The internet completely fucked up gaming allowing companies to keep games and not give them to us. It also allowed them to reach stupid people and gambling addicts. Where they can make billions in micro-transactions committing essentially fraud.

You have made this point extensively in other threads. Kindly stick to the subject here - what makes a good FPS. Thanks!

Maybe I missed something but this is on-topic, also it is the primary reason why modern FPS and modern gaming itself generally pales in comparison to the classics.

What makes a good FPS - not online-focus.

Or perhaps you missed the latest call of duty with lootboxes because you know you don't know anything about modern gaming? How has even call of duty not been messed up? Oh perhaps because I was on topic.

Well, thanks for ruining what was a fun topic with your repetitive rant.

Oldies, definitely.

I've played most of all back then and it wasn't all roses and joy: what I see listed in this topic are the masterpieces that shaped the sub-genres of today.
Those old masterpieces have been able to innovate and had they very own identity, games like Wolf3D or DooM, System Shock, Ultima Underworld, BLOOD, Dark Forces, Quake, Half Life, Deus Ex, Unreal and later on STALKER.
Today's game development is basically oriented towards graphics and effects, so there are cutscenes, quicktime events, GPS, automapping, instant reward, no backtracking, general hand holding and so on.

The difference, imho, is that back then great games were truly masterpieces that brought something new, today games generally look good and are basically the same game with different assets.
You can't reinvent the wheel every time but today there's lack of courage and innovation, there's lack of will because making interesting/engaging/challenging/innovating games isn't the priority anymore.

This reminds me, when are we going to get Hugo's Nightmare 3D?

Now, maybe this is the case with shooters. I'm really not that experienced in more modern shooters.

But I disagree strongly if you are making a general claim about gaming. There are more great games being released every year right now than ever were before. (Yes, more crap, too, but that doesn't cancel out good ones.)
Divinity: Original Sin
Botanicula
King's Bounty: Warriors of the North
Metro: Last Light
Dead Cells
Into the Breach
Darkest Dungeon
The Witcher 3
Gorogoa
LIMBO
Cuphead
Dishonored
Dark Souls
The Banner Saga
Factorio
Recursed
Don't Starve
Sunless Sea
Kerbal Space Program
Path of Exile
Legend of Grimrock
Batman: Arkham Asylum

There's a very incomplete list of innovative, great games from the last 6 years. It's limited by my own playing experience and by the fact I threw it together in just a few minutes.

But each of those games took risks and did new things, and quite a few of them are indeed masterpieces.

Agreed. Newer games, especially shooters, seem to be pushing for a combination of nostalgia and GFX parlor tricks rather do what the first generations did, which was create and innovate. That's not just shooters, but the gaming industry as a whole. Seems it's true - nothing new under the sun.

Did you literally not read what I posted just above you?

Both of you are making broad general statements. I have provided a list of specific games.

I love GOG, and I love these forms, but I get awfully tired of the kids-these-days everything-new-sucks generalizations.

I sick to my statement. There are more great and innovative games coming out every year right now than ever before. I love the classics, too. I have hundreds of hours into arcanum and bloodlines and jagged alliance and old text adventures. But man it is tiresome to have a concrete list of games dismissed with a vague generality.

No because we insta-posted together. That or the fact that I was too busy pounding down Ritalin while constantly thumbing up stupid cat videos on youtube.

Ahah! The old cat-videos-ate-my-homework defense, huh? Well, we'll let you off the hook this time, buddy. But, watch it!

Yep, part of what you said is why it was a good time to be a gamer in the 90's, developers were really pushing limits on what they could do. This is just my opinion but I think people long for classic FPS not for the games themselves, but because of the innovations that games in that genre brought to the table. It was exciting to see how boundries were being pushed back then.

Bethesda Softworks really pushed possibilities to their limits in the 90's. Anyone else remember Terminator: Future Shock and SkyNET? It was the first FPS game I played with open maps, drivable vehicles (No, this did NOT start with Halo) with an atmosphere faithful to Kyle Reese dream sequences in the original Termintaor movie. It also was the second game I played with 3D modelled enemies (The first game was Descent).

Half-Life gets a lot of credit for story telling but I honestly think Cybermage: Darklight Awakening should have gotten a little more recognition. Just like Wolfenstien 3D wasn't the first FPS, Half-Life wasn't the first FPS to have a narritive. I'm not sure which FPS that would be though but I do know Cybermage did it before Half-Life. Cybermage was one of the earlier game that showed us FPS games didn't have to be about finding keys and hitting switches to end the level.

How about the original Quake that did away with the 2D sprites and helped pave the way for 3D graphics acceleration. Although this did get off to a bumpy start (a ton of early 3D platformers sucked), it has gone a long way since then.

Or how about Thief, the game that showed us FPP games didn't have to have things to shoot to be fun.

Don't get me wrong, the current gaming industry still has room to evolve. However, consider the development costs for AAA games today, I'm not surprised devs don't want to take risks. With modern AAA gaming, it's hard to be excited when you know devs are just going to stick with a proven formula rather than stretch posibilities.

How about Superhot? How is that not innovative and risk-taking?

I meant the industry in general, I'm not making absolute statements about every dev about every single game. When talking about broad subjects, we have to make broad statements which will never be correct 100% of the time.