Last Post: 7:32:42am, 10/11/2018
I understand what you mean, OP. I'm 29 and also grew up playing video games my entire life; I very much prefer retro (6th gen consoles and prior) titles over most modern releases, although not quite for the reason you've described. I don't necessarily find modern games overwhelming or to be sensory overload as you've mentioned, but I do sometimes feel like there's just so much padding and bloat to menus and an excess of superfluous options... I just don't care enough to navigate everything most of the time, unless it is well-implemented into gameplay.
Part of the problem is that I think some games--both old and new--do a much better job than others at creating intuitive UI; if a game has an overabundance of options and windows that pop up, this doesn't feel quite as bad if the process of navigating from screen to screen (or executing whatever command you're attempting) flows seamlessly and requires little backtracking and hopping back and forth to properly complete your task. It's definitely an important piece of game design, and I believe it's just harder for some modern dev teams to implement well, since games are a bit more complicated than they once were.
Anyhow, just my two cents. I feel ya on this! Fortunately, there are a lot of wonderful retro titles that are still as engaging and captivating today as they were upon release, so you're certainly not in a short supply of options. :)
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