Basically, I feel like games have become way too linear. I'm tired of people praising games like Halo and CoD when it feels like the game is holding your hand every step of the way. Walk through to the next room, kill enemies, encounter scripted event, repeat.
Back in the 90's, I felt like FPS games were much more immersive. Levels were wide, and exploration was encouraged. Key/door puzzles were more the standard, and they promoted nonlinearity.
Nowadays, games seem to be held to this standard of realism. Key/door puzzles are put aside and levels are basically cramped into linear gauntlets. They're easy. But I also find them boring.
Games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem, etc -- all had lots of hidden goodies, hidden passages, secret levels, and diverse level designs. I can't remember the last FPS I played that I could say the same about.
On one hand I do understand why companies dumb their games down. A lot of it has to do with money. A lot of games now come with a multiplayer mode, and so it's in your favor to make a game where they can quickly beat single-player in order to move to multiplayer as soon as possible. Spending a lot of resources on a single-player mode isn't profitable. It might have been fine in the 90's when multiplayer access wasn't nearly as widespread, but gaming was more niche back then, too, compared to what it is today.
Duke Nukem Forever really let me down in this regard because I expected a game that felt and played like DN3D. Instead we got more of the same-old two-weapon linear-pathway BS, and it played like a Duke-themed CoD game.
I miss the days of old and wish we had more games that held true to what made old FPS games so great. Half-Life has generally done a good job of this, but not to the extent I like. Levels are still *generally* linear but at least there is still exploration to be had.
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