I have no idea why this game just came to my mind, really, but thinking of it brought me back some good oldschool gaming memories. Well it's not ancient, but you can consider this old, as it's from 2003. Basically, this is a well balanced mixture between stealth and action. Kind of Splinter Cell-like, but a bit less stealthy. From what I remember in terms of the story is that the protagonist has to bust a Russkie company which is working on some virus or so. I don't remember much of it, but I didn't really care about it back then; the gameplay alone was important. Having said that, I do remember a lot of the gameplay simply because it kicked ass. You could choose from many unique gadgets. These were ranging from grappling hooks to dart guns, remote controlled assault helicopters, or even unique multi-functional pistols that can either disable cameras or fire a sticky tracking device onto the enemy to tag him, or fire a noise projectile to distract the enemy. Pretty awesome. Your main assignment would be sneaking through some high-security complexes, while taking apart the enemies with some cool combat moves, hacking computers, unlocking doors, or listening to conversations while hanging from the roof. The graphics were pretty fine as well, and the sound was sheer awesomeness. Great game. Looks like I might get out my PS2 again.

Well my definition of oldschool stuff isn't necessarily '2 decades plus'. It actually varies. I kinda consider classic PS2 games 'oldschool' when comparing them to nowadays' gaming standards. Operation Surma is from 2003, that's almost a decade ago, which is roughly half my life. I guess for me it's bound to be old school.

If we're talking about 'real' oldschool games, I'd name Doom 2 (1993) as a good example from my point of view. I used to play it at the age of 5. It was my first PC game aside NFS1. I still play Doom 2 these days, last time I played NFS1 was 4 years ago.