Following the critical success of Bloober Team’s seminal horror classic on the Xbox One, Layers of Fear has now been revamped for the new generation of gamers in virtual reality format for the Oculus Quest.
Cast in the role of a washed up artist who still believes he has greatness within him , your task is to help your character complete his last great work. You do this by collecting various items that are scattered throughout an old, dark and very creepy mansion. Oh, and while doing this you must also experience the horrors of the artist’s mind as he teeters on the brink of insanity.
While many horror games rely heavily on cheap scare tactics to keep you interested, Layers of Fear is a subtle, disturbing physiological experience that gnaws away at your nerves, keeping you on a constant knife-edge as you explore your surroundings. The majority of the game is limited to interacting with doors, reading notes left lying around the house and trying to piece together the story line yourself. We only begin to realise the full twisted horror of what has happened to the artist as we read the notes and find items that have been left discarded throughout the rooms. There is no spoon-feeding here. You decide the speed of your progress and your imagination readily fills in the blanks as you traverse the games 8 -9 hours of rooms.
The virtual reality environment in Layers of Fear is truly first class. The rooms are incredibly well detailed with the developers making great use of lighting and shadow effects to create a haunting and foreboding environment. The graphics are among the best we’ve seen in a very long time and each room seems to breathe and sigh with life of its own. If you’re an art lover, you’ll love the time lavished on creating what looks and feels like a real haunted house.
With the Quest’s internal headphones emphasizing the eerie nature of the rooms you’re in, the sound here is something that has to be experienced to be believed. As you make your way around the darkened house, you’re accompanied by the sound of rain, thunder, doors creaking, the hollow echo of the painters footsteps or a violin screeching out a mournful note. All of this add to the palpable tension of the game and leave you sometimes gasping for air because you simply forgot to breath.
As this is a VR offering, many of the objects in Layers of Fear can be interacted with. In practice this means you can pick things up, inspect them and, in some cases, read notes left behind for you. If we had one quibble with the game it would have been with the fact that not every object in the rooms can be manipulated. And, quite often, it’s a case of trying to guess which items are there are eye candy and which ones add to the story.
This minor niggle aside, Layers of Fear is probably one of the scariest games we’ve played since the original Silent Hill. During our first play through we were genuinely freaked out by Bloober Team’s dark and menacing creation. Rooms would change while your back is turned, doors you came through would suddenly be locked and paintings fade and transform in front of your incredulous eyes. Sometimes whole corridors will disappear leaving you disoriented and just a little nervous. Excellent.
Layers of Fear has some 18 collectables that help give you some sense of immediate goals to achieve. However finding them all will require you to take your time and explore rather than attempt to rush through to the ending.
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Layers of Fear is one of the more pleasant surprises in the list of VR games released this year. And it is a game you should experience. Preferably in the dark. And in VR. And alone. Go buy.
