All the while, there’s very little story and even less game. The gimmick plays out and there’s still 90% of the playing time to go. When you have no rules, breaking rules is meaningless. But when a game consists of nothing but the expected gimmicks, it gets tedious. Or maybe something where you have to go into cyberspace in Fallout 4. For instance, a dream sequence in a Max Payne game. This stuff might have worked as part of an actual game. Guess who’s there when you open it? You got it. And even if something or someone had been there, then what? Something bangs violently on the door. What did you expect? A knife killer? Someone standing there sheepishly because he’d almost hit you with a knife? It was always going to be no one there. Someone throws a knife at you from behind and it sticks into the door frame. Did a ghost knock it down? Who knows? You turn to the exit. A door is there that wasn’t there a second ago. So it rolls out its hackneyed funhouse tricks one after the other in carefully linear fashion and as regularly as clockwork. Sometimes it’s just light and noise.Īs Layers of Fear shifts the world around, it has to be careful not to be too confusing, because then you might take too long getting to the next jumpscare.

Usually, it’s a kind of mummy/zombie thing with the obligatory vibrating head. But here comes Layers of Fear with another cheap jumpscare in which the world shifts or something jumps at you. There aren’t many layers to being startled. It makes the same mistake as lots of bad horror by confusing being startled with fear. It accompanies its tricks with loud noises. Layers of Fear loves this moment, but it doesn’t understand it. Furthermore, he only used this trick once. Tobe Hooper didn’t play a loud clanging noise. A subtle mischievous musical trill plays. When the camera follows her standing back up, all the chairs have been arranged in an elaborate stack atop the table. She crosses into the kitchen and bends down to get something out of a cabinet. In the shot, we can see a dining room beyond the kitchen with a table and chairs. In one of the most memorable scene in Poltergeist, JoBeth Williams is in the kitchen. But Layers of Fear asks anyway.Īnd then it jumps in your face and makes a loud noise.Īfter the jumpscare, another jumpscare, and another, and another, and another. Of course, anybody who has ever played a videogame already knows the answers. Can a videogame play with the idea that you have no idea what reality has been constructed behind your back when you’re not looking? Can it violate the laws of physics? Can it ruthlessly deconstruct physical space? Can it do zero-G? Those are the questions it intends to ask. Layers of Fear tries to ask a few questions.

Layers of fear 2 endings explained