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I did not get a chance to play most of the late 90s and early 2000 games in my childhood. My second console after an NES clone is a PS4, and I always had run of the mill business computers. My father gifted me Age of Empires: the Rise of Rome and that's pretty much all I played. And Half Life, which my friend gave me. I also played demo versions of Unreal and some shareware ID games, but never full.

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

The two newer Deus Exen are worth a go if you like the first one. Infamously and accurately, you may as well skip 2 and go to 3 & 4.

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.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is fun and immersive. One of the best games I've ever played.

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.

I actually love latest (3 & 4) Deus Ex while not really like the previous ones (1 at as well) ;)

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 :)

Prey is fantastic. Such a hidden gem.

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.

Based on the amount of stealth games in that list, you might like Mark of the Ninja - indie side-scrolling stealth platformer with a great visual style.

Will check that out, thanks

That's the thing about getting old, you end up seeing enough examples of everything that you generalise and everything fits in your model of the world. Which also means some of the magic is gone, and possibly also your ability to recognise something genuinely new.

> ...and possibly also your ability to recognise something genuinely new.

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.

> also your ability to recognise something genuinely new.

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.

Isn’t it actually easier to recognize something new? Anything that still excites me must be fairly great.

I'd say what sets the good games from then apart are the ones which were, back then, innovative. Hexen might've been a fun game, as was Heretic, but it is Doom and Quake which were ahead of their time.

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).

I consider myself also old in this regard, having really enjoyed games like Galaga and Mario Brothers on the NES and with Tiberian Sun as one of my most favorite games of all time.

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.

Now you could say "but doom was new and groundbreaking", but even if there had been a dozen identical games before

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??

> There has definitely been a game released during the last 12 months that you'd totally like if you only knew about it.

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!

I have seen a lot of very good indie games in some genres, but not in all. Can you point to some good indie realtime strategy games?

I find "planetary annihilation : titans" to be a cool recent rts

It's not very polished, many issues with balancing, etc... It cannot compare well with the best games in the genre.

I think it’s a cool tech demo. And that part is honestly impressive. But I find it a pain to play. You are constantly watching your back in 360 degrees on multiple planets at the same time.

Multi-planet battles while cool looking and fun are not balanced and most of the competitive matches are played with no orbital tech on single planet - these are quite similar to competitive matches in TotalA and really well balanced. If you play ladder or with people looking for competitive matches then it feels a lot more like old RTSes although you can still zoom out or send units in not so obvious ways (frontal attacks rarely work) which often makes for interesting surprises and strategies.

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.

Genre got rehashed / beaten to dead, the hype's at the successor of the genre, MOBA. No more innovation to take from RTS, unless you implement it as part of other genres/games. Which you could argue MOBA is.

I cannot get the game to play correctly. I'm using Debian with AMD open graphics, and about everything works fine, but this game is horribly broken with it. I'd love to play it.

> thanks to the indie scene there is still great games being released today in any genre and subgenre you can possibly think of.

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).

That's BS. DotA was an indie game (if you look for popularity).

Terraria and Factorio are great (for multiplayer/coop and replay experience correspondingly)

You give me 3 examples. That's cherry picking, and I did mention there are gems, and the games you mentioned can be considered as exceptions. I challenge you to give me a list of 50 polished indie games in their respective genres.

Your post had quantifier "Any".

You also wanted something the scale of SC, which was very singular for quite a while in its success. And I managed to name 3!