For me, it has to be “souls like”. I don’t get much time to game so when I do, I want linear stories that are challenging but not to the extent that I can’t move forward without dying 100 times.
Also, sims that encourage a lot of DLC purchases - I’m an old school gamer and games used to come with all of the content - for one price. Now it’s just a given we have to hand over more money for half the game content.
I avoid anything with anti-cheats, if I’m going to pay for a game, I don’t want that kind of crap. I also tend to avoid FPS, just because I started playing those back in the Wolfenstein 3D time, and then I played a lot of Quake III, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and a relatively obscure Quake III mod called World of Padman. So by the mid naughties I was kind of burnt out on FPS.