You're one of the few. Pretty much everyone else complaining about how modern games are bad and the time you speak of was some magical time for gaming, are at the same time only be playing games from the last decade or so.

Having been a game since the early 80s, I would argue gaming is better now than it has ever been. It has its own set of problems, but nothing better than throwing a game I'm interested in into my wishlist, waiting for it to go on deep sale (which happens long after most of those annoying first bugs have been ironed out), checking the reviews at that point, and then downloading if it still looks good.

Generally speaking, games are so much better looking and have the ability to be far more intricate and interesting. Like I played hundreds of hours of civ I. But if I'm going to play civ now, it will be 5 or 6.