8 Popular Video Games The Industry Doesn’t Make Anymore

3. Cover Shooters

After Resident Evil 4 showcased over-shoulder aiming and Gears of War locked that down to a series of waist-high cover points to trade fire with enemies, it was off to the races for any action franchise looking to cash in.

Now, Gears is still going strong but Resident Evil completely lost its way in the process, backing off from the 'zombies with guns' fare of RE6 into a P.T. style reboot that got the franchise back on track.

Cover shooters, though? They haven't been meaningfully iterated on in a way that stuck since the original Gears trilogy. Sure, Dark Void tried to make a "vertical cover shooter" where you literally attacked enemies vertically, Dead to Rights mixed in melee combat and Fracture tried to let you dynamically create and destroy cover, but nothing has gone the distancet.

In the end, for as solid as Gears 5 and The Division games are, they are boilerplate when it comes to formulaically applying lessons learned over a decade ago.