Backwards to Goldeneye

With the leak that Goldeneye might be coming to Xbox and (maybe) Switch, I have started playing TimeSplitters 2 and will eventually play Perfect Dark on XB. I wanted to play this style of FPS that I haven’t really touched since I owned a PS2 in the early 2000s. I really like the level design and ease of playing a game like TimeSplitters 2. I am excited to try out Perfect Dark which I only briefly played at a friends house as a kid. This style of game, with objectives changing based on difficulty, is something I wish more games adopted now. Creates a space to learn the game and do something new each playthrough.

Is there any old game design ideas that you wished more modern games would use? Are there any series that you have gone back through recently?

Games are so differet these days, I guess I wish some games were simpler again. I don't need 5K collectables accros a huge map. I don't need hundred of fetch quests or bases to take over. I think the attempt for a bit more elegance & simplicity would be worthy.

Wouldn't "focus" be a better word here? A game that isn't necessarily short, trimmed down, lacking in features, or simple, but rather one that is focused on being very, very good at a handful of things instead of somewhat OK at basically everything.

Focus was something I really appreciated about God of War. It wasn't a small game by any means, but the way it was designed reminded me a lot of 2000s action adventure games before everything was open world. It was a large nonlinear world with some amount of freedom of exploration, but no giant open fields stretching for miles. It felt like the whole game world was deliberately designed with a purpose, rather than being huge for the sake of being huge.

Everyone's going to get bored of me talking about this alll the tiiime so i'll keep it short, but yes, i crave the old style of linear shooters. I love that i can replay Perfect Dark, know where the enemies are, do a casual speed run of the lower difficulties or try and master the levels in the higher difficulties because it becomes such a different experience, but the thing i miss the most is tailor made experiences.

I think of Half Life 2's developer interviews and commentaries, "What's an interesting thing we can do in this room, how can we introduce a new challenge, when is it time for a puzzle, here's where the player should see something cool, what are they expecting, how can we play on those expectations" etc...
I always thought that was a core part of game development, but with the rise of open worlds and procedural generation it's become more common to have accidental encounters or game levels that lack surprises or innovation.
I AM NOT SAYING MODERN GAMES AND MECHANICS ARE BAD, i love modern games too and those old sensibilities do still exist, but i see how extremely well Titanfall 2's campaign was received and think "yeah we used to get those kinds of experiences all the time"... but why would you spend millions of dollars making that when you could make Apex...

I went long again, i too have been slowly playing through Timesplitters 2 and am excited for potentially a PC version of Goldeneye that i don't have to emulate.