The feeling I have is that games nowadays basically "reset" every 40 seconds or so. So like, you don't really feel as much in control as you would playing like space invaders and getting to level 99 without using up 3 lives.
Graphics are always neat at first, but for me, within about 1-2 hours I get used to graphics and they no longer amaze.
But yeah, if you compare modern games to some of the better iphone games like Tiny Wings or Bit.Trip.Beat, you realize that with the better iphone games, there is an accumulation that occurs over the course of the entire level, and each level can last several minutes and so every action that you take really matters.
While in most modern games, you have regenerating health, are never resource constrained (always have more than enough bullets in the gun), make numerous dialogue selections that simply do not matter (bioware games), and overall just feel like a bunch of meaningless plodding packaged in pretty anistropic filtered and anti-aliased graphics.