PC Gamer - UK (2022-01)

R

eviewing something as
influential as Maniac Mansion
feels slightly absurd, like I’m giving
you a critical appraisal of bees. But
it’s worth knowing that Maniac
Mansion is still worth playing. And it
does loads of stuff that still feels
surprising. As a point-and-click game
I’m expecting to meander around
without any sense of urgency, but I
immediately saunter into the wrong
room and get locked in a dungeon.
Better still, I’m able to escape when
one of my buddies gets captured and
we find a button hidden behind a
fake brick. The interface feels
cumbersome now, but there is
something immersive about
having so many ways to
bollocks up a puzzle.

MANIAC MANSION

80

I

t’s quite hard to find games about

big old buildings that a) aren’t

scary and b) I haven’t re-reviewed

before. That’s why Rusty Lake Hotel

is nestling here like roasted venison

upon a bed of mushrooms and

rosemary. Which, with the necessary

context, is still a rather frightening

thought. It’s Fawlty Towers meets

Hannibal: a game about preparing

dinner for (and with) your guests.

The route to murdering and cooking

them is often crooked – it involves

solving a series of puzzles while they

wait for death – but the weirdness of

it all helps excuse some ludicrous

solutions. Unless Tabasco sauce does

in fact come from the nose of

deer skulls, in which case I

stand corrected.

RUSTYLAKE HOTEL

66

T

opping off this month’s theme is

Pacify, a game that proves that

investigating spooky places with

friends does nothing to lessen the

unpleasantness. Although, to be

honest, the most frightening thing

about Pacify for me was the nausea I

got from playing for too long –

vengeful wraiths have nothing on a

stomach that feels like it’s been in a

tumble drier. Sickness aside, this is a

simple, moreish investigative horror

game and possibly the first

that’ll make you glad to lay

eyes on horrible dolls.

PACIFY

65

THEY’RE BACK

EXPECT TO PAY
£ 15

DEVELOPER

Bloober Team

PUBLISHER

Aspyr

NEED TO KNOW

I

’ve often wondered how I’d die

in a horror movie. I assumed

something heroic, like having

my knees eaten while I lift starving

orphans onto a rescue helicopter.

Layers of Fear has been kind

enough to confirm the grim truth.

Apparently I get locked in a

basement and starve to death after

effing about with a ouija board I

should obviously have left alone.

It’s not even that I was stupid enough

to play with such an obviously-cursed

item – more that I broke the

sacrosanct gaming rule of following

the light and going where the game

wanted me to. It’s not the ideal finale

for my first go, but it does highlight

one of the game’s most interesting

and unforgiving features: if things go

wrong, that’s it. Game over.

A second attempt is more fruitful,

quite literally. I stumble into a

kitchen that features a painting

which spews forth endless apples,

and I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be

terrifying or delicious. This is

perhaps the biggest issue with Layers

of Fear: one scare isn’t enough. There

have to be 2 0, daisy-chained together

like monstrous bunting. The game

has a tendency to bury you in

cascading dolls and warping

corridors. It all comes quite early for

me, too. Before I really have time to

understand what ‘normal’ looks like,

the doors are switching around and

the paintings are flying off the walls.

It’s effective, but some restraint

would help the big scares stand out. I

still love the ambient storytelling,

artistic suffering, and the scrawled

notes hinting at past horrors, but I

also feel that Bloober

Team don’t quite trust me

enough to decide when I

need to be scared.

ART ATTACK

LAYERS OF FEAR is spooky, but in a loud way

BELOW: (^) ‘Portrait of a Young Games Journalist’.
Even the furnaces
in Pacifylook
terrified.
71