Layers of Fear

Layers of Fear is a fun ride. If you can live with the poor frame rate you'll find a horror game that relishes the chance to mess with your head, delivers plenty of scares, jumps and heart-pounding moments, and wraps it up in a bizarre yet intriguing storyline.

It’s just a shame that, even with all the literary influences, the phenomenal and thought-provoking ambience isn’t backed up by the writing or voice work that can both feel flat and uninspired more often than not. The dodgy frame rate that’s becoming depressingly synonymous with Unity on PS4 adds to the issues here and pushes it that bit further away from truly hitting the mark P.T seems to dominate, even if it’s now starting to pass into gaming mythology.

In its title, Layers of Fear implies an ability to inspire multi-faceted terror. Unfortunately, it only succeeds on the surface level: Sometimes I got pretty surprised when something creepy happened (invariably accompanied by a loud noise), but even that layer eroded over time. Despite some creative visual tricks, Layers of Fear doesn’t have sharp enough teeth to maintain its bite.