Let me preface that I've been gaming since I was 10, own a PS5 and had an Xbox Series X both at one point (and played Game Pass)
But man... after spending the summer going to garage sales, finding older / retro games for PS2, GameCube, SNES I've realized that games are not any better than they are these days, or not even near the amount of originality that came with said games.
I've played some great games like Ghost of Tsushima, the Tomb Raider Reboot on PS4 and loved those, looking into the future of games I'd want to get on PS5 and the list seems rather small, maybe I've consider GTA 6 and the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake, but really that's about it -- and I usually try new things but haven't found a modern day game on the PS5 that really hooks me in.
I find myself going back playing Donkey Kong Country on SNES, Tetris on GameBoy, or even having a blast playing Mortal Kombat Trilogy on PS1 -- games like those while tied in nostalgia just seem to have been made better -- I just don't know what changed. I've also been collecting older video game magazines like GamePro and EGM -- and it shows so much excitement around video games.
My question is too, is it because rental stores disappeared and now we're stuck with a 50-70 dollar game (refund if we can, sometimes not always the case) -- did developers get lazy? Small studios bought out by big companies? What about exclusives being faded out, or everything being ported over to every system?