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 - everywhere 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.
The problem is Layers of Fear 2 recycles many of the same devices of its predecessor, but the extended playtime - double the four/five hours of the original title - is too long. Its initial unpredictability becomes the antonym of what it sets out to achieve, and an over-reliance on horror tropes and jump-scares pokes holes in the tension crafted by the game's superb environmental storytelling. You'll learn to read the jump scares before they arrive - oh look, there's a spooky mannequin, I bet it'll move just as the light splutters out - and while there's no denying Layers of Fear 2's capacity to pull them off from time to time, the cheap instakills, unbalanced pacing, and unnecessarily long run-time whittle away all the good points.
The frequent film motifs are overused and ineffective. The shifts from full-colour to black-and-white start off impressive, but - like so many aspects of this game - it loses its potency each time it's used. And while their solutions are rarely "difficult", most of Layers of Fear 2's puzzles lack effective signposting, so even a veteran puzzler may struggle to decipher them.
The grossest crime, however, is the routine - and routinely unfair - instakills. In response to complaints that its predecessor was little more than a haunted house simulator, Layers of Fear 2 has swung too far the other way with an array of cheap scripted deaths - some utterly unavoidable - extinguishing the immersion to the point of irritation. Your protagonist's baffling lack of urgency coupled with a clumsy control scheme will see you die unnecessarily and repeatedly in maddening chase sequences, succumbing not because you didn't know the way out of the maze, but because your controller wouldn't let you toggle the interaction button quickly enough to slam the door shut. It's unforgivable, really, given it's the only mechanic in the entire game.
Sometimes, though? Sometimes when you can only spot an exit from a certain angle in the room, or when you enter an empty elevator and turn around to find it's no longer empty, Layers of Fears 2 can be breathtaking for all the right reasons. Stuffed with dozens of screenshot-able moments and highly memorable sequences, this could've been one of the best horror games in years. Sadly, Layers of Fears 2 is too bloated, too repetitive, and too uncertain of itself to stand confidently on its own merits.
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