ZeroPunctuation is a guy who does humorous video reviews of games that are great in a ranty kind of way. He's generally great fun, though he does fall into the crowd that likes half-life for arbitrary reasons. However, in the posted video, he deals with modern fps', and he pretty much hits the nail on the head - especially when he speaks about how games used to not take themselves so seriously.

Looking back to the 90's, games in general seemed much more human-made. Back then, it was still okay for the games to mess with their players a bit, just for fun. I don't think I'm too far off base when I say that games used to have more secrets, more inside jokes (that weren't instantly turned into memes), and more rebellious than today. Scar3crow had some cool insights about how music has changed as well, and I find that the very mood of the things match almost exactly. The 90's were the time for Paradise Lost and Fear Factory, and they didn't have total media saturation. Maybe that's what's changed - "subculture" has as much marketing and commercial support as anything else these days (Hot Topic, anyone?).

So this is pretty much to give this guy the big thumbs up on this video, though it makes me feel a little bit like an old man talking about the good ol days.

One last note - Halo did bring two *good* things to the fps table. They may have existed before, but I sure hadn't seen them: offhand grenade and offhand melee. Having those actually made sense and added depth to the gameplay. As often as Halo is mimicked, I wish others would take those two features and leave the rest. Fps' in general have gone the way of MTV.