Modern shooters are completely destroying the shooter genre and just plainly miss the point.

Thank you very much con. 1. Focusing level design on graphics itself is NOT a good way to go. Graphics are the least of importance in a game. So watering down, and simplifying gameplay for the sake of game looking good is the worst thing you could have done. Bad looking games with good gameplay can't be considered bad games. Good looking games with horrible gameplay are mostly considered broken. A book isn't good because it has a good cover, a book is good because it has good writing. A game isn't good because it has good graphic, a game is good because it has good gameplay. There were no "unnecessary items" when it comes to old level design, everything was where it should have been. You were put into a labyrinth full of dangers, and your only way to survive was to find hidden weapons and items that allowed you to face the dangers ahead. Also, you should not compare single player level design to multiplayer level design because those are two different things. And even then old games gave us great arenas full of secrets and different ways that we could approach enemies to use. 2. Devs are not doing a really good job of realistically recreating the military setting. They didn't recreate them in game mechanics, they also didn't recreate them well in the story of actual setting. Modern shooters are really over the top and sacrifice the gameplay in name of "cinematic experience". And even if, you can still make a realistic shooter without completely simplifying the resource management mechanics. Floating health packs and ammo are nothing more than a visual difference. A health pack or an ammo pack can just lay on the ground and still work the same way as they worked before. So I don't see your argument here. 3. You're still talking about visual differences, which to be fair, is really not that important in a game. While when talking about mechanics, the guns got again , watered down and simplified. 4. Again, you're talking about visual differences which don't matter in games. When talking about game mechanics, the enemies use mostly the same strategies and don't differ too much. And change of setting is not an excuse for making your enemies samey and less interesting. And even if we're speaking visual design the old games are superior. They have more, original and interesting designs of enemies instead of boring soldiers that all look the same. 5. First, you could look up in down in most of the old shooters, and even if you don't count Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior etc, you could always count games like Serious Sam and Quake 2. Second, crouching and jumping in FPS is nothing new. Third, visual differences, again don't change the fact that our movement is limited by cover based system. Although it looks nice, it doesn't really change the game in any way. 6. The fact that old shooters had pixels instead of full 3D doesn't change anything. You still can make interesting colorful environments with today's graphics. Oh and yes, those games had cave, and interior areas that used a lot of color brown, but that doesn't change the fact that they were overall more colorful than the new ones. http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net... http://media1.gameinformer.com... http://images9.gry-online.pl... And most important, every of these games had a little bit different art style so you really couldn't confuse Doom with Shadow Warrior, or Shadow Warrior with Duke Nukem 3D. 7. Yes but they don't have that character like in the old games. Old weapons worked on a very different principle that new weapons work. Grenade and Rocket launchers in the past were far more powerful and far more original than those today. The grenade launcher you're talking about now isn't the grenade launcher I'm talking about. Back to you Con.