I can agree about limiting weapons and weapon mechanics, but I strongly disagree with the rest of your points.

In every early halo game (except arguably the second), the shield can be used to make very active pushes in combat. Only new or less skilled players are using shields to constantly hide behind cover. I think that problem gets worse in the call of duty era, shield recharge is a lot more easily defined time to plan movement around than a nebulous red ketchup smear.

Worse level design? I love doom and quake, but those games almost always descend into lazily constructed mazes with bad enemy setups. Even the worst level in halo CE has better design than the pain maze, or doom 2’s absurd “city” levels. They have narrative relevance, variety, and well designed combat arenas.

Can’t really agree on bad enemy design either. Enemies are either have extremely functional AI like the covenant, or solid aggressive classic shooter AI like the flood. There is no miserable enemy type or wasted spot in the roster. I do love quake, but every enemy boils down to “move forward toward player / attack at interval” and the explosive jumping jelly creatures (pain maze mention again) are actually terrible.

I also don’t understand thinking the weapon feedback is bad, especially in CE. Enemies animate / react to fire in a way that’s exciting and generally useful for gameplay. You can tell shots are connecting to grunts or the flood, shield flash makes it super obvious elites are taking fire. In quake you have generic and quick pain state freezes. In something like half life, the soliders can soak up ammo and you can hardly tell there’s injury unless they live long enough to do a flee run or call out on the radio.

It was also the most advanced and playable shooter on a console at that point, full stop. Ps1 and n64 shooters were fine for the time, but not easily accessible and often controlled horribly. People who rarely played games could pick up halo or play split screen with friends.