I realize that I posted a Game EXP article about Layers of Fear less than a year ago, but that was when I played it through Steam, and this time it is my experience playing it on the Nintendo Switch. For a more comprehensive review of the game, I would recommend you read the article I posted last October, so I am not going to go into explaining gameplay mechanics and expect that you will have either played Layers of Fears already, or you have previously read the aforementioned article.
First off, this version of Layers of Fear is very much the same game that is available on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It may be graphically inferior to other releases of the game as far as texture detail or quality of dynamic lighting, but I feel that unless you are doing a side-by-side comparison, playing on the Switch, you will probably not notice if a wall, painting, or wooden doll's body would have looked even better on a PC or PlayStation 4. And as long as we are talking about gameplay performance, I will admit that I did not notice any recognizable dip in frames per second, but since I do not have a counter on screen, I cannot confirm that the game did not dip from 30 fps to 20 for 4.7 seconds. And this was from playing predominantly in handheld mode, although I did play a few times in docked, but at the very least, all of the pictures taken here were in handheld.
My biggest concern with playing Layers of Fear on the Switch was how well the system would handle the seamless transitions that made the game the first time around so effective. After playing for the first hour, all of my fears were alleviated. Walking down a hall way, hearing the door you just walked through click behind you and turning around to find a blank wall where the door once was, then you hear the sound of a crying child behind you. As far as I was able to tell, all of the ways that LoF excelled on my PC during my first playthrough have met all of my expectations on the Switch.
Having now gone through the game twice, I felt that the second time was significantly less frightening than the first time, but I feel like that is to be anticipated since I knew what to expect for the most part. That being said, the game was still pretty terrifying in a lot of areas.
When I came upon the bedroom, I immediately recalled all of the horribleness that happened here. By this point in the game, my palms were already a bit sweaty and my brain thought it would be the perfect time to inflict my arms and the back of my neck with goosebumps. And that is primarily what I was hoping for on my second playthrough, and first on the Switch. I have yet to go through the Inheritance DLC on the Switch, but I anticipate that it will have similar results.
And something that I apparently did not notice the first time I finished the game, was that "New Game" was replaced by "Finish It." Now I am really hoping that there will be something different on a second playthrough of the same file.
So congratulations Bloober Team on a great port of a great game, and I am really hoping that Observer is able to see a Switch release, but I have been hoping for that now for nearly a year, so let us just keep at it, shall we?
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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