Monster closets and ammo traps - Nostalgia, takes me back to the original Doom games ( this is a remake after all ). Yes sometimes it did take away from the immersion but generally I stay 'in the game' and fretted over the old style traps when I wasn't playing it.
martian buddy lockers - agreed, bad idea. If they added a functional web browser to some of the terminals in the game that would have been cool.
That's still no reason to produce such an obtuse gameplay "gem" like the flashlight (And before you get started on "standard issue" this and "duct tape" that; just because you have a reason to explain it away DOES NOT suddenly turn a concept that isn't fun into one that is..)
Do you think the flashlight would be better if it attached to every weapon? or every weapon had a flashlight built into it? (soulcube??)
Should your marine do a little juggerling act at every weapon change to reattached/swap hands?
Do you think dark areas or unlite corners would be scary and make you walk around carefully, if everywhere you looked was lite up by your 'always' on touch and if there was something there you just click the mouse button and boom it's gone,run to next room.
Maybe you think they shouldn't have bothered with all those dark areas so you don't need a touch. Of couse then you don't really need realtime lighting so you can go back to precompiled lightmaps like HL & HL2 and everyother game.
A flashlight only works if it doesn't just produce light but also produces new shadows for everything it hits.
Sure maybe a flashlight with a battery that runs down would cool, but it just wouldn't work for some areas where there was no lighting at all. That wouldn't be fun at all.
wide open areas are only important for outdoor maps and even then only if you have jeeps/buggies etc ( which Q4 will have ) otherwise it's just a matter of taking longer to get to next objective. It doesn't matter if their are 20 different routes with a slightly different number of hostiles on each if you still haev to walk a mile to a specific door.
realistic water: since far cry this will be the norm. No reason not to have it(unless you're on a planet without it:) ). It's not exactly going to add aanything new to the 'game'. Water is water, it's reflections etc don't actually add gameplay, just looks cool.