Turret sections are one of those trends from the seventh generation of gaming that seemingly came and went alongside the brown cover shooters with chest high walls and chonky space marines. Video games that were previously high (or at least medium-well) energy would come to a halt, freeze the protagonist in place, and shout something akin to, "Sergeant Bowsette! Get on that Browning and make sure the Germans don't advance one inch!" Any previously held sense of momentum would stop as the player was shoved into an immobile gun placement with infinite ammo and told to hold right trigger until given permission to stop.
And I've got one big question for any veterans of seventh generation shooting games: were these sections ever actually fun?
It seemed for a while like the turret section was obligatory. The player would go through a couple levels of moving around and shooting people with a dynamic system and then be rewarded with a section that takes away all the movement and shooting and placed in a death hallway in which they are functionally indestructible. Perhaps it's the benefit of hindsight, but this just seems like one of those things that was just included without considering if it really jived with the flow or pacing of a game. Something that otherwise emphasized movement would come to a jarring halt and superglue the player's feet to the ground.
Is it just me? These days I can't help but groan when a game shudders to a stop and tells me to just hold the right trigger until stuff moves on, but maybe I'm in the minority on this.
