• Upgrade Trees and Character Development
• Health Management
• Ammo + Weapon Management
• Inventories

All of the above have been removed from most big shooters. The only recent games I can think of that haven’t done this are Dead Space and Bioshock and a few smaller titles like Far Cry 2.

Typically, a game genre starts out simple and over time, players want increased immersion and deeper strategy and new games add features to accommodate that. The flip side is that these added features, increase complexity which can hurt newcomer accessibility.

Shooters have become very big budget productions, so there is a strong incentive to play it safe and keep the games really simple and mass market friendly. But on the flip side, the maturation process of the single player modes of shooters has stalled. The games have been dumbed down to the point of: push forward, follow flashing on-screen prompts, watch scripting, and repeat.

There is a market for that: many people really want a simple, heavily guided and scripted game, and lack the patience or interest for anything more involved. But a lot of the game-buying public does want something a little more involved.

So what do you think? Are you happy with big, simplified blockbuster shooters that are heavily guided & scripted? Or are you eager to see some more depth and immersion?