Game EXP: Layers of Fear VR (MQ2)

 

Layers of Fear VR

Release Date: July 9, 2020

Systems: HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest 2, Meta Quest 2

Publisher: Bloober Team SA

Developer: Incuvo S.A.

First off, a couple of things to note about the above.  Layers of Fear VR is a VR port of Layers of Fear, developed by Bloober Team SA in 2016.  The port of Layers of Fear to VR was handled by Incuvo and released in 2020.  Secondly, I have previously played this game on Steam and the Nintendo Switch, so I knew, for the most part, what I was getting into when I started; I also briefly talked about buying the same game multiple times here.  I would not normally review a game for the third time, but this is the first time I have replayed a game for the first time in virtual reality, and because there were some noticeable changes to the game in the VR format that I feel that Layers of Fear VR deserves its own article.

This being the third time I have played various iterations of Layers of Fear and just as many Game EXP articles.  The first time I played the game was on my computer through Steam, and the second time was on the Nintendo Switch exclusively in handheld mode.  I wanted to pick this game up for the Oculus Quest 2 / Meta Quest 2 for all of the reasons that I talked about back in August.  I had read some of the reviews for the game on the Oculus store page and knew some of the graphical limitations and a few of the crashing issues and glitches, but I felt pretty confident that I was going to be playing a fairly stable game.

Going into the game, there were two specific areas that I was terrified about revisiting.  First, there was the bedroom for your daughter.  In both previous games I had played, this room was very unsettling because you were forced to be in this room as the only door in/out would lock upon entering, and you had to be in the room the whole time while events happening around you.  Things like a doll banging its head against a crib, toys rolling across the floor, a music box with a spinning light playing some creepy-ass tune.  There were also effects in the room that I was afraid was going to make me very motion sick because previously, the lights in the room would spin, followed by the game forcing the player to slowly spin (in the opposite direction?  maybe?) without the player being in control, revealing horrific changes to the room with each pass.  Spinning rooms and not being in control are great ways to cause nausea, at least for me, and especially in a VR space.  Thankfully, the developer who ported "Layers of Fear" took this into account and there was no spinning in the room apart from moving myself, and they managed to make the room just as terrifying.  Sure this room was different from the original game, but only in how certain mechanics operated, but I am glad that Incuvo did make the needed accessibility changes to make it playable for most players while still maintaining the original feeling and effect that Bloober Team had created for the room.

The second room that I was not looking forward to was The Painter's office which involves heights, both in looking up, and falling down.  Now I have played VR games involving heights (The Climb 2, Ultra Wings, Vader: Immortal) and there are times when you can "feel" the fear of falling a few hundred virtual feet.  I recall the first time I played through this area I fell a few times because I thought that was how you progressed through the towering bookshelves looking for the ringing phone.  I now know that you are required to fall at least two, possibly three times, and each time I hated it.  Granted it is not quite the same as jumping across a gap between cliffs in a canyon, but walking across pallets suspended from the ceiling while surrounded by Dali-esque bookshelves is still an unnerving experience.

The rest of the moving about in this environment, now created in a 3D space felt pretty natural even with accessibility modifications.  In some VR games I have played that require the player to move around a space, they have used a projecting/throwing method that projects a circle on the ground with a connecting line showing where you will move to.  In Layers of Fear VR, you move around as you would in any first-person game, but while you are moving, the sides of the screen darken and narrow, essentially giving you tunnel vision, and only keeping the area directly in front of your virtual eyes in focus, reducing the risk of motion sickness.  When you stop moving, your vision returns to normal without the darkened edges.  It did take a while (a few 15-30 minute sessions) to get used to this method of movement, although by the end of the game, I felt fine moving around without issue; at least most of the time.  Going up and down stairs did make me feel momentarily nauseous, but I had gotten into the habit of marching in place while walking and using stairs to help mitigate that nausea feeling; I am sure I looked ridiculous, which Conklederp and my parents could attest to. That includes putting your hand through objects like walls, books, windows, and objects looking oversized (enlarged to show detail?).  

For people who hang their experience on the world being 100% accurate, there are a quite a few immersion-breaking aspects to the game. First, I fully understand the difficulty of "clipping," when your virtual hand clips through objects because I feel like there is little that the developers can do to not have your hands move through objects that would not translate well visually and to the haptic controllers.  You could just have your hand not pass through objects, but that would be visually off-putting as you know your hand is still moving, but visually, it is static.  So instead you can move your hand through most things in the game world.  Your head, essentially being the camera, on the other hand, cannot pass through most objects, especially walls.  If you do try to pass your head through a wall, the game world will just "back up," rather jarringly, until the wall and your head are no longer clipping.  There were a couple of instances where my head clipped through a door that was either opening or closing, but that is likely due to the walls and doors being constructed differently.  Additionally, when reaching for dressers or cabinets with a lot of drawers, There was also one room and one hallway that did not have the correct image/texture behind the window and instead was a just solid bright fuchsia.  It was momentarily distracting, but only if I were to stare at out that particular window for more than a second.

There were several times I found that objects were a lot larger than they would normally be in a real space.  Things like dominos were the size of small books, spice jars the size of growlers, rings that might fit Andre the Giant, a pocket watch was the size of your palm, and an embossing stamp was about three inches in diameter.  Sure, these objects were ToonTown levels of large but their models were never created with the idea that they would be looked at outside of a 2D screen or by waving a hand up in comparison.  In the original game, the objects might have come across as slightly larger, but not this comically large.  Does this ruin immersion?  A little, but it was not often that I was going around comparing objects to my virtual hands and this would only come up when reaching for a letter or drawing to see if I could pick it up; which was actually quite frequent.  I also admit that I am the kind of person that is not bothered by this, so after I got used to some objects being larger than their real-world counterparts, I was quickly able to get over it and continue getting the metaphorical feces scared out of me.  

Lastly, and this is a twofer, you could not interact with all freestanding objects.  Like rolls of paper in drawers, books on bookshelves, and chairs, which is something to be annoyed with after playing the Penumbra series where you could interact with nearly everything, but like a lot of video games, there are some things that were never meant to be clicked.  Secondly, items that you can interact with, like bottles, and some items in the kitchen, those objects do not have sound when you place them down or throw them across the room.  I picked up a wine bottle and tossed it up in the air, and it landed on a table, rolled off, and landed on the floor without any kind of sound effect.  Sure a lot of these were immersion-breaking, but I am also more on the forgiving side, and I know that I am a little bit biased.

For those wanting to know how I finished the game, I got the "Loop" ending again.  For the third time.  I thought I had read that to get one of the "good" endings that you needed to avoid the rat drawings, and while I only picked up three (all by accident), I still had The Painter finish the painting of his Wife only to have it distort in front of his eyes and laugh at him mockingly.  The game then did an interesting thing in that it cut to as if I was watching a movie on a screen, as The Painter picked up the painting and threw it in a room upstairs with all of the other paintings of his Wife.  I think this cutscene was shown this way to reduce motion sickness since, in the original game, it shows you performing this action, but if it were to happen all of a sudden, at the end of the game with the computer taking control of your character, it might cause the player to feel ill.  Also, because it is a cut scene, you are not supposed to be able to look around, which inevitably the player would likely do, which would lead the developers to need to create that portion of the house at that point in time.  So instead, it was shown as a movie, removed from the player's ability.  I was fine with this.

[No, this is not the final painting]

I think I can say that Layers of Fear VR, is my favorite way to experience this game now.  Sure, I could play it on PC and the game would look better than it does in VR as the textures would be richer and everything that Bloober Team created for the game would be there, but being able to be in that mansion, after having already explored it twice and it still feeling new was an amazing experience.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Leave Me Be, With My Memories