8 Popular Video Game Mechanics That Suddenly Disappeared
7. Scalable Multiplayer Maps
Perfect Dark Zero is far from a perfect game, but it did briefly popularise a multiplayer mechanic which should clearly be a standard among shooters - scalable, adaptive map sizes.
The game's multiplayer suite allowed up to 32 players to compete in a bevy of match types, but ingeniously, the map size would change to accommodate the number of players in the lobby.
If, say, only 16 players were battling it out, the map would block portions off, in turn shrinking it down to be more manageable for a lower player count.
This ensured you didn't spend half the game time running around looking for enemies, as proves immensely frustrating for anyone caught in a low-populous multiplayer shooter match.
Despite this being one of Perfect Dark Zero's more fondly remembered mechanics, scalable maps simply never caught on and have been a disappointing rarity among shooters for the past near-two decades.
That even cream-of-the-crop FPS Call of Duty hasn't rolled out adaptive maps yet feels like a huge missed opportunity.