In case anyone is confused what this is, as the description is somewhat unclear, Layers of Fear contains all games in the series (including DLC) remade from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5 as well as the new release. So essentially three games in one, plus DLC. And for this price, for what you get, I personally think it's a steal. Based on my experience playing for a bit, the new engine has a profound effect on the way the games are presented, as they look a lot better. The new lighting actually makes the games scarier and the sound design, of course, is top notch. Strongly recommend for horror enthusiasts.

I see many of the reviews are comparing this game to the original 2016 game. To start, this game includes MUCH more than just one game. It includes 2016, 2016 DLC, and 2, and another narrative, AND an overarching narrative that carries between many of them in some way.

Many others make good points on how the first narrative isn't "exactly the same story" from the 2016 game. Yes, that is true. Personally, I think the 2016 had better story and was definitely slower pace and was easier to follow.
However, with the 2023 version, seeing a "remastered version" with better graphics of the 2016 story was very much enjoyable. Also, don't forget, you also get all the other narratives included in the 2023 version, so it's a pretty good bang for the buck too!

I liked all of the stories, the first one being the best of course. However the writers story was also very good.

Another small thing through out the game, wtf were those pre-rendered cut scenes? Looked like 720p and the voices sounded SUPER compressed. Though, in other parts of the game sometimes the voice sounded compressed, so I have no idea what that was about.

Lastly, YES this is a "walking sim", but that's just their way to tell the stories. They are leaving it up to the player to find the path to go and enjoy the ambiance and visual design of all of the different areas of the levels.
Yes, I will say I got stuck in a few parts (maybe 3-4 times throughout ALL of the narratives), but one walk-through video later, I understood what I was to do, and enjoyed the rest of the narrative.

In the end, I would recommend this to anyone who loves a spooky story, loves fantastic sound design, and being mesmerized with many of the graphics fed to you throughout the game.

Layers of Fear is what many have come to expect from Bloober Team. Though the amount of content you get for the price is good, the overall package is extremely mediocre. What it does well at, it does very well. What it's not so good at ends up being incredibly bad. The result is a game that just ends up being "okay" at best and genuinely has me concerned as to how this developer is going to handle the monumental task of a Silent Hill 2 remake.

Much like Bloober's other titles, the game's strongest asset is in its presentation. With the graphics updated to a new engine with new lighting and effects, along with some much better realisation of scares from the originals from a technical standpoint, Layers of Fear is a very pretty game across all three of its story locations. The biggest touch ups are mostly notable in the original 2016 narrative, but the project as a whole is well modelled, well-realised and I personally suffered no technical hitches as far as the presentation goes. The sound design has also been improved from the originals, with a multiple of ambient foley including unseen footsteps and other creaking noises making the environments feel much more alive, along with some welcome adjustments to the "scare" effects so they are less typical jumpscare fodder and more of a complete soundscape. I also found myself enjoying the soundtrack this time a lot more compared to playthroughs of the original releases as it was allowed to shine through a lot more.

The gameplay is mostly unchanged from the originals, with the exception of later elements from the second game being incorporated throughout. Though this is no classic survival horror affair, being mostly a walking sim with some minor puzzle solving, new sections of having to search for key items while being hunted down by an entity you can only delay helped to add a bit of adrenaline to the rather slow and controlled pace of preceding sections. Even despite the trickery of making the environments loop and change with every camera move, I never had a moment across the entire game where I felt like I got stuck or confused about what I should be doing to progress. It is worth noting there were occasional bugs where certain interactions with objects just wouldn't function or there'd be near soft-locking moments due to inconsistent hit registrations, but a quick reload alleviated these.

However, the elements of Layers of Fear that make up its artistic direction and its storytelling, arguably the most important parts of a psychological horror, are still just as poorly executed as they ever were which is not a good sign when the game is a narrative-driven experience.

When it comes to the art design, a lot of the visual elements may be technically well made in terms of 3D modelling and animation, but they don't really have a lot of substance to them from an artistic or horror perspective. The well worn tropes of cryptic writing on the walls, objects shifting around, living dolls and mannequins, cheap jumpscares and twitching creatures, all of it is material we've seen before in countless other horror entries and therefore is not in the least bit frightening or tension inducing. Any "symbolism" that is implied about any of the characters is also about as blunt as you could possibly get for psychological horror (the Wife's world being covered in chains because she feels "trapped" being one of the most eye-rolling attempts at commentary I've seen in a while) while some of it actually feels unrelated and only included because it simply "looks cool" rather than actually trying to make a statement about the story.

This is not helped by how fragmented that story is. The entirety of the narratives told across the collection are told through notes, objects, and voice-over. Because these pieces are not only deliberately hiding important information such as names and complete dates but also only being mementos of events that have already happened, they're all referencing a story concerning individuals that we never actually see and never learn the full extent about. We don't get a chance to know any of the characters in any personal way, so their tragedies and struggles feel disconnected and unimportant despite what the game is desperately trying to make us feel. These issues are made worse by the very inconsistent voice acting, some of which is perfect for the scenes they're in and some being totally at odds which what the game is trying to convey, And on top of that, particular endings change the actual facts of a story, so a lot of the details are left deliberately vague on purpose so any one of those endings can apply.

The new story of the Writer in particular is the worst. In addition to having the same problems as the other stories, it also feels like half of it is missing through how little of it there is. Despite being thorough in my explorations of the lighthouse (as I was everywhere else) to try and get as much of the findable material as possible to work out how it connected everything together as the marketing said it would, the Writer's story suddenly begins making references to pacts and deals that we never see happen and are never explained by the end. Characters are still not named, relations to dates and other parties are never specified, and the only thing that maybe ties it together is entirely reliant on being familiar with a specific ending of the Actor's story which you can miss. Good luck working out anything to do with the Rat Queen if you never end up encountering her on your first playthrough.

Layers of Fear is just another standard Bloober Team affair, where the presentation and horror inspirations are worn proudly and well made from a pure technical standpoint, but the actual narrative and art direction is incredibly lacking or just straight up bad. Even with the improvements made to numerous sections of the original games on the new hardware, the psychological stories they're designed to tell are both a mixture of too confusing given how vague they are and not substantial enough to really get invested in. With a project as gigantic as a Silent Hill 2 remake on their shoulders, I can only hope that Bloober focus mostly on what they're good at, graphics and sound, rather than trying their hand at original interpretations of artistry and story where they are clearly not.

I hope you like reading reviews longer than the games they're talking about.

The idea itself here is commendable - re-release all Layers of Fear content, upgrade it graphically and with voicework, and tie it all together with the writer's story to give the entire franchise a sense of continuity.

Updated graphics are the easiest to praise. If there's one thing Bloober Team consistently excels at, it's art direction and level design. Still, while technically and artistically impressive, it felt like an unnecessary flex. I personally preferred the original iteration, purely because the subtlety is lost with new, visually loud set pieces. What was once the charred remains of a room, now is some sort of nondescript black goop cave. Depending on your tastes though, you might feel differently.

Voice acting though... Why? The notes in the original games, the first one especially, often had certain bits (such as names) crossed out, which leads to fragmented voice work. The acting itself is mediocre at best and laughable at worst, turning tragic characters into campy caricatures. To make it even worse, not all notes are voiced in the first place, and the second game's notes barely has any voiceovers. As a whole, this is one of the most confusing additions.

Perhaps to avoid "walking sim" criticisms, they have also added gameplay mechanics. In the second game, it's actually pretty neat, if superficial - you carry around a flashlight and, since it's an actor's story, you "play out" a scene by flashing the light at posed mannequins. Pretty basic, but hey, it actually looks neat.

The first game's updated gameplay however is easily the most tasteless addition I've seen in a long time. Bear in mind, this is originally a tragic story of a painter and a musician, who drift apart despite becoming parents. The mother herself is a victim of a great fire that leaves her disfigured and unable to pursue her career, on top of her spouse no longer finding her attractive. In this updated version, the burn victim becomes an active antagonist that chases you down hallways, who you have to fend off by picking up a lantern and shining a light at her, slowly burning her until she temporarily despawns.

Think about it for a second. In this supposedly somber story in which a character condemns his partner because she's a broken burn victim, the player is given control to burn her to ash. Repeatedly. Imagine if a certain character from Silent Hill 2 needed to murder a certain female pursuer with a pillow. Repeatedly.

This mechanic shows up again when you play as the wife in the new DLC they added. Yes, you burn your twisted mimic to death. I cannot begin to understand who thought it was a good idea, or why.

It's difficult to fully describe how offensively tone deaf the painter's and the musician's stories are. I'm also starting to notice a trend how in Bloober Team's games, everyone hates each other's guts. There's no catharsis, no release, and the writer(s) have an unhealthy addiction to endings wherein the character is stuck in some sort of nightmarish loop. Speaking of endings, whenever they're not arbitrarily decided by collectibles, you have to play into said abuse to get more favourable endings. What a nice message.

As for the writer's story, it's haphazardly put together. In my playthrough, shortly after the protagonist makes a Faustian pact with a supernatural entity, her son mysteriously vanishes. Or does he? I have no idea. Soon as I finished the first game's stories, the main character was already furious with whatever it was that happened to her son, and was ready to break the pact. I have no idea what happened here honestly, but considering how frequently scripts break because you trigger something else, I assume I accidentally skipped something I wasn't meant to be able to.

Playing through this re-release was increasingly frustrating. It felt like the writer(s) had a lot to say about nothing. Ultimately, I gained nothing out of it, besides a couple of decent scares; the graphical upgrades made it feel more like Bloober wanted to wow me than scare me. I suppose I managed to get an ending in one of the DLCs wherein the wife lives so I should feel happy about that, except... she dies in the core game, making the existence of the former ending - which comes after the core game - confusing.

All I can think of as closing words is, I defended Bloober Team against naysayers when it came to the Silent Hill 2 remake. After playing this, now I too am worried about the team's future works.

Bloober

The original Layers of Fear and Layers of Fear 2 were released back in 2016 and 2019, respectively. Bloober is known for making such walking sims with twisted stories and with a gameplay where you constantly get the feeling that you are in a horror movie. There is a reason why the synopsis of the original refers to it as psychedelic. This is also the team that was behind Observer and its redux version.

Both games are played from the first-person perspective and the emphasis is on finishing up your Magnum Opus - a painting in case of the first episode (in a Victorian mansion) and a movie role with an actor aboard a ship. I think most people prefer the first one but my favourite is the 2nd. There is some puzzle-solving and paying attention is needed to collect every item needed for us the understand the story in more detail and - since the genre is horror - there will be some running sequences here and there.

Reimagining everything in Unreal 5

First, I thought this would be the only change. This is already a big leap compared to Unity (the second episode was developed in Unreal 4, though). I was specifically looking forward to sections such as the falling fruits from the painting or the moss-covered rooms on the ship. Everything looks fantastic!

But there is more! Gameplay-wise we have a lantern we can use to get rid of the monster attacking us. We can also destroy the black slime covering important items to free those. In the sequel our "weapon" will be a flashlight - again, good for stopping the monster but there are also numerous mannequins that can be "activated" with its light so that they open up a blocked path.

An interesting concept that means there are way more chase sequences in this remake (perhaps not everybody will like them) and you will also notice some rooms that previously were not there and this includes new puzzles. I would not call the reimagined versions longer, just slightly altered at certain sections. And remember: the DLC of the first game titled Inheritance is also included in this pack!

This is already great and should be fine, right? But there's even more than that! We have 3 additional stories. First off, both games get a new accompanying story: our painter gets the Musician (here we have more information on the wife) while the actor's story is followed up by that of the Director. And to make it even more interesting we are introduced to the Writer first - she is the one the story begins with in a lighthouse where she sits down to write a great story... of a painter and an actor. I do not agree with all the decisions the creators made (some parts of the story were open for interpretation in the original ones, here we get more hints as to who the culprit is), but this is definitely a way to remake or remaster your previous titles! (Where credit goes not just to Bloober but to Anshar Studios, as well!)

Highly recommended!

The only thing this games got going for it is the graphics really. Its not scary at all and definitely not worth the price.
I will keep saying this over and over, Dying is NOT scary! getting real tired of horror games having the "scary" thing kill you because you didn't do exactly what the game wanted you to do in the very specific moment, Its more annoying than anything.
Save your money, play the original 2016 version its half the price or just wait for a deep discount

The original layers of fear was amazing. The story was compelling and genuinely so well written. The game felt so unnerving and you never knew what to expect. This remake is just terrible. I'm sorry. The voice acting is criminal. The new writing is so basic.

I know I'm being overly harsh and I am sorry. However, this feels like the original has been completely ruined. I can't recommend this game. Just play the 2016 original.

it's layers of fear with updated visuals but the voice acting feels off and it's very weird sounding

still no fov slider either so gotta use flawless widescreen like in the previous

it's 45% off for owners of the previous games so that's nice

It's a decent horror game with LOF 1 + 2 + DLC along with new additional content added, however I would wait for a sale to buy it.

The scariest part about this game is there are NO cats.

Unravelling the mind

Bloober Team, with the aid of Anshar studios, brings players back into the twisted world of psychological horror and artistic obsession with the remake of the Layers of Fear series which now contains three stories of craft-obsessed protagonists (The Painter, The Actor and the never-before-told story of The Writer, which ties everything together). The remake also includes all DLC released from the first game. With its enhanced visuals, which looks absolutely spectacular (the entire series has been remade from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5), and immersive atmosphere, this revamped edition manages to recreate the chilling experience of the original games while introducing a few new surprises thanks to the addition of The Writer. 

However, despite its visual splendour and eerie ambience, the game falls short in the narrative department, mostly let down by the jumbled and confusing sequel that seems to lack any sense of urgency until the final two hours or so which mostly devolve into a series of frustrations as the player is constantly thrown into a series of instakill situations. These sections are frustrating and tedious to move through. The remake also fails to deliver any significant innovations to stand out among the ever-growing genre of horror games.

Pros:

Enhanced Visuals: The 2023 remake of Layers of Fear is a visual treat. The updated graphics and refined details create an even more haunting and immersive experience. The game's atmosphere brought to life with a level of realism that intensifies the sense of dread and unease as players navigate through the dark and decrepit mansion, cruise liner and lighthouse..

Artistic Ambience: The game's unique blend of art and horror creates a distinct and captivating atmosphere. The use of various artistic elements throughout both titles also adds an extra layer of intrigue and sets it apart from traditional horror settings.

Cons:

Familiar Territory: While the visual upgrades are commendable, the overall gameplay and story progression is let down by a weak second act. Players that are familiar with both games may end up being disappointed in the full package as not much else has changed except outside of the visual upgrades and the addition of The Writer - which feels more like a short 2 hour long DLC rather than a fully fleshed out story like The Artist and The Actor and this can lead to a sense of déjà vu, as they will have already experienced many of the scares and plot twists.

Minor Technical Issues: Some players have reported encountering minor technical glitches, such as frame rate drops or occasional texture issues. While these problems do not severely hinder the overall experience, they can be a mild annoyance.

Uneven story telling: Layers of Fear's narrative is a bit of a jumbled mess. While The Artists story remains gripping and is engaging right to its conclusion and is definitely the strongest of the three tales being told here, unfortunately the same can not be said for The Actor - which is a confusing, jumbled and frustrating mess that ends up being mostly disappointing. The addition of The Writer is a stronger addition than The Actor but it's a pity it's over far too soon. The way the games toy with players' minds, immersing them in each protagonist's unravelling psych still remains the games strongest asset.

Conclusion:

The layers of mystery, symbolism, and psychological exploration should keep most players engaged throughout the journey as they try to piece together each protagonist's tragic past and descent into madness. The game is visually striking and it rekindles the spine-tingling terror of the originals. While the game successfully delivers a visual treat, it's let down by a narrative that feels at odds with itself despite all stories dealing with artistic obsession and a descent into madness. 

For those who missed the original games or simply love the horror genre, Layers of Fear is still worth exploring for its psychological thrills. However, if you're seeking groundbreaking innovations or a completely new experience, you might find the familiarity of this remake slightly disappointing. With its eerie beauty and disturbing revelations, Layers of Fear still remains a game worth experiencing.

A real visual treat when compared to both of the originals visuals

The game bugged out on me on two or three of the games puzzles where the cursor to complete each puzzle simply just vanished forcing me to have to quit out to the game main menu. Thankfully, reloading back in solved the issue but this ended up being a minor annoyance because of the auto-save which often ended up forcing me to have to replay sections of the game just to get back to the part I was originally at. I thankfully didn't experience any visual or performance issues like some players have reported..

Dear Esther, Observer, What Remains of Edith Finch

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=869453510