Face Your Fears 2 Review

Is It Scary? Is it Worth it?

 Amanda BlainPosted:October 17, 2021
Updated: June 3, 2022

Let’s get started on this Face You Fears 2 Review.

What is Face Your Fears 2?

Face Your Fears 2 is a survival horror game. You are presented with two scenarios that focus on the mysterious Harvest House and Harvest Familly.

The game highlights specific fears in each chapter. Can you make it out alive?

Who Makes Face Your Fears 2?

Face Your Fears 2 is developed by Turtle Rock Studios. They are a large developer in California, USA. They have made many triple AAA titles over the years including Back 4 Blood, Evolve, and of course, Left 4 Dead.

They have also made several VR titles including Face Your Fears 1, Journey of the Gods, The Well, Blade Runner 2049, and Otherworlds.

Which VR Headsets is Face Your Fears 2 On?

You can play Face Your Fears 2 on Oculus Rift, and Oculus Quest 2.

Face Your Fears 2 Tutorial

There is a very in-depth tutorial when you start Face Your Fears 2. It walks you through movement, lights, turning, and interactions. It is above and beyond in detail with a few little scares built-in.

I recommend everyone play it, even if you are familiar with VR as they have a few differences here than some other VR games.

Face Your Fears 2 Review Gameplay

Face Your Fears 2 presents you with 2 different scenarios when you start the game. 2013 Shadows Of the Past and 1983 The Investigation. Both stories play out at the same location, the Harvest House, but they have a dramatically different feel to each one.

I fully recommend starting with the 2013 Shadows of The Past.

Shadows Of The Past

You are looking for your sister who went to a late-night teenage party at the haunted Harvest House. You start off driving in a car down a dark spooky road.

This situation as shown at the start includes:

• Deadly Spiders
• In Grave Conditions
• Tentacle Terrors
• Ratopia
• Escaping Harvest House

Some of these experiences are scream out loud worthy. When you are trapped in a spooky room with a million spiders coming at you even if you don’t fear spiders, it is sure to get your heart rate up.

Then these huge spiders start attacking you. There is a great moment of picking up various objects and chucking them at these evil spiders. It made me cheer out loud. Things like “TAKE THAT SPIDER” were frequently heard during my play-through of this.

The same thing can be said for many of the other moments in this chapter. There are some truly scary jump scare moments and evil things startling and attacking you but you usually get to attack back in some way after the initial fear moment. It brings a nice satisfaction to it. It also takes away any of that helpless feeling and therefore you lose some of that ‘fear’ seen in other Horror experiences.

The game has typical adventure elements. You need a key to open a door and you must find it. The game directs you with tiny green sparkles in the direction that you need to go. Nothing is too complicated because of this. You occasionally will have a few puzzles as well.

The Investigation

You are a news reporter as part of a paranormal ghost hunting team. Something has happened to your partner. You need to enter the Harvest House and find him.

This situation as shown at the start includes:

• Haunted
• Creepy Show
• Widows Walk
• The Witches Lair

Even though both locations are set in the same Harvest House location it is not a simple repeat of the same level. Although the overall layout is the same, many rooms you could previously access you can not this time. You also have access to new areas. A cave-in means you can’t go that way now for example. This brings a sense of familiarness without repeating the same level and it works.

Turns into Platformer?

What doesn’t work is the developer’s decision to make this episode more of a kind of platformer than a survival adventure horror like the first episode.

You will spend most of this level climbing, reaching, jumping across platforms, and mostly dying. Dying over and over and over just like you are playing a hard level in Super Mario, there will be much death, as you figure out the correct timing and path.

As you are jumping around these platforms, a spooky witch will fly out at you. It will likely startle you. Good. Scary. Then you accidentally walk off the ledge and die. Oops. The game reloads.

Disappointing parts of Face Your Fears 2

Do you know what is NOT scary? That spooky witch is back flying out at you. You will see it 10+ times, in the exact same spot, while you figure out how to navigate the next section. It turns more into nails on a chalkboard annoying, than scary.

This isn’t just one section either, this is most of this level in one way or another. Not really sure why they did this. Part of horror is being unnerved by something not expected. There is no randomness in Face your Fears 2. Everything is pre-scripted and unfortunately, because you might die, things are actually repeated. Over and Over.

The climbing is especially frustrating as you really need to lift your arms and move them around. Your arms reaching above your head, gripping buttons, falling, dying on the 20+ try to get somewhere. Yeah… you are likely to be pretty discouraged.

It isn’t so much that you don’t know where to go when climbing, (it is marked with a blue grid) it is that the game doesn’t register that you have grabbed another spot. Or you reach too far trying to grab something so your first hand (according to the game) drops. Oopsey fall to death. Do the whole thing over. With the same voice scenes and jump scares.

Talk about frustrating.

That said, there are some much better puzzles in the 2nd level, including a very spooky and challenging mannequin puzzle I really enjoyed. I also found the story in this part to have a lot more elements to it as it goes over the spooky history of the Harvest Family.

Even with the strange platformer section, It is still worth playing because of the puzzles and story, but prepare to be frustrated with the repeated deaths.

Replayability

After you have completed the story you are able to go to the menu and select any one of the specific fears at any time. This makes Face Your Fears 2 a great party game to play with friends. It is similar to Face Your Fears 1 in this way.

Face Your Fears 2 Graphics and Sound

The graphics are pretty good for a Quest 2 product. There are of course not as many shaders as you would see in a PC VR experience but overall spooky things look spooky enough.

The sound is pretty great here too. Like most horror experiences they use breath ghosty whispers and noises from one ear to the other to keep you on your toes. No complaints in either department.

Does Face Your Fears 2 cause motion sickness?

There IS in-game movement in Face Your Fears 2. There are many movement settings to select to help you pick an option that doesn’t cause you motion sickness. I recommend playing around with these settings to find what works for you.

Face Your Fears 2 should not cause any motion sickness issues as long as you use the in-game settings. 

Final Thoughts On Face Your Fears 2 Review. Is Face Your Fears 2 worth it?

Face Your Fears 2 is worth it, even though it suffers from some issues. It still is a good addition to your VR horror collection.