User blog comment:Crazy sam10/My views on a MW4/@comment-78.97.91.207-20130309082056/@comment-78.97.91.207-20130309234400

Like I said, this is a trend in recent years, making them less and less gameplay oriented, and more geared towards telling a story, usually by heavily restricting the player. There are still many FPS games out there that allow for certain degrees of freedome and active thinking. Halo, like I've already said, Far Cry, Crysis (the first one), Borderlands, STALKER, and many more. There are a lot of them that don't fit the mould. Also, some games allow for freedom and thinking even inside linear-ish environments. My first example would be Half Life.

You see, when you combine the small and restrictive environment with the huge amount of scripting, you get pretty much a movie. You walk over there, you trigger an event, you shoot at a few dumb "AIs", you're forced into a toy (vehicles, drone, turret, etc), you press a button, you trigger a cutscene, BAM you're in a vehicle drivven by others and you need to fire at some people and then the level ends. Sometimes events unfold without your intervention, the game takes the wheel and you become a passenger. It also doesn't help that the campaign are also incredibly short, and really lack a challenge.