Crysis 2 isn't the only FPS ditching sandbox-style gameplay for tighter, more narrative-driven experiences.

Speaking to EDGE , Battlefield 3 Executive Producer Patrick Bach said, "We’ve been building sandbox games for quite some time and we’ve got pretty good at it, but I don’t see that as the only way of building games, because then we wouldn’t build campaigns at all... In some cases they aren’t, but in most cases sandbox games are hardcore, boring, hard to get into and they are not very popular."

There is also the question of whether or not this is, in reality, a reaction to the limitations of technology. Battlefield 3 is visually impressive and features, as EDGE points out, the destructible environments of the Frostbite 2 game engine. Every game is a balance of limited resources, and so it only makes sense that the direction of gameplay will have to change in order to suit the technology.

Then again, perhaps Call of Duty has influenced the direction of yet another series.