Things gamers complain about that you like.

[Shadow1980]

I'll echo the OP again by agreeing that features that help with navigation is often a good thing. Mini-maps. Indications of where certain footholds are for climbing (especially given how detailed graphics are these days). Et cetera.

I'd also agree with linearity. Open-worlds, Metroidvanias, and other non-linear worlds have their place, but that place isn't "everywhere." Some of the most fun levels ever devised were self-contained ones with a clear beginning, middle, and end, with maybe some little side areas to explore here and there. Sometimes it's nice to have a game where it's clear where to go next, and you're not obliged to spent time wandering around some gigantic map wondering where to go next and there are no clear Points A, B, C, etc. A bit of directed structure can result in a fun game. That's why 2D Mario games still work after 40 years.

Speaking of giant maps, another one I'd like to add is "short" games. Oh, God, did "short" become a word just a dirty as "linear" in many gaming circles, and many of them devised what is to me the most asinine bit of calculus ever, that being "A game's value should be measured by price divided by length of one playthrough," as if replay value isn't a thing. Possibly one of the reasons why I still prefer older games is that "short" was the standard. I could beat most games in a single sitting in the NES & SNES days. Even in the first two 3D generations, there were still plenty of games I could knock out in like two or three sittings. Meanwhile, so many newer games can take me weeks worth of sittings to beat. You typically get plopped down in this gigantic contiguous world filled with giant checklists of miscellany to do, and while much of it is technically optional, it's often functionally a necessity in order to keep yourself from being under-leveled, as such games often contain RPG-lite elements, namely XP levels that affect your ability to gain HP and new skills. These games are so vast and so much of your time is just spent getting places that the devs had to add fast-travel so you didn't have to go down the same roads and other paths you've already traversed fifty times already and you've seen everything there is to see from corner to corner of the map.

Time in finite, and I want to spend that time playing other games, or watching movies or TV shows, or something other than working on a long-ass game that starts to feel like a full-time job. At some point, the game just overstays its welcome and I'm thinking to myself "Wrap that shit up! Wrap it up, B!" Games that take forever to beat are games I rarely if ever will go back and replay, and the ones I did had to me an outstanding gameplay loop and amazing story, but even in the replays I try to just rush it as much as the game will allow me. Meanwhile, I can crank up an old Mario or Sonic or Mega Man or Halo game on the regular because they ask so little of my time. Most of my all-time Top 20 games I can beat in a single afternoon. If I have, say, 60 hours a month dedicated to playing games, I have to make a choice to play one long game or several shorter games. It's like rewatching a 2-hour movie vs. rewatching an entire multi-season TV series (if it has a serialized story, at least). The movie is just the better option for a casual watch. To me, the perfect length of a non-RPG is 8-12 hours. Leave the 40+ hour adventures to traditional RPGs like your Final Fantasies. There's been so many games that would have been better if they were shorter (and in some cases more linear).

@00Xander00 I was complaining about tank controls back in 1998. I slogged through RE2 on the PS1 back in the day, but had no interest in the series past that because it felt like the controls were fighting me every step of the way. Tank controls weren't some stroke of genius, some deliberately unintuitive scheme to make the game more challenging or "scary." They were born out of necessity because the PS1 controller was essentially a modified SNES controller and devs had to create control schemes based around a D-pad. Lots of games on the PS1 used tank controls because there wasn't any realistic way to have the kind of controls that are the standard today through the use of just a D-pad.

The real genius in controls that generation was on Nintendo's end. As odd as the N64 controller looked, that analog stick was a revolution. I remember how simple and intuitive the controls on Mario 64 were. You pressed the stick in a direction, and Mario moves in that direction. And once modern dual analog controls became commonplace and standardized starting in Gen 6, tank controls eventually faded away. Capcom was oddly one of the few that still retained them in some fashion, but it wasn't until the RE2 remake was released and standard dual analog controls were fully adopted that I actually started to enjoy the series, and I've since played and enjoyed the hell out of RE7, RE3 remake, and RE4 remake, and I plan on getting RE8 & RE9 soon. Tank controls were a product of their time, and should be left in that time, unless someone is making a retro game deliberately aiming to recapture that feel of clunky PS1 controls.