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...
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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...