Familiarity breeds contempt. Our younger selves have enjoyed many games. Now, we recognise the re-use of tired old ideas and see the influences of past games on present ones and are bored by new releases. Which games do we enjoy? The ones we haven't played to death that we enjoyed ten years ago. The politicization, malicious fragmentation of content for extra money and ever increasing "cinematic" quality games, i.e., less gameplay, more spectacle, are also big turn-offs.
Older games are objectively superior to modern ones. This has been true for a long time.
>Smaller budget, less averse to taking risks, so less generic
>Lesser hardware capability, so more of a focus on the intricacies of mechanics and the world you interact with rather than tightly-controlled pretty sequences
>Small memory size - on console, can tray and play. No constant updates, and once you have the game, you have the game. No extra charges for content.
>Smaller game studios - games were more personal, works of passion crafted with purpose rather than big pieces of software to be shat out by big companies expecting a huge profit to justify huge investment.
>Couch co-op - remember when you could actually play with friends on the same console on something other than rocket league?