I recently bought and played thief, thief 2, deus ex, starcraft, the rise of nations, prince of persia (My dad used to play Jordan Mechner (PC port) one with me, but I was too young then), max payne (1 and 2), half-life 2. I know these are blockbuster games of their time, but I feel they are better than blockbuster games of today. I play RDR2, Spiderman, God of War etc on my modern PS4 but thre is sothing these games are missing.
Some modern games I do like and recommend to everyone: Rimworld, Kerbal Space Program, Prey, ShenzenIO
Also Notable: the Witcher series
Also both Dishonored games—best of the more recent descendants of the Thief/Deus Ex games. Improved with the right mindset—you start out more capable than the average person, and are very soon "hella OP", so, whatcha gonna do with all that power? Plus no save scumming and turning off all the modern flashy-arrow-waypoint HUD bullshit. Makes you really feel the weight of things better.
> max payne (1 and 2)
Max Payne 2 on the ultra-hard mode that you have to unlock, where you only get like 2-3 saves per level, is one of my favorite gaming experiences, and I'm not usually the sort to like hardcore "challenge" modes. It totally changes how you play. Highly recommended. Plus you get the real ending :-). Hated 3. Repeated "hold on while we take control for a cutscene then leave you standing in the open for no reason, with guys already shooting at you" got old fast, and the game just never stopped doing that, sometimes seeming only to take control in order to do that. Plus the story failed to make me give a damn about anything that was happening, which is a problem.
Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4) might be up your alley if you've enjoyed the open world "make the icons disappear from the map" games (Red Dead, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry from 3 on) at all. It actually has a plot you might care about, unlike almost all the others, and the world is much cooler than average.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice has the best acting I've ever seen in a game and I've felt very involved and immersed in the game and the character.
But yeah, games like Horizon:Zero Dawn are great.
There is also some indie gems like Hyper Light Drifter - I've stopped counting how many times I've beat this game :)
It’s one of those games that I’m really looking forward to play again the next day. Those are few and far between these days.
I think we can still recognize something new: I found that playing "Vader Immortal" on Oculus Quest to be a genuinely new gaming experience. And I've been gaming on PC since 8/81 (when PCs were first released) and on Apple IIs before that, and IBM 5110s before that.
EDIT: I disagree games are no longer good. Slay The Spire is a brilliant combination of rogue and card game. Total War: Warhammer II is a good real-time RTS with a non-realtime map component. World of Warcraft was a good MMORPG, and it is from this millennium (2004).
Humans are pattern recognition machines and someone who has a much larger training set than a younger person would have a much better sense in spotting what is new or not.
I'd say the most recent time I've been blown away was using Vive's full room VR setup. Many VR games have some very primitive concepts and graphics but it's a very different way of gaming even in multiplayer. There's a lot of room for improvement in graphics, but even _more_ room for improvement of controller hardware designs.
I'd love to find out about a dozenb Doom-like games that appeared before Doom. Of course, there was Wolfenstein 3D but its 3D engine was much more limited, there was Ultima Underworld but it was hardly an "identical game"... but other than that? Which fast-paced, first-person 3D action shooter existed before Doom??
I've found this to be especially true. Playing through Witcher 3, Factorio - I'm rediscovering some incredible games that focus a lot of systems design for more emergent gameplay. The architecture of factorio vs the divergent gameplay of Witcher captivates for hours upon hours!
It takes a bit to get used to playing on planets instead of classic maps with borders but that’s what makes this game special.
Problem is that the indies production values pale vs what AAA studios did even 20 years ago in terms of how polished the games could be. Like, you won't find any indie game that's as good as Starcraft 1. So in reality you get a lot of half-assed games in many genres (of course sometimes you get lucky and get true gems).
Terraria and Factorio are great (for multiplayer/coop and replay experience correspondingly)
But the "getting old" part definitely plays a role too. When you're a kid or in your teens everything is just more exciting and impressive to you. A teen today might think the latest Wolfenstein installment is the most awesome thing they've ever seen while to you it's just another first person shooter or doom clone, with somewhat better graphics. Now you could say "but doom was new and groundbreaking", but even if there had been a dozen identical games before, if doom were the first one you played, it wouldn't have mattered. Graphics is another thing I stopped caring about. In the late 90s and early 2000s I was blown away by new graphics demos released every year showing off what the next gen of gfx cards were capable of. Nowadays I'm so out of the loop. Graphics from 5 years ago look no different than today. Although I must admit the latest unreal engine tech demos actually did manage to impress me.