: ...This is why I'm always suspicious of people claiming that things like
: sprint or vehicle boarding (or even reload and jump buttons, if I want to
: bring my introduction to Marathon a couple years ago into this) are so
: necessary to game flow. In my experience, removing those things only feels
: "awkward" until you get back into the flow of the simpler title.
: If said simpler title ever flowed well for a gaming population, it probably
: has a flow that is still entirely possible to enter. It's just that muscle
: memory is a jerk.

Sure, but that doesn't mean people have to prefer it.
Of course I can re-adapt to playing older games (or in some cases, newer ones which have gone through a simplification process. Like the example further down), but that doesn't mean I still don't miss certain features or find myself preferring the older game.

Playing Ace Combat 6, I got very used to High-G feature when both triggers are pulled together for much tighter turns at the cost of airspeed.
Now since playing AC6 I've still clocked up dozens of hours each in AC04, AC5, AC0, ACX, ACX-2 and well over a hundred hours in the newer Assault Horizon.
I still missed High-G every second of them.