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Ask Slashdot: What Modern PC Games Would You Recommend For An Old School Gamer?
wjcofkc writes: The last time I was a serious gamer, I was playing Quake and Quake World. That type of first person shooter, with the qualities it offered in terms of physics, level layout, and community, produced for me some very fun times. I have long since fallen away from gaming entirely, but frequently look back to that era with great fondness. My question to the community is, are there any current games that recapture the spirit of the original Quake? Note: This is strictly for PC gaming as I do not own a console.
You'll never have that kind of fun again playing computer games, because you're not 19 anymore.
I know because I went ahead and played the games I played when I was young, and it's just not as fun anymore. Games haven't changed, I have.
then no.
Quake old school? Sorry, but if you did not load the game from a cassette tape or better yet have to type it in yourself, you do not know what 'old school' really means.
There are a ton of FPS shooters out there. Pick one.
I'm in the same boat, played it all in the 90s and hadn't played anything since Half Life, until Portal 1 a couple years back. It was everything I wanted in a game, I played it for about two weeks an hour or so after work, between plays I couldn't wait going back to it. That's not terribly modern but there you go. Someday I will play Portal 2 too.
I am now 40 and bad news. I can't play anymore. My reflexes have remarkingly slowed down terribly. I am done before I see what is up. I get confused and pause on maps too for a good 1/6th of a second too. I am not really out of it like I am 80, but that one 1/6th of a second pause where I wonder where I am on the map and look around is enough for someone to run a rail in the back of my head.
I am not 23 anymore so I gave up on FPS. You can try but the young kids today will 0wn you as they have 200% faster reflexes
If you want to do something fun us old farts do MMOs like SWTOR (star wars the old republic) and or Elder scrolls online based on based on Skyrim. Man this is depressing
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No, don't. Seriously.
It's a politics-rife, asshole-filled, scumbag-overflowing cesspool.
Would be nice as a single-player with bots though, if that would exist.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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Caveat: I'm an Overwatch fanboy so take this with a grain of salt, but it might work for you. There's a character for everyone and they interact well for the most part. If you liked rockets in Quake you might like Pharah, or if you want a dude with an assault rifle who recovers health on his own then Soldier 76 may suit you. Really good mix of team play, individual skill, and tactical considerations. Easy to get into.
Don't forget Borderlands.
My current obsession is Path of Exile though.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Right now there's not really anything on the market for a 'middle of the road gaming PC'. Most people are either focusing on a high end gaming machine or they just go for consoles.
Most all the old ones can run under WINE, PlayOnLinux, and Crossover, or they have a modern, multi-platform game engine and hires textures. I'm getting my friend set up to play Quake using the Darkplaces engine for MS-Windows and with hi-res textures. As awesome as Quake seemed in 1996, it is even more awesome now. It is impressive that fans of these classic games have kept after them all these years. It seems that those games were just that good. Many are still available for purchase from vendors like GOG.com and Steam if you have misplaced your original CDs.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Mass effect, elder scrolls (morrowwind and skyrim mostly)
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
Overwatch - It's a relatively casual fun shooter, playable on a nongaming pc, and there's a balancing system so you are playing in games with people of roughly your skill level.
FTL - A cheap and fun Steam game, relateable to old-school sci-fi fans, a full game can be played through in 2-3 hours (or 20 minutes if you're a speedrunner). I have gotten over 100 hours of entertainment out of it, from my initial investment of $10 during a sale.
Eve Online --- you can try it for free
Fly a spaceship and choose what you do
gain isk (in game money) and be a pirate, space trucker, industrial giant, hard rock miner, moon & planet farmer, bounty hunter, space warrior
lots of fun, play, make friends...
it is NOT a test of reaction time, it's a test of planning, wisdom, tactics & strategy
My big brother had a Zenith(?) TV set that had a button you could push to switch it to a game of Pong. The most basic, boring game ever. We were absolutely FASCINATED by it.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
Don't forget Borderlands.
Yes, do forget Borderlands. It's fun, but it's a console game, and a loot grinder, simplified and assisted for a generation that don't have the patience for learning twitch skills nor trying twenty times before getting through difficult parts.
Ahh crap, I miss tread the question... NM.
You're obviously into FPS games. I don't play those like I used to, they mass produce them these days and though there's some good ones out there they've failed to lure me in as of late. Closest thing to an FPS that really lured me in recent years wise is Portal.
What has captured the spirit of a little later FPS's now considered classic, such as Unreal Tournament but isn't even an FPS is Awesomenauts. It's got the team play and cooperation mid-era FPS's and I love it.
I like platformers, my first system was an Atari 2600, but of course I adopted Mario as soon as I could. Giana Sisters games fit into that category well. I'm also playing A Boy and His Blob, a modern take on an NES game I had back in the day. The new one is sort of a kids game, but I'm really loving it. Super Meat Boy is an action platformer with very good yet unforgiving controls.
Something that scoops up the old space shooter genera then amplifies is into something awesome beyond all expectation is Beat Hazard. I have no idea how many hours I've spent on that between the Android and Linux versions.
If you liked Adventure games and Final Fantasy turn based strategies it's hard to beat South Park the Stick of Truth. Just don't play it when your kids are around.
The Torchlight games are a shoe-in for anyone who liked Diablo - actually made by the same creators.
They keep remaking and reimagining games of our era - you can usually find something to revisit.
If you really want something with old school herky-jerky make you sick to your stomach if you spend too much time on it games you can always try Goat Simulator. I have to limit my time on that one.
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As a person who also grew up in the same time, built my own PC's back then (I miss my AMD K6-2 and Athlon) and continues to causally game today (and continues to build my own pc's) the issue with gamming today is virtually all the games worth causally playing are designed to run on laptop hardware. League of legends, TF2, Overwatch, SC2, These are all games you can sit down at not have to worry about remembering were you were in the story since you last touched it a month ago and play for 30 min to an hr. (you really have more than 2 solid hrs to dedicate to gameing as a 40yo?)
Buy a $300 bare bones kit, stick a $300 video card in it and you'll have a gameing PC that will do 95% of what you want. (you'll spend another $1500 chasing that last 5%)
I am an old school gamer. The last time I got back into gaming after years of absence, someone mentioned farcry 2. I had wanted something like q2, MechWarrior, rb6, tribes, America's army, tf. When you get on servers with other games, old school or solid, it's the quality of gameplay not the game that makes the most difference. Anyway, if I got back into gameplay, other than flight Sims, I'd get that new farcry version set in the Midwest Montana.
Its free, has old school 3D graphics and is shitloads of fun for a 40+ year old, because the game offers so much freedom and doesn't depend on fast reflexes like Battlefield and COD for example do. Take a look here: https://soldnersecretwars.de/m...
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
"It's a politics-rife, asshole-filled, scumbag-overflowing cesspool."
Ah, just like real life.
This suggestion won't immediately address your nostalgia issue. But if you want to putter around a little more with games, and don't want to buy a console and stay exclusively PC, install the Steam app/client (its free).
Steam, from a business perspective, is a game management interface/platform. It makes money by acting like a software games store (its a middleman). But besides the client program being free, it can help you access/install free games (and you can google/reddit for lists of free games available through Steam). Every so often, an (oldish) "commercial" title is released for free. Even though I infrequently buy games software, I'm still building up a library of free (dated) games.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Modern FPS based on DP engine and tons of fun servers with modified game plays. http://www.xonotic.org/
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I spent a good year on that game. Best FPS of it's day.
Like you, I was playing on the PC well before Wolf3d, Doom, Quake, etc came out. Most current modern games (like the current iterations of Doom, Overwatch, etc.) are too flashy and have too many different colors, landscape and building details, and distractions for me to be able to focus well on the hunt. I'd recommend TF2.Half-Life, HL2 (and episode 1 & 2) are good as well. Also Portal and Portal 2.All of them use older, more simple engines that won't support all of the flashy effects, and as a byproduct make it easier for me to understand what's going on around me. Plus, they work well and don't need cutting-edge PCs as well. Now get off my lawn!
The most recent iteration of Doom IMO captured all the things that made the original great. Arcade style fast paced action. Basic map navigation (find keys, unlock doors). Interesting bosses, it can be quite challenging, and best of all none of that hyper realistic stuff that seems to bog down modern games like weapon reloading, only being able to carry 1 big gun etc.
I highly recommend it.
I don't know if you're going to find anything these days that matches that experience. I think a number of suggestions by other posters are good. Half-Life (1 specifically) was a very good game, on a versatile engine that became used for multiple community efforts. The Half-Life mod Counter-Strike was very popular, and the derivative Counter-Strike : Global Offensive is currently popular. Team-Fortress 2 is another game with roots in a Half-Life mod. Portal and Portal 2 are must play first person...err... puzzlers, with gobs of community content. While nothing is particularly nostalgic about Portal, it is somewhat of a gamer staple. As an afterthought, Borderlands might be worth looking into as well. Lots of humor and generally just a good FPS experience overall.
Going through the comments so far, I took a look at Quake Champions. Just what I have been wanting. Now we will see how my own personal age factor affects the enjoy ability.
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If you want old time FPS fun without worrying about such details as what's plausible, try out Redneck Rampage, the expansion pack Redneck Rampage: Suckin' Grits on Route 66 and the sequel Redneck Rampage Rides Again! Lots of surrealistic violence at several different difficulty levels. Yes, the clipping's a tad careless so that if you kill somebody behind a barrier their arm might stick through, but for me, at least, that just adds to the charm. Written for DOS, it plays under Windows, or in DOSBox, and if you're running Linux, it works just fine under Wine.
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The kids are in to Overwatch for FPS these days, but if you've been out of PC gaming for a while you might want to check out Bioshock. Single player only, but even my wife was hooked after playing for 5 minutes.
(insert witty/esoteric/dumb quote here)
Doom (2016) and Quake Champions are pretty close to their ancestors. Quake Champions even features a map which closely resembles the one in Quake 3.
Dragon Age (any) and Mass Effect 1-3 (skip Andromeda, buggy mess). Pilliars of Eternity, Tyranny and Divinity Original Sin. Torchlight I&II, The Adventures of Van Helsing. Street Fighter 4 (not 5), Injustice & Mortal Kombat 9/10. Ys, Xanadu Next or pretty much anything from Nihon Falcom. Sonic & Sega Racing Transformed (great game, lousy title). Cave Story, Momodora I-IV, Freedom Planet, Shadow Complex, Rayman Origins. Fire Pro Wrestling.
I'm mostly a "PC Console Gamer" to be fair. My bro's a strategy gamer and there's something of a renaissance going on if you've got the cash (the games are usually about $60-$100 if you buy the expansions, and you will buy the expansions). But I can't speak to those.
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Bioshock for sure. Deus Ex, masterful. Get the original, skip Invisible War, and continue with Human Revolution. Borderlands was a lot of fun. Half life, not nearly as inventive as I wished. Same with Crysis, and Halo. I tried Fallout 3 but couldn't get into it. No ammo anywhere and a vast world with few clues what to do. I hear Fallout New Vegas is a different story altogether so that's what I'm trying next. I did play Duke Nukem Forever all the way through, just because.
Yes, Half Life 2 is well worth it, because then you can enjoy the Concerned parody comic that much more. At least watch one of the playthroughs on YouTube if you can't be bothered to work the puzzles yourself.
Haven't played HL1 yet, still waiting for that fan-based remastered remake... is it ready yet?
I've never played it myself, but it's getting a lot of love on some video game podcasts I listen to. Some of the guys on Giant Bomb are old farts like you & I too.
I just confirmed, it can be played first or third person.
https://starcraft.com/en-us/
I tend to rant.
Doom (2016) is a very much a modern interpretation of old school shooters like Quake - way more than other modern FPSs like CoD, BF, Halo, etc. It captured the over the top speed, action, fun factor, etc. perfectly and the changes they introduced fit perfectly. The new Wolfenstein is also quite good, but I enjoyed the new Doom more.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
The spirit of the original Quake?
Devil Daggers.
The average age of a gamer in 2016 was 35. http://essentialfacts.theesa.c... . I realize that what constitutes a gamer can differ widely based on who you ask but what this assuredly says in that adults play lots of games.
In other words getting older does not equal too old for video games. Sure, your personal tastes have changed over time, mine have too. I have no use for pro sports anymore and I used to love that stuff when I was a kid. Some one starts rattling off team and player names at me now and my eyes just glaze over. (My favorite is when some one asks me if I caught "the game" last night. What the hell are you even talking about?) Do I think pro sports are childish and for kids? Of course not, tons of adults enjoy them. Pro sports just arent to my taste.
I still enjoy video games however and am well into being a responsible adult (although I have less time for them nowadays :( ). Don't confuse your own experience with everyone's reality.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Uh, quake champions has a railgun..
https://quake.bethesda.net/en/...
See, to me, one of the reasons I still play quake style games is the quick matches. I can play for 10 minutes, or an hour. No grinding. It's the MMOs I don't have time for (I didn't have time for them in my 20s either).
seconded
lose != loose
There are really good modern old-school games made by indie developers/studios. The Humble Bundle is a good way to start. Here is a somewhat outdated list of bundles. Many of those games can be bought on Steam too.
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
I'd recommend Crusader Kings 2. It's not exactly turn based but its pretty close, and if you like the old strategy games you may like this.
Super hexagon gives lie to your sentiment.
I too was a hardcore Doom, Quake and Quake Wars player, because well, they showcased the hardware I continued to upgrade. There was of course Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 because who didn't frag back then. Before that though, the games that excited me were Bard's Tale 1 and 3 and the wonder I felt in the simulated world of the Bard's Tale was the same kind of experience I took away from the first 200 hours I put into The Witcher 3 (which by the way was my first contact with the Witcher series).
So... TW3 Wild Hunt is the recommendation for an old school gamer like me, though it's not an FPS, which I'll note you didn't specify it needed to be FPS.
Good luck finding that elusive experience.
Red Faction was the most amazing game of that era. It still, to this day, has a huge community and I've seen new maps being made for it. Red Faction was the first game to let you alter your world. Pull out a rocket launcher and play through the wall, floor, ceiling, etc. As you change the environment, it's changed for the rest of the game. The gun selection was fantastic and the LAN play to this day is top notch. Graphics are good on a moderate video card or usable on even a laptop.
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Welcome back you were expected. I have a 4 second video nobody liked 400K times, the demographics are incredible with that traffic. There are three spikes in ages 36, 55, and 61 when people come back to games.
As I've got older my lust for head to head competition in video games - and effort to become competitive - has diminished greatly.
I'm finding I enjoy single player games more now that have some real depth to yhier story or solid strategy. Witcher 3 and Stellaris are recent gems. Fallout 4 was fun exploration even if story was weak.
Just wanted to second the recommendation for The Talos Principle. It will make you think about more than just solving its puzzles, and some of that may be what you need for the experience to be memorable as an adult. Portal and Portal 2 are also excellent.
cross platform and free. cant beat that with a stick.
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I refuse to sign
Seriously, used to rock a 45 ms ping in Quake back when most players were still on dialup. Boring compared to flying a FPV racing quad via goggles. Check out multicopter on reddit, you'll only use your computer for sim time and 3D printing upgrades.
Starseige Tribes is still going. Mech warrior online is a new take on an old classic. Counterstrike (various incarnations). Team Fortress 2 (or just TF2 to those who play it, it's probably the closest to Quake World).
The pinnacle of Quake 1 was Mega Team Fortress afaic. Just started playing Ballistic Overkill and I'm having a blast with it. Any game that doesn't need me to fire up wine, VirtualBox, or PlayOnLinux is even better in my book.
Naw, I disagree. The shooters tend to be marketed to high end rings only, but there are a lot of games I like that work on my system great. The gamergodz will diasgree but I am not playing in their silly world. Fallout 4 does not need a high end rig, neither does Skyrim, the new Thief reboot, Tomb Raider reboot, all worked great for me. I was not getting 100fps but 30 is good enough to enjoy games if you're not constantly twitching.
At a certain point your average PC with 8GB and a $100 graphics card became good enough. You no longer needed to upgrade to top end hardware just to play the latest fad. And the game makers like this because the market is so much larger if it's not restricted to only the elites. Don't get the largest resolution monitor you can because that will hurt the performance, and I think this is the primary reason why top end games keep wanting the bigger and badder gfx cards because they want that 4K video.
And don't play the latest games, they're all crap anyway. Play a 3 to 5 year old game instead, the prices will have dropped.
MMOs are mostly set up to appeal to the 10-30 minute crowd. It's the WoW model, with tiny microquests that give continuous positive feedback. Ie, get in, finish a few quests, talk to friends, and log out in under an hour. Now the instances and raids take longer, but not excessively so for the most part (can take longer to find a group than to do the content). But soloing an MMO doesn't require the bladder control like they used to. And in many MMOs you don't need to grind, it's optional, and the hard part is ignoring the players who tell you that you have to grind because they all assume your end goal is top tier PvP and PvE.
Wing Commander.
Xwing VS TIE Fighter.
Quake is not an old-school game. Most first person shooters are just prettier versions of the same thing.
How about Sopwith Camel and Ancient Art of War? The later was the original tower defense game, only there was only one tower.
Absolutely. None of this "taking cover" bullshit - just keep firing until you or the literal thousands of enemies are gone, or run away to wherever that last health pack you saw was.
I'll suggest Serious Sam 2 though - 1 wasn't -bad-, I just didn't like the level design in a lot of places. YMMV, etc.
Our hobby has grown alot, and in many different directions, and so have you, and so has anyone who will answer you. Lately, gaming has also done something a great deal less common: it has united many different traditions into one modernity. I could show you something that I feel is a revival of the old ways. But my old ways aren't your old ways; four different kinds of console gamer still exist even though only three kinds of console still exist, and the PC is exponentially more riddled with tiny little zeitgeists that got amalgamated into what we have now. At this point if you're playing modern games, even the console/PC distinction only matters when somebody asks you what "retro" looks like.
My point is this: I could say that a game feels like Quake to me. But I probably didn't get out of it what you did. I only experienced Doom and Quake as shareware until long after they were already retro. I never got the slightest taste of what real multiplayer gaming is like until they put it on the N64, where you could have a whole four people and a ridiculous number of bots. And what if I did get the same thing out of it? Do you have any idea how many of my favorites from 20 years ago I've gone back to and couldn't stand? There was just so much the medium hadn't done yet, you know? I always wait tearful years for remakes of these things to see if the dev team can pull off that strange and rare magic of taking what I loved from the old days and genuinely improving it with what we've learned since then. Almost nobody does it right, because they think the important part is something I don't think is important, or maybe all they modernized is the graphics and the gameplay is still too old-school to be fun, or maybe they're trying to wedge in a stupid new business model, or maybe the idea just doesn't actually work and I come to discover I liked it because I was a stupid kid.
Home is a time, not a place. You can't play Quake again. I mean... you can. There are source ports of it. Loads of people play it all over the place. For all I know, even the community feels exactly like it used to. Won't you just rediscover why you left the first time? Maybe the reason you left is genuinely that you were too busy, and it'll work just as well as it ever did. So, it can't hurt to try. It probably won't work, though.
If it doesn't work... get Doom. The one made in 2016. It's called Doom. Yes, I know, that's confusing. I'm sorry. It's basically perfect at giving you the old feeling without being the old thing, to the point that it makes all my hemming and hawing look like bullshit. I don't know how they did it, nobody else has ever done it that well. Maybe they actually made a pact with the Devil?
Sorry if that was too long, I'm high on cough syrup.
"handle"?
OP is saying the game is both not fun to play and full of obtuse asshats. That's not something you "handle" it's something a rational person avoids.
This isn't like SEAL training where only the best can "handle" it.
EVE Online is more like CrossFit for nerds with poor social skills.
This is all imho of course. It's gaming and if people want to play it fine. But as far as an honest summary when making a recommendation, OP is basically right on.
Thank you Dave Raggett
It's almost as fun as Windows 3.1 Solitaire was.
(Yes, I know, don't ruin it)
Just get any preconfectioned gaming PC that fits your needs, preferably one that is quiet, small and relatively cheap. MSI and Acer have neat gaming PCs.
With a ready made system you won't have the hassle of fiddling with current hardware and most hardware today is perfectly sufficient for playing current games at 1080P with regular settings.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
https://github.com/BusFactor1I...
It's a Korn Shell script.
Check the readme above for a bit more of an explanation. It's fun. And really challenging, even though there's only 3 words and 3 bits to work with on the virtual machine, a 'Seed'. You combine the words together and see if the calculation computes correctly based on your assumption on a non-deterministic machine. It starts out easy, but it get's difficult quickly. Here's the start. Check the github for the rest: #!/bin/ksh DEBUG=t # expect - test your expectations # # BusFactor1 Inc. # 2017 # License: AGPL set +k tee () { echo -n "$1 " /usr/bin/tee $2
}
function tri {
# execute the next word if x is 1
x=$(
Listen to my music.
Recently, I've been enjoying Toxikk; their tagline is "frag like it's 1999". My one complaint about its single player / campaign mode is that it seems like the difficulties can use some tweaking - enemies either thoroughly ignore your existence, or the next difficulty up, they'll become champion marksmen who never miss...but it's still fun, there is a free version, the only DLC is the paid version, and it supports LAN play if you roll that way.
Also supporting LAN play, and also costing $0, is Unreal Tournament. Epic Games has moved to a content store model as well as using it as a springboard for engine and dev tools licensing, so the game itself is free. It supports LAN play, the bots are pretty well balanced, and although the map selection is a bit sparse at the moment, they've been consistently adding them as the game has progressed. I've found it to be a bit faster paced than UT2004 or UT3, but about on par with Q3A. Both this and Toxikk greatly benefit from a half decent GPU. While you don't need quad TitanX cards to get a good framerate, I wouldn't recommend either on Intel GPUs.
From the FOSS department, Alien Swarm is half decent. It lacks the polish of the first two games, and there are relatively few players if you enjoy playing online against randos, but as far as open source games go, and at a cost of $0, I've been pretty happy with it.
If you're looking for something less twitchy-shooty, the first two Trine games are highly recommended. From indie studio Frozenbyte, these two games are gorgeously animated, have simple-yet-challenging game mechanics, aren't ridiculously long, and are generally enjoyable. While they lack solid replay value due to the puzzles lacking wide varieties of solutions, there's usually at least two and they regularly go on sale on Steam.
I'll echo other recommendations for Mass Effect as well; though it has its problem spots the characters are wonderful and the trilogy is thoroughly enjoyable and well worth the invested time. Every so often I'll pull up Civ 5; though I'm not very good at it, its complexity keeps my mind working. Batman: Arkham Asylum is also recommended, and if you haven't played Bioshock, it's well worth it. None of these games are 'new', and many haven't aged perfectly in terms of graphics or game mechanics, but the fact that they are still being recommended 5-10 years later shows that there are more than a few redeeming qualities for them.
When 'real life' doesn't keep me busy, there's no shortage of video games with which a fellow "late 90's / early 00's" fan can find enjoyment.
...I play games to avoid real life, not to emulate it.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
No, don't. Seriously.
It's a politics-rife, asshole-filled, scumbag-overflowing cesspool.
Would be nice as a single-player with bots though, if that would exist.
A single-player (or better, co-op) Eve variant would be a heck of a fun game, IMO, especially if you could build fleets with friendly bots. There's a lot of interesting complexity to Eve gameplay, but it's almost as if player toxicity is the point of the game.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm still playing Q3 on raspberry pi with the interns, and my skills haven't diminished any.
Playing on pc is even more unfair to controller users. :)
IMHO, The only current game worth playing is Doom; it's progression system is terrible, but there's a great single player, and Arcade mode is great.
All it really needs to succeed is for them to release a dedicated server, and real level making tools in the old style.
I want the old maps; TLTF and Morbias Station. :)
We still play Q2 and Unreal tournament on LAN, on PI and PC, lol.
Crysis 3 is pretty dead now, but it was fun as single player and multiplayer.
I still run a Duke Nukem Forever server some weekends; Red light district is still fun.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Ex-q3 pro here. I played q3 for about 12 years, compensating the rising loss of reflexes with strategy and knowledge for a time. Now i am 42 and i have moved on from Arena FPS. What really works for me now are Mech-Games. They are FPS, too, but the deliberate slowness and higher armour make the contest even more tactical and teambased, so that's my stable for old horses :)
There's a lot of interesting complexity to Eve gameplay, but it's almost as if player toxicity is the point of the game.
Because it is...
CCP have realized they can both make some money and basically not assign manpower and expense to the inevitable endless stream of "he stole my shit plx help" complaints by letting the sandbox manage itself. I am yet to encounter another game where being an asshole pays more than not being an asshole.
I played EVE for years, I am not talking out of my ass. First time I played between 2009 and 2010 IIRC and then I played between 2013 and 2015. First stretch I was mostly a PvE player who at some point got into Nullsec, running complexes with a friend. We were renters and it was okay, until some big alliance pissed another big alliance and we were collateral victims. That would have been fine and dandy, fecal matter happens, but we were, as renters, promised safe passage by the victor, only for that promise to be promptly erased the moment we exited the station. We were smart enough to do our first attempt empty-handed, but it was a lesson to remember. Shortly after, I was searching for another nullsec corporation and despite being totally not interested in politics, I was considered a spy because "you were in a corp which was in an alliance which was at some point an enemy of an alliance which at some point was our ally". Now that was some weird paranoid shit right there.
Second stretch I came back tot he game and went straight to a very large coalition, my account being vouched by a real life friend who was already there. I played as an Industrial character, building ships and modules for the corporation I was in and doing trading. Nothing aggressive towards anyone, just ordering raw materials and turning them into ammo, modules, ships and drones. It was peaceful, I liked research and so on. Even so I got betrayed a couple times, once by a member of my own corporation and once by a friendly corporation. I finally left EVE again when the same situation as before happened: big coalitions getting at each other's throats for no reason other than "for lulz" with the full assortment of betrayals, backstabbing, theft and general assholery.
That toxic environment is not for me.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
At 37, both my age and genetics (I have slower-than-average reaction times) make me a disaster at twitch skills. that might make me an "Untermensch" according to your own thresholds, but it also makes Borderlands a fun game to me. Playing it co-op with a couple of like-minded friends has provided me enormous entertainment.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
If you want to experience the old Doom games 'modernized', try playing them with the Doomsday Engine. Updated Lighting, 3D character modeling, sky, music, and sound. Hacx and Chexquest WADs too.. ( dengine.net )
As an older-but-not-too-old gamer who can only hack SP FPS on slow mode, I've moved on to Don't Starve, a gothic horror/survival crafting roguelike. It's got the occasional thrill of FPS with a lot of down time spent on collection, planning, and exploring.
I know it's not quite modern any more, but if you loved fragging people online with Quake, this is probably one of the best games you'll ever play.
And if your reflexes aren't up to World of Warships, try Naval Action for really slow turning mechanics.
Is it worth building a custom console for Kerbal?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If you liked the original SNES Shadowrun [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun_(1993_video_game)] you can try the Shadowruns from Harebrained Studios - they are turn based RPGs in a cyberpunk setting.
The first one (Shadowrun Returns: Dead Man's Switch) is kinda "meh", after you have played the other two, but as a first game in the series it is OK.
The third one (Shadowrun Returns: Kong Kong) is good, although the story is a bit too slow-paced at times.
And, last but not least, the second instalment: Dragonfall. This is perfection. The story is great, the characters memorable, the setting awesome. Try to unravel a mystery related to a dead dragon, while navigating Berlin as the anarchistic Flux State... Man, that is some quality game. I can't recommend it enough! Here's a link: https://www.gog.com/game/shado...
I also played Quake quite a bit until I migrated to Unreal Tournament. As much as I hate the fact that UT is being redone with the same name as the original, it does seem to be recapturing a lot of the old feel with a modern game. It's still early alpha, but I've found it rather enjoyable so far. https://www.epicgames.com/unre...
Reminiscent of Flashback (Delphine Software)
Unfortunately, the vast majority of modern PC games are not a good fit for old school gamers. There were some very profound changes that took place in the 2000s that changed the nature of mainstream PC gaming. Back in the 80s and 90s, PC games were on average very sophisticated in terms of their gameplay. This was because not many people owned PCs, and even fewer played games on them. This audience was intelligent and demanded interesting and stimulating entertainment. Likewise, game developers of that time were small companies or individuals who genuinely loved the medium and worked in it to produce art.
In 2000s, both of those things changed. Everyone had PCs then, and the audience expanded to include all sorts of people, such as soccer moms, casual players, and so on. At the same time, games became cross-platform between PC and the consoles, so that the audience also included a lot of younger players. Whereas the old school PC audience might resemble a book club, the new one was essentially the general population.
Around the same time, games moved to 3D, partook in physics and voice-overs, and generally became significantly more expensive to make. This resulted in a shift from smaller enthusiast developers to large corporations running everything, such as EA, Activision, and Ubisoft.
The end result of both of these changes is that when you have corporations which are not interested in games per se at all, but only in making larger profits from them, and a mainstream audience with fairly low-brow tastes, games being produced will become significantly less sophisticated and interesting. You can see this in every genre. Shooters and action games that used to feature massive non-linear levels with interactive gameplay have devolved into linear cinematic corridor slogs. MMOs that used to experiment with social systems are now static themeparks. Single player RPGs that used to be complex and required significant player agency are now without fail states, and simply lead the player around with their quest compasses and on-rails gameplay.
Now, with the depressing history lesson over, all is not hopeless. Despite the overall decline of the industry, there are some excellent new titles, mostly from independent developers, but occasionally even from an outlying big company.
Witcher 3 - This single player RPG released in 2015 features many of the problems with modern games. It has a huge amount of cut-scenes, and the gameplay can often be too easy and non-interactive. Despite that, it is still an amazing game worthy of playing. The quality of writing, quests, lore, and characters is on a different level from most games, the world is huge and amazing, and on harder difficulty settings, even the combat system can be quite fun.
7 Days to Die - An early access title on Steam (meaning it's still technically in Alpha), this is an amazing game, and is probably the culmination of all the survival type games out there. It captures the best of games like Minecraft, Terraria, and many others, and then goes way beyond to create a sandbox that old school players can appreciate and play in for hundreds of hours.
Dwarf Fortress - This game has been in development since 2002, and will likely be in development for another 20 years of so. It is already the deepest, most complex game ever made. Do not let the ASCII nature of it deter you, there are graphical tilesets available, and one of the modders in the community is working on a 3D front-end in Unity. This game might at some point become the greatest one of them all. It aims to simulate the entirety of random fantasy worlds. Think of it like this, imagine your favorite fantasy book (let's say Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire), and when Dwarf Fortress is complete, it should be able to procedurally simulate any event in that book. Yeah...
As an aging computer nerd that grew up with a TRS Model 3 and IBM PC-XT... I'm going to recommend the Zork Anthology. It's around $6 US on Steam. It comes packages with a DOS emulator. It's blast from the past!