The biggest change is that we put up with a lot more repetitive gameplay back then, just because that’s how games were and there wasn’t enough horsepower to make complex stuff.
Today, you blow through a level of a modern first person game, or whatever, and see only a tiny fraction of what the game makers created for you. I played Titanfall 2 for the first time recently, and after playing the same level a few times, I noticed that a room that appears only briefly as you take an elevator past it has an extension cord coiled up on the floor. You can only see it if you look down as the elevator goes up, so you can see the floor of the room.
Old games didn’t have the room for those kinds of indulgences.