I may be wrong, but I'd guess it's due to the multiplayer focus of many of today's AAA shooters like CoD. Why bother with AI if the game is not really supposed to be played with any AI (just humans with Natural Stupidty). And yes, I know Unreal Tournament is a multiplayer game. But it comes from a different age when FPSes were still mostly single-player focused, so giving bots good AI was just how it was done back then. Not as much corporate focus on cutting every possible corner too, probably.

What are you talking about, friend? You mean you get caught up in the tutorial in the plane where you need to do specific tasks while following a story and from there you decided to go on a rant how oldies are 'better,different'. Lol and people take you serious !?!?! WHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ;p

Modern shooters tried to focus in realism, narrative, linearity and spectacular graphics, a natural evolution due to the potential of the 3D evolution. Not a bad thing itself because even old 2000 shoters are beloved examples of this in games like NOLF or Half Life etc.

But I miss a lot the "dungeon crawling" old concept, I mean, the "free roaming" "big levels and fnd the key" and the automap, and labyrintical designs.

Visual Novels are about story only right? I'm honestly asking because that's not my kind of game. But I deduce that the joy someone search for in this kind of games is a deep story and good character progression only, so this should be reviewed differently.

I mean, let's take Monster Hunter for example. This series is around for about 20 years and since the beginning they've created awesome movie like "David vs Goliath" encounters with giant dragons and monsters without taking control out of the player.

In a visual novel, the "movie like" situation would be a moment in the story that impacts the player.

Is this correct?

The beginning of Wolfenstein New Order is a bit annoying to play through, but once you get past that, it opens up into a more traditional mission-based FPS.

But as others have mentioned, if you want a "purer" unadulterated FPS experience, Doom 2016 is a good choice.

Imagine the shock I got from playing Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, a fun stealth action game with creepy voices, to playing Wolfenstein 3D, which is a bit of a mindless shooter.

It's correct that visual novels are mostly about story, as they're basically lots of dialog with the occasional choice for the player to make.

(A kinetic novel is a visual novel minus the choices.)

Edit: Why the low rating?

Personally I liked shooters hving more cinematics as it makes me more immersed in the storyline & feel 'connected' to the character we play in the game. Some which I really enjoyed r MGS, MOH & COD series.

If u do not like such shooters there r plenty of pure shoot-them-ups games out there as well that do not focus so much on the story but more on playing the game so I dun really see where u coming from. A gd example as others mentioned is Doom 2016.

I hv played RTCW b4 & it too hv it's fair share of cinematics which 2 me only enhances the game. I hvn't tried the newer W:NO though so can't comment on that but I feel u shd not get too 'uptight' over in game cinematics.

To summarise, just choose & play according 2 wat u desire 2 achieve (FPS with engaging storyline or just pure shooting games) instead.

I agree with OP and there are a few considerations I'd like to make here.
First of all reboots and modern sequels are kind of a thing of their own since they are burdened with their predecessors' legacy which is rather hard to live up to.
On the OP: I still have to play the new Wolfensteins but based on what I have seen they completely altered the original games' spirit.

Then there's the matter of the discrepancy in development focus (which I agree with): back then the games were essentially gameplay driven while modern ones are mostly aesthetics driven instead: the horsepower needed wasn't there to support the graphic fidelity we have been used to in later years.
They were trying to make up for it with gameplay and by luring gamers with side contents in the form of printed lore-expanding media and booklets and concept art, also, game boxes were incredibly appealing and well made.

I don't see it as a modern phenomenon but as a precess instead going on since ever basically, I guess, through the 90s and up to today where we've reached the point where coding gameplay mechanics and making assets is cheaper than spending millions in motion capture/performace capture material.
Clearly modern/casual gamers are used to other types of media and ask that.

Conversely shooters from the past have very basic mechanics which developers made up for with clever workarounds, fun gameplay, good stories, and, again, the power and media, holding the games, where not always there to support their needs.
Just think of DooM: it wasn't possible to stack rooms on top of each other, they had to compensate with satisfying shooting, fast action, speed of movement and larger levels due to limitations of the engine which then became the id Tech 2, Quake Engine: geometry became incredibly complex compared to the past but levels became smaller at the same time and they had to slow down the character because otherwise they felt small.

Unreal is a great title, the look of it, the AI were something nobody had seen before, I remeber being astonished seeing the Skaarjs dodge my rockets and ASDM shots, at the same time, though, the game suffers of the same problem of the games of the age: the bullet sponginess of the enemies.
All he games from that time have enemies that you have to unload a chunk of ammo of the effestive weapon to take them down and, again, Unreal was the only one that enemies behaved life-like or at least credibly.
To be honest Unreal focused both on single and multi player and was the first game that let you train in MP with BOTS without the need to resor to mods.

Good games and crappy games always exjsted but I think that the single player games peaked in the 90s on average, I mean, back then the points of reference were, DooM, Heretic, Hexen, RotT, SS, DooM, Quake just to cite a few of the biggest titles which many other were clones of which in many cases delivered, today what are the titles publishers and developers are looking at?

To me they destroyed and are still actively butchering (System Shock Remake) so many great titles that I can't even think of it without feeling sad and depressed.

I am going to stop here for now, might keep on later on.

A bit too aimboty in the first UT. The later games reached a much better middle ground. Especially in UT 2003 and 2004. Every single bot having their own stats does wonders for actually giving them a specific behavior and personality type.

But yeah. The fact that you can drop bots from any UT game into a random custom map and they will always be capable of at least basic navigation even without custom bot paths is quite an achievement.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with durable enemies. Actually, the main weakness of Duke 3D is that 90% of the game dies to 1-2 shotgun shots. I honestly hate this obsession of calling anything that doesn't fall over nearly instantly "bullet sponges".

The best is a good mix of weak and tough enemies. Something Doom 2 has yet to be bested in. Baron of Hell is one of my favorite enemies simply for the fact that it is a persistent, 1000 HP threat that you have to expend some resources to neutralize.

I think it's silly to make "realistic" shooters, as the very concept of shooters (a single man with some guns destroys entire armies) is inherently unrealistic. Old shooter embraced the silliness and camp of the concept and ran with it. For example, WW2 shooters are ridiculous because World War One was won by millions of men fighting, a single soldier was meaningless, so having some WW2 soldier as the protagonist running around killing Germans by the hundred is dumb.

Its fulfilling the fantasy of the one man army, the sole hero through their own guile and strength defeats all the bad guys and wins the war for the good guys. Players want to be the action hero and probably want *realism* from their enemies so they can more strongly believe that they won through their own skill rather than the poor AI.

Although all video games are unrealistic in this regard. Sending a sole man to save the president's daughter or avert a nuclear war with nothing but a pistol?

Raven and MachineGames are very different developers with very different styles here.

RTCW was by Gray Matter...

...Meanwhile Wolf TNO and its sequels were done by many Ex-Starbreeze guys @ MachineGames. Their style's more cinematic and similar to games like say Riddick: Butcher Bay & Riddick: Dark Athena.

MachineGames was probably brought on to modernize the Wolfenstein formula, which is what they did.

Also, I don't think the whole mega-texture thing from Id Engine from that era - i.e. RAGE 1, Wolfenstein: Alt Universe titles by MachineGames, etc - really helped either, as that also probably ballooned the game-file size.

EDIT - Thanks below to idbeholdME. Gray Matter made RTCW, not Raven.

RTCW was made by Gray Matter Interactive, not Raven. Originally known as Xatrix and later merged into Treyarch.

Thanks for your correction.

You're right; Raven did Quake 4 and Wolfenstein (2009 Reboot).

EDIT - That's right, Xatrix did Reckoning mission pack for Quake 2.