The real test of a good horror game is playing it in the dark. What may not seem so bad while the friendly Mr. Daystar is shining his light through the window becomes alarming at night. The last time I was so creeped out that I had to save the game and do something else before bed was "Signalis," and I remember doing the same thing on a scary level in "Thief: The Dark Project." With any luck, the remake of "Dead Space" might also make this list.

"When I play at night, I can't play with headphones. I can't play with headphones," said technical director David Robillard in an interview with PLAY magazine (opens in new tab). It's not just a visual thing."

"It's not just a visual thing. It's not just the visuals, but also the sound, the atmosphere, the effects, the way the system handles trying to scare you."

As Tyler Wilde noted during his hands-on with the "Dead Space" remake, one of the changes from the original is the addition of an AI director. "In the remake, the 'intensity AI' mixes in surprise necromorph attacks with pre-prepared ones. For example, a room that was light in one play may be dark in a second play."

Other changes from the original include a voiced protagonist, the ability to detach from the ship in the zero-gravity section and fly around with the thrusters, a few additional puzzles, and the loss of the loading screen. However, the Motive Studio team takes pains to point out that despite the changes and additions, it is still the same game.

"The first part of the game is very similar when played side by side," senior producer Philippe Ducharme told PLAY. 'But as you get to some of the chapters, you start to see some objectives that aren't as popular. If we were going to make changes, we wanted to make sure they reflected one of our key pillars [...].

Robby.

Robillard returned to the topic of fear, saying. "We needed to find a way to bridge that gap so that players don't feel like, 'Oh, I was here, I'm okay, I'm safe.' No, it's never safe. You can get jumped on. Someone will ask you for lunch money, and it's not friendly."

In choosing where to make these tweaks, the deciding factor was the impact on immersion. From the beginning of this project, we did a lot of walkthroughs of the original game to make sure it mapped properly in our minds." For us, anything we could do to enhance the immersive experience was an automatic yes."

It seems that every genre of video games is currently the focus of remakes, and after the success of the "Resident Evil 2" remake, it is no surprise that horror is following suit. The "Resident Evil 4" remake will be released on March 24, and remakes of "Silent Hill 2" and "System Shock" are also in the works. Whether any of them will provide the same tension as the original versions remains to be seen.

The Dead Space remake will be released on January 27, and will be available on PC via Steam, and natively, no Origin required, and will be available on the Xbox 360 and Xbox 360.