It's cool to add realism to a game, but that also killed the controls of Killzone 2. The delay in the aiming made the control less responsive and for that specific reason... shooting in MW2 feels much better.

I guess Designers must properly cut between engagement and trying to add too much personality to a game.

From my perspective the controls of KZ2 (and the similar scheme in Perfect Dark Zero) weren't necessarily realistic either. Some of this ties with user expectation as well. In Halo 3, when you pick up a large turret, you get a similar "laggy" feel to the aiming, but it makes sense as you are lifting a large mini-gun. It makes sense and so users can live with it. In Battlefield using a tank gives you the same "heavy" feel. Again, users can find it acceptable because it makes sense.

I can't put it much better than your last statement, and the article touches on this.

It's a great article. Michael Thomsen interviewed the right people. Seeing Samus's face in the reflection of the visor when an explosion went off in the Metroid Prime series was very impressive. Retro did a great job and deserve recognition for making an engrossing first person game.

The HUD in Metroid Prime was a brilliant design feature and definitely increased the immersion of the game. Not only the fact that rain would bead off the visor, or seeing steam and your reflection, but also that the display was curved so that it felt like you were wearing a helmet.

A very impressive quality for a game that came out in 2002.

You'd expect Samus' visor to actually be made of materials that would avoid the distortion effect. It is amusing how to make the thing more real, they had to make it more primitive. It's like how people feel "hard" scifi is more real than the soft one with its beams and outstanding technoslangs.