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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.