Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-5641163-20150522174501/@comment-5641163-20150526131725

It's not so much CoD as it is consoles. Just about every backward step in game design that I've noticed in recent years comes as a result of the limitations of consoles. Finite level scope limiting free exploration (leading to invisible walls), inability to save when or wherever you like, regenerating health rather than health pickups (because it's easier to manage and ties in with checkpoint saves), and on-a-rail gameplay based solely around action set pieces and scripted events, they were unheard of in PC gaming for the longest time.

Complex level design, inventory management, ability to tweak graphical settings, all sacrificed on the altar of consoles.

It's getting better, as the spec of consoles finally catches up with that of PC (for a while, anyway), but ultimately developers go for the path of least resistance, and publishers want the maximum amount of cross-platform sales. Thus they'll always tailor their games to work on consoles, stripping out many features that PC users consider to be standard. I remember when it first started happening you'd launch a PC game and it would say "press Start to begin". It was massively insulting.

Modern Warfare, BF, MoH and their ilk were some of the first to start using this method and are inexplicably massively popular, so many other games followed suit. Sadly.

There are exceptions, of course, DXHR lets you save wherever you like, has a proper inventory and rewards exploration, alternate routes and different solutions to problems, all despite successful ports to just about every console there is. Proof that you can, in fact, do whatever you want, without restriction, but only if the developers give enough shits to actually bother.

Duke 3D used to have signs that said "You aren't supposed to be here" if you cheated in a jetpack to get to some obscure corner of the map. The Serious Sam games just love putting weapons and powerups miles outside the main level or up on platforms you can only get to by getting bounced up by an enemy or rocket jumping. I miss those days.

Racing games I can take or leave. Driving games, however, I do like, especially ones in a massive sandbox like Red Faction Guerilla or Just Cause 2. True freedom to go and do whatever the hell you want.

And I've nothing against "pretty", but at the time I just couldn't understand why it was so important, as it usually meant a game that my system couldn't run. Graphics in games have never been that important to me, I put gameplay first every time. Mostly because for most of my life I've always had to settle for inferior graphics cards and thrown together systems!