[bane]

I find playing certain old games I grew up with and have lots of mastery and muscle memory around unwind me very quickly.

Lots of modern games, puzzle platformers etc. just make me feel stressful.

(I also find watching retrogaming videos and longplay videos on youtube is almost as good of an unwinder)

[mercer]

Indeed. I think this has a lot to do with 'fluff'. More modern games have a lot of fluff to make the difficulty increase less abrupt and, of course, because we demand it.

There are a few games, even relatively new ones, that don't have much 'fluff'. They're often considered very difficult, but because they're so lean and well-designed, they don't generally feel unfair.

These games remind me of what I used to play growing up, and they often offer much more satisfaction in a shorter time-span.

A good, new-ish example of this is Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox, which at times feels overwhelmingly difficult, and yet after playing for a while you notice improvement. It rarely feels truly unfair, and I find it more enjoyable than 'fluffier' games.

Other examples would be games like Ikaruga, F-Zero.

[bane]

I find I like to load up Axelay in an emulator and play a few levels. It has an amazing balance of playability and difficulty once you get how it works and is a very relaxing game to play through.

Strangely, I also love playing a few levels of Elevator Action. Something about jumping around and plugging bad guys from that little side arm is very satisfying.