Quake and Goldeneye really shouldn't be compared with each other. One's an arcadey twitch shooter, while the other is Goldeneye. Go and play the original Deus Ex and tell us you also hate that game. I know I definitely couldn't get into it after playing it two years ago, and it's the same reason you can't play Goldeneye.
No one's bloody patient enough to figure **** out for themselves these days. End! We've all been babied through incredibly pretty-yet incredibly non-interactive FPS games for the past decade and it's sent the genre way back. But that's my opinion, and obviously sales for those select few explosive set piece-driven shooters are through the roof, but whether or not they're successful due to ease of play or merely the appealing action sequences is anyone's guess.
The original A Boy and his Blob is totally a **** game compared to Super Mario bros.!!! Accessibility, right? Trying to make a game as appealing to on-lookers at a first glance as possible. Quake is incredibly easy to pick up and get in to, where Goldeneye needed those two old words no one uses anymore, learning curve.
Nintendo has mentioned many 'o times recently--as recently as a week ago when referring to the WiiU Zelda in fact--that they're trying to make their games as accessible as possible. No learning curves!!! Great for you, someone who grew up in such a time, but for the rest of us? It sends shivers down our spines, as we find sticking with complex games with layers of depth rewarding when digging deeper. Most people are just happy with runnin' and gunnin' though, yay. -___-
WALL OF TEXT OVER.
tl;dr Back in my day, etc...