaning we have an entirely new setting, characters, and storyline from the first game in the series. While this is a sequel, it’s only so in title. ![]()
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