8 Popular Video Game Mechanics That Suddenly Disappeared

8. Active Reload

Active reload is one of those elegantly simple but deliciously satisfying mechanics that probably should've taken the shooter realm by storm. And yet, it didn't.

Active reload was first popularised by the Gears of War franchise, effectively serving as a quick time event (QTE) mini-game in which you need to hit the reload button during a small window of time.

If you succeed, you'll reload faster than usual, often with a small combat buff, but if you mistime your button press, the gun will jam for a couple of seconds, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attacks.

It was a brilliant risk-reward mechanic and one that was seemingly relatively easy to implement, and so, why didn't it ever catch on? Hell, Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski even straight-up encouraged other games to copy it.

Despite a small scattering of subsequent shooters implementing active reload, the last major games to feature it were Returnal and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy back in 2021.

Since then it's been bafflingly absent from the gaming space, perhaps suggesting the developers don't much like the feature for one reason or another.