The atmosphere sticks like a sweet, damp odour. As the door swings shut behind you – instantly snuffing out the meagre light – something shifts in the darkness. You’re just hearing things, you admonish yourself – it’s only the drip of a pipe or the creak of a floorboard; you’re on edge and have been for ages – but then it happens again and this time, there’s no mistake. The silence is a silence, now; a watchful one. knows you’re there, and it’s waiting for you to move first.
Layers of Fear 2 reviewDeveloper: Bloober TeamPublisher: Gun MediaPlatform played: PCAvailability: Out now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One
Layers of Fear 2 is never better than when it ramps up this cloying, almost paralysing atmosphere, leading you through claustrophobic corridors and dank, damp interiors where once fine furnishings lie in sodden, mouldering heaps. While first-class tables have been set for dinner, decanters left to breathe and napkins fanned in anticipation, the dining hall is empty – across the Icarus Transatlantic is empty. The further you explore, the more you’ll notice its once majestic suites are now crumbling and decaying, leaving you with just scraps of notes and musty memories to piece together the unsettling puzzle of double-u-tee-eff happened here.
These opening hours are my favourite. The disquieting – and deliberate – similarities to Titanic are strongest there, and the low-key sleight-of-hand horror at its most effective. Later, when the game pulls you elsewhere and even the jumpiest of players – a group in which I include myself – will become oh-so-acclimatised to the scripted scares, you’ll feel the weight of repetition and the poor pacing pull fretfully at the edges of your enjoyment. Here, though, in the beginning, your desire to know more will trump your hesitation, tempting you onwards through the reinforced steel archways. You jump as the room trills with the metallic thump of the door swinging shut behind you, panicking as you realise the room has quietly shifted when you looked away, doors dissolving into thin air, trapping you in a dark, tight space with no obvious means of escape. Layers of Fears 2 hasn’t taught you to be cynical just yet.
Developer Bloober Team has taken the spectacular spooks from its original haunted house tale and reframed them in this mysterious ocean liner. Here you play a Hollywood actor who’s following a curious casting call – but you’re nameless and voiceless in that special way that makes it nigh on impossible for the player to forge any meaningful connection. With no internal monologue or external exclamations, it’s impossible to ascertain what they’re feeling, which irrevocably damages Layers of Fear 2’s intensely emotional story; if my character doesn’t care about this deeply personal story, why should I?