Good article to read and I really enjoyed playing Resident Evil 4 Remake that to me Is the game of year and my favourite game for this year. It would take more effort to get lost than to reach your destination. The Callisto Protocol, though, is always scooting you along through extremely straightforward corridors. The Dead Space remake allows you to get lost as you explore, attempting to make your way through the intricate guts of the Ishimura. You can see how this approach to level design compares to earlier games by comparing Dead Space’s remake to its spiritual successor, The Callisto Protocol.

Both funnel players along extremely linear levels with little branching, stopping at intervals for combat encounters at escalating difficulty levels before ending the level with a flashy boss fight. I wrote recently about the ways many modern triple-A games like Final Fantasy 16 and God of War Ragnarok share an almost identical approach to level design. These remakes are notable for how obvious it is that they come from a different era. With the exception of Layers of Fear, which has a more dreamlike logic guiding its exploration, these games place players in sprawling environments and ask them to explore them until they make sense. What most of those games have in common, aside from being horror games from an earlier era, is an intense focus on tight, rewarding level design. EA released Dead Space, Capcom put out Resident Evil 4, Nintendo remastered Metroid Prime, Bloober Team doled out some Layers of Fear, and Nightdive Studios gave us a shock to the system with System Shock. 2023 has seen a lot of remakes and remasters.

Dead space remake achievements