During the new millennium, the world was becoming more connected, and how media was both distributed and consumed was changing drastically. This decade saw the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – where fans could get the chance to actually engage with the creators of works that they liked. As a result, gaming made bold new changes in order to meet the demands of this brave new world.

With this change in the landscape, the gaming industry was making some much-needed efforts to be more inclusive while also accommodating the demands of the hardcore audience. Some of these efforts caught on while others are better left back in the aughts.

Turret Sections Were A Boring Method Of Padding Out The Runtime

In the 2000s, turret sections were commonly used to pad out a game's runtime – even in genres that had no business featuring the gauntlets. While not ideal, their presence in first-person shooters is somewhat justified. Why Sucker Punch thought that a vibrant stealth platformer series like Sly Cooperneeded parts where the titular gentlemen thief mounts up, and blasts hostiles is anyone's guess, but did they have to make the sequences so relentlessly dull?

They really were just the gameplay equivalent of jingling keys in front of a baby's face. Thankfully, turret sections have become less common as players have rightfully grown tired of them.

Many Franchises Tried To Go Darker, And Edgier

The success of M-rated franchises such as Grand Theft Auto and Halo led many publishers to force recognizable franchises to undergo darker and grittier reboots to disastrous results. Hudson's cutesy Bomberman series had a more realistic post-apocalypticptic entry in the dreadful Act Zero. Prince of Persia Warrior Within removed the title character of all his character development from the previous installment, and made him a snarling, self-aggrandizing fool.

Even the cartoony platforming Sonic the Hedgehog series gave the blue speedster's morally ambiguous frienemy some firearms and mild cussing in a massively ill-advised attempt to some "maturity" to a franchise that most certainly did not need it.

Many Developers Thought That Real Was Brown

With the advent of HD technology, games started looking sharper and boasted more visual fidelity than previously possible. However, possibly due to a pursuit of "realism," several developers arbitrarily decided that everything had to be brown and gray.

Sure, it makes sense that the post-apocalyptic settings of Gears of War and Fallout 3 would be lacking in vibrancy, but this approach was ill-suited for other titles like Need for Speed Most Wanted. Instead, Games like Viva Piñata and Uncharted stood out by actively avoiding a dull color palette and have aged far more gracefully.