Layers Of Fear VR

A horror to go Wilde over?

Using mental illness as a scaffold to hang your frights from feels exploitative, moreso if the story pays lip service to the issues it raises and is there merely to arrange jump scares around. This is where Layers Of Fear VR hangs its paint-stained coat and as it does so you can’t shake the feeling you’re playing an old game.

Now in PSVR, Layers Of Fear was originally released in 2016, and its use of schizophrenia and domestic abuse feels shallow. It shows the game’s age. Set in a dimly lit mansion, you play a Dorian Gray-like artist who begins to succumb to wild hallucinations. His paintings warp and run as reality and art bleed together. The further into the mansion you explore, the more the story is revealed, with shocking twists. How much of it you believe, and what you actually experience, will be down to the choices you make. Or rather, the doors you open. You’ll be fumbling your PS Move controller at a lot of doors (DualShock 4 is not supported).

ART ATTACK

The mansion warps and expands around you, and depending on the puzzles you solve and doors you open, you uncover one of three endings. While the game hasn’t aged well in some respects, VR refreshes it, particularly if you’re more interested in the shiver a dark descent into a basement can muster than a nuanced narrative.

If you’re after shocks, Layers Of Fear VR delivers some doozies. With intuitive controls and a solid sense of place immersion is a given, and it only takes a thump at a door or a falling painting to make you tense up. Misdirections that would land flat on PS4 find new life in PSVR as your sightline and audio cues conspire for some memorable jumps – you’ll constantly fear what might be lurking over your shoulder. The wilder hallucinations fail to land, however, as in VR any spectacle – for example, a painting leaking its oily fruit – demands to be observed rather than run from.

For all that’s good it’s hard to escape the feeling of playing a last-gen game. There’s more than floorboards creaking in this spooky 1920s mansion. Visually scrappy, even for a PSVR game, the halls of this old house can feel papery; but in VR feeling matters. Odd audio bugs confuse, too, as your footsteps can be a second behind the action, leaving you with the feeling of being scared by your shadow. While fun, this and other bugs can distract from the orchestrated shocks the dev wants you to experience.

The story and treatment of its themes hasn’t aged well, but the shocks land and the sense of being lost in a haunted mansion offers a palpable sense of isolation. Ian Dean