[7th gen was over saturated with COD]
Going back about as far as I can remember everything was oversaturated once someone hit upon a good idea (usually a well made game) and everybody copied what they thought made it good (which typically did not result in a well made game).
Modern and near future/specialised military was this time around. Most of what I saw was completely fictional, I wonder if the need to do that will still be present this time around.
World War 2 provided endless games before then, almost invariably European conflict and even there you would be lucky to see anything in say Italy, Scandinavia or the Russian fronts. Modern stuff you had to actually look for to find -- other than Tom Clancy, Operation Flashpoint, Delta Force and maybe Counterstrike and other Half Life spinoffs you were pressed for choice, note also most of those were of the balls hard variety as well. Occasionally it might have gone as far forward as Vietnam (what is Korea?) or as far back as something that could almost be world war 1.
For a hot moment there far future stuff looked like it would take over, that may have just been how big Battlefield 2142 got though.
Though it had existed as far back as Doom and even before now online was the thing of choice, so Unreal and everything trying to be it was the thing here. It did do much to dethrone Quake/ID mind you.
By now we are probably back in Quake clone country. It was somewhat less diverse than what I am about to cover though with Unreal nipping at its heels that is hardly surprising.
Before that was Doom. Aesthetically these had some quite varying themes (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6), however they kind of looked the same and mostly played the same though; stop me if this sounds familiar, handheld, possible handheld upgrade, pistol, shotgun, grenade, machine gun but limited in some way (ammo, accuracy, clip size....), rocket or basic energy weapon, crazy far out gun that does something unique to the game, maybe a big boy machine gun for the last levels or better energy weapon, mega death cannon. Add sniper/accurate weapon according to taste.
Before this... we are probably back in the everything must be a
platformer or shooter (as in shmup) or
shooter platformer era. The state of licensed games of that era probably says it all there really, indeed such a thing I usually find is a good barometer for any period in gaming, give or take some of the "action adventure" stuff.
.
