Dark Forces

Research Facility mission. Notice that the beginning of the facility has so many turns to the left and to the right, including loops, that it has the effect of disorienting the player. This confusing pattern repeats all over the game.

Detention Center mission. There are two lifts (elevators) in this level, but they are identical from inside and outside. With the textures and architecture being the same for both it confuses the player, who ends up running in circles because he or she can't distinguish different areas from the same level. Even if there are severe memory constrains that limit the number of unique textures, the level design can still rely on geometry to distinguish different zones within the level.

In the Fuel Station mission the same thing happens. There are two identical doors on identical corridors that really confuse the player about where to go next.

Unreal Tournament 1999 - Liandri

This deathmatch level has a huge pillar at the center of the map with an elevator inside. The pillar works as a landmark. All corridors and areas are placed around the central area. There are three different areas, each with a different texture on walls, floors and ceilings. The problem is that the blue lights at the entrance of each area and the ceiling lights are all equal and there isn't some unique architectural detail to make distinguishing each area easier. The teleports are all the same green color, which doesn't help to navigate the map. The ramps and platforms placed around the pillar are asymmetric, while at the same time the lights are all symmetric.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Image credits: Bolloxed

The slum mission on Rio de Janeiro prioritized a real world setting over the gameplay. The slum was built as it is in the real world, a place with no regards to order, full of alleys, narrow spaces and no landmarks. The player feels in the same way a police officer would in an operation where they go to an unknown territory. Who is the enemy and who isn't? From where they are going to attack? In this mission the enemies attack from windows, houses, corners, doors and the player is left disoriented because they are attacking from everywhere. The police officers in Rio de Janeiro suffer from constantly having to combat criminals who know their way in the slums, whereas the police don't. Not knowing the enemy's territory and going in is a suicide mission.

If you view the slums from a distance all you see is visual pollution. There aren't guiding lines for the player to follow. It's pretty much chaotic. There isn't a landmark in the form of a house with higher height or that stands out with a unique style. Every house repeats the same geometry, colors and style.

Look up for Cantagalo, Rio de Janeiro and notice how similar the game is to the real world location it was based on.

Image credits: Bolloxed

In this place the player is faced with two paths: go to the right, upstairs, or go the left. Nothing in the environment tells the player that the house to the right is locked, it's a dead end. The map is linear, but in some places you can go in a house or around it.

Image credits: igcompany

That hill has a shape that seems to be a path and the texture is the same texture that the player has already walked on before. But there is an invisible wall there preventing the player from going up there. The developers should have placed a fence there or remodelled the ground to make it not look like a path. If the player follows the wooden planks to the right, trying to go in the house, they are ambushed with enemies having an obvious advantage there.

Image credits: igcompany

Things that can help the player know which way to go: specific graffiti depicting guns pointing at the right direction; objects such as pipes that are parallel to the player's path or even garbage bags placed in specific spots; utility poles with cables that the player can use as guiding lines; even the windows and doors themselves could be aligned in a way that points at the right direction; concrete textures can create guiding lines; the water tanks on the roofs can have some color or mark to stand out; if a fence has a door that won't open, it should be made clear with chains or wooden planks that the player can see from a distance.

Control

Containment Sector. Logistics area. In the grand scale, Control's level design contradicts some natural coherence that we have in our world.  If we are inside a building and Jesse's room and Joe's room are both on the same 10th floor of the same building, we expect to be able to go from one room to another without having to go from one floor to another. This is exactly the rule that this game breaks. Putting aside the game's excuse of playing with weirdness and unnatural spaces for a while, it's very confusing to go from point A to point B when we have to go under or above another floor, yet both A and B belong to the same floor. The level design in this game confuses the player because there are places which have the same height, but to go from one to another the player has to travel under or above another's floor in the same building.  Or the opposite, the player goes up or down some stairs but they still are within the same area.

The other aspect that makes Control's level design confusing is that the player is forced to memorize the location of locked doors or places blocked by a toxic biological entity. There are multiple rooms and places that require some security access level key or a biological immunity system that the player is granted after completing some missions. Some of these doors are the backtrack route, while others are optional extra rooms with secrets. There is no distinction between the two. The minimap provides no markings related to the location of such rooms and places. This combined with the previous paragraph makes Control very hard to navigate. There is a minimap, but for some unknown reason they decided to lay out all the floors on top of each other, making the map very hard to read. For a 1990 game such as Doom a 2D map was perfectly acceptable because there weren't rooms over rooms and all paths were essentially 2D. For a 3D world of a modern game though, a 2D minimap with all the floors stacked on top of each other is a nightmare to follow. By contrast, Doom 2016 adopted a 3D minimap which can be rotated and makes a clear distinction between different floors and areas.

To cite one mission in Control as an example of the above. When the player has to go to the Panopticon to complete a mission, it's very confusing to find the entrance to it because the nearby areas: the medical center, security, logistics and prime candidate program have stairs, corridors and are on different floors. Which makes it very confusing to progress in the game. If you look at the minimap you have the impression that one room is at the other side of a wall, yet you have to turn around and take a long route to get to the other side.

A comment about the logistic area. There is a corridor that connects two parts. In one we have a darker space. In the other we have a much brighter space. Notice that the corridor leads a more indoor space into a more open space and vice-versa. It feels unnatural because both ends are corridors. The other thing that makes the building rather confusing to navigate are the doors. Notice that the corridor's door to the right and the bathroom's door to the left are identical. There is a "women's bathroom" sign but it draws much less attention that the yellow light above the door. This happens in real life too. We can confuse doors of closets, pantries, dressing rooms, cellars, etc if the door is exactly the same as the door to a bedroom for example.

Research Sector. I can't state that this is a mistake by itself because I don't know what priorities they had and how they decided to build things. Nonetheless, I'd like to make a comment. When you come out of the elevator you are presented with a huge stair and you can either go up or down. Going up you go to Dr. Darling's Office or The Dimensional Research. Going down you go to the Parapsychology sector. If you look up there is another floor up there, which can't be reached through the stairs in front of you. It's the Luck & Probability sector. How to get there? The textures and lighting are all photorrealistic, yet the architecture is on a boundary between reality and fantasy. With this game's theme about alternate dimensions and shifting spaces it seems to be a sensible decision. But from a navigational point of view, it's rather confusing to some player's eyes.

If you follow the stairs with your eyes you'll notice that the  architecture does suggest that there is a stair behind the walls, yet there isn't. The angled cut does suggest some spiral staircase around the tree in the middle, connecting multiple floors. With the building being huge the designers did suggest the existance of more rooms and sectors near the tree's peak. If they, the developers, had plans for more rooms and sectors there I can't know. In here I'd say that there were asthetic reasons behind the decision to build this area with the suggestion that there exists upper floors and more rooms behind the walls. If you fly up there you'll find some secreat areas with sealed doors and the existeance of such doors supports the idea that the designers did want the player to feel that there is more to be explored.

Each sub area inside the Old House is more or less linear. If you ignore the minimap there is a steady progression of rooms, corridors, stairs and you should be able to always go fordwards without getting lost. Except for some optional side areas and that's where the confusion begins, because the player often finds himself or herself going backwards because many doors and corridors are identical to each other. One example is when the player goes to the Research Sector for the first time. They can go down to the Threshold area, but it's entirely optional. A decision was made, related to the plot, where corridors and rooms never have windows to the outside world. The constant turns to the left and to the right, without having windows to show the outside of each area, creates the same confusion seen in Dark Forces. The player can't know for sure which direction they are heading to. It's disorienting. Another example of how disorienting the level design is, is the elevator from the Parapsychology area to the Luck & Probability area. If you look at the map, it's an elevator that travels sideways and not only that, has doors placed on different faces of it. It reminds me of the elevator in the movie "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".

Executive Center. Before I comment I should stress that there may be artistic reasons behind the following decisions. When the player goes out of the Director's Office, the red carpet draws the player' attention straight forwards. Not only that, they placed a little island with benches right in front of the door that leads to the corridor to the Executive Central. Why? No idea. If the player has just found the hotline and completed the mission, they may not notice the door to the left and run straight fordwards. This way they take the much longer route back to the Executive Central to be assigned their next mission.

Taking a look at the map, the corridor right under the one I mentioned in the previous paragraph, leads to the main's building elevator. In this case the game clearly has an excuse of dealing with extra dimensional spaces. Inside the elevator we don't have buttons that indicate floors, meaning that the elevator is not what we would expect from the real world.