Playing Infinite, I realize that Halo-style recharging shields are actually a huge mistake in shooter design. But all shooters use them now. Since people are going to ask: There are two problems; one is about emotional pacing, one is about gameplay crispness and fairness. With shields, you are always doing okay in the medium and long term. They low-pass filter the emotional high of surviving a tight situation. You can have a tight situation on the order of 10 seconds, but not on the order of 5 minutes, which matters more.
The crispness problem is: In order to provide difficulty, designers now have to overwhelm your shields all the time, which means designing situations that are spammy (get hit from all directions so you can't process what is going on). These are confusing and not fun. These feel messy to play but they happen all the time because they have to. Or, like Infinite does, have super attacks that take away all your shields at once *and* 1/3 of your health, which feels steeply unfair.
Also, shields train the player to ignore getting hit most of the time, which becomes grating at the end when guys start hitting hard. (You trained the players for one thing but then gave them another!) I think shooters are much stronger experiences when it matters if you got hit. In shield games you get hit all the time, like flies buzzing.

- Johnathan Blow

Original Link - http://kotaku.com/the-problem-with-bioshock-infinites-combat-468530143

Honestly I loved infinite but the shield issue is annoying.

Like the old quake games I could be having an insane fight on like 10 health and win the entire battle on skill after battling for 10 mins. Unlike now where I fight for 30 seconds followed by 10 second camping gaps for shield recharge.

Overwhelm us with smart enemies not spammers. Ones that I have to strafe jump towards while avoiding their fire and shooting at the same time.

Bring more predictions weapons. This is what made rocket launchers fun, bring more weapons that have such prediction qualities.

Thoughts?

I assume Infinite is referring to the new Bioshock, which I haven't played yet, but I do tend to agree about the issue, especially in horror games. When you just have to sit tight for a minute or two to let your shields recharge, you kind of get robbed of that sense of desperation where you're going, "Oh God I need a medkit right the hell now I really hope there isn't anything in the next room because I so don't have the health to deal with it." And if there is that something that'll kill you, you get the satisfaction of reloading and learning from your mistakes to make sure you retain more health before that encounter the second time around.

I do sort of know why shields are being implemented, what with not breaking up the intensity of action, but again, I haven't gotten that level of desperation in a while, which is unfortunate because it can be an exciting rush, despite the fact that you're a bit scared out of your mind.