You get a vague idea of the story by the second act, but even then a lot of the game is trying too hard to be mysterious. You are on the ‘ship’ and then weird stuff starts happening. Not because it was difficult – you are just walking from room after all – but because there is no introduction, no back story. The game is split in to five acts, the first of which was one of the most arduous slogs I have ever encountered in a video game.

Like the first game you don’t have to do much other than make your way to the next area and as there’s only one path for you to follow, this allows developers Bloober to script in jump scares and set pieces. That lasts all of two minutes before every rule is thrown out of a porthole and we descend into madness, opening doors to find forests, mazes, and things scuttling around in your peripheral vision. The game is superficially set on an ocean liner where the unnamed actor is about to start filming, with Candyman star Tony Todd playing an unseen and malevolent director, berating and belittling the star. It might be about a childhood trauma, an abusive father, a split personality, or an evil director, but unfortunately the voice overs and imagery are so obtuse and pretentious, it’s almost impossible to work out exactly what is going on. In a similar way, Layers of Fear 2 uses cinema to explore the psyche of an actor searching for a character. Art was at the heart of the horrors of the first Layers of Fear, as you journeyed into the dark recesses of a painter’s mind and his struggles with alcoholism.

Layers of fear 2 movie references