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

The shooter genre was a wonderful place before modern shooters came to existence. Though I respect the people enjoying them, I cannot stand to see how one of my beloved game genres is being completely destroyed by series like Call of Duty. But what's so wrong about it anyways? Well as you all know, every genre has it's established rules that a game has to follow to qualify. Game designers work inside those rules to create a original and interesting experience. They may change them just a little bit to give us something fun. But by changing, nobody ever meant water them down and simplify and casualize them. Let's count the ways that old shooters were better than the new ones, shall we? First of, level design. Level design in old shooters was based mostly on two types of levels. Maze ones with lots of secrets that allowed you to survive inside a dangerous environment full of enemies trying to get to your throat. It rewarded explorations, unlike today shooters. The second way of doing things was making an arena shooter. The game would have simplified level design but would make it up with the gameplay and guns. Instead of exploring maze we were fighting on giant arenas full of monsters. The player was rewarded this time not for exploration, but more for his actual accuracy and reflexes. Today we mostly have corridor shooters, that involve none of the above. Second, resource management. In older games the ammo was more spare and health didn't regenerate, you actually had to find a health pack to not die. It meant that you actually had to explore and be more careful with what you do. It was actually involving skill, and careful planning. Nowadays we have regenerating health and ammo that falls out of enemies everywhere, so it is far easier and less interesting. Third, the guns. The guns in older games were not only far more interesting than any one from the guns in the newer games, you could actually hold a lot more of them. There was also a reason for that. Your every weapon was different than the other so you could experiment with different playstyles, also as you would come into different situations involving different enemies in those games, you would sometimes prefer to use one guns above the others. Now the guns not only don't change too much, and aren't so interesting, you can also carry only three, or even two of them. So many of them would work in the same situations. If you approach a bit different situation than the last one, don't worry, they'll just give a new gun to you. Not brilliant. And if you're blaming the setting, or supposed "realism" of those games, most of them don't do a good job at either of those. Fourth, the enemies. Old games had different types of enemies and bosses that acted completely differently than the others. They had different attacks, different looks, and you could approach them in different ways. New game enemies don't change all that much. And they all do the same thing. Fifth, the movement. In old games, you had to actually move through your surroundings avoiding enemies and their shots. In the new games you're basically stuck to one position, behind a wall, sometimes you can get of the wall for a bit to get out from the grenade range, and get stuck by another wall. You don't move all that much and mostly shoot behind the cover, which is not as skill-based as actually avoiding your enemies. Sixth, the art style. I don't think that I need to talk about this all that much, old games= colors, new games= brown and gray. I'm awaiting a worthy opponent for a worthy debate.