Out of curiosity what's your "games with substance"?
anything that actually tries to have interesting Gamedesign and/or gameplay.
Death Stranding is memed about a lot for being a "walking simulator" but that game actually tries stuff and tries to be different. there's no game that plays quite like it or has features like it.
planning routes, building paths with tools you brought with you, using pathways other players built, terrain with different grip values, having to be mindful of your balance and the surfaces below you while traversing...
there's nothing quite like it and the devs tried to make a game that didn't exist yet.
but it's certainly not "3rd person shooter with stealth elements #7252" that I would see as a game with a lot of substance beyond a pretty look.
like how many games do we need where hiding in a bush or a high-up vantage point with a bow and arrow and/or silenced pistol is a core gameplay element?
how many games do we need that have handholdy platforming in them only to have an alibi gameplay element so it seems to the casuals to be less monotonous? if your character's jump arch or even the ability to jump is altered depending on context, that's not a gameplay element, that's filler content.
or puzzles that are literally designed to solve themselves, and if they aren't are basically solved for you by intrusive monologuing of the main character? *caugh* Horizon FW *cough*
it's filler.
and it doesn't need to be super innovative either. games can have other gameplay and design merits, like Doom Eternal, a game that's not innovative but has lots of depth which brings with it a large skill gap, meaning you can play it over and over and every time you do you learn more about the mechanics and you'll play the game almost entirely differently from when you first started it.
this can also not be said about the mainstream, dumbed down AAA titles I'm talking about. you can't get much better at semi-scripted platforming, or at shooting at stationary enemies while being stationary behind cover.
playing such a game for the first time and then again for the fifth time won't be drastically different, you might be faster because you know where everything and every enemy is, but what you actually do to beat them won't be that different.
so games with actual substance to me must have one of 2 things or both:
depth and/or innovation
the mainstream games I am talking about usually have neither.
there's no gameplay depth in Uncharted 4, neither is it innovative in any way, it's lots of gameplay elements we already had, and half of them dumbed down to be basically just filler. or what good is a climbing section you can't fail at? it's filler... it's there to fake diversity in gameplay.
and if you like Uncharted 4 and games like it (I simply used UC4 as an example here for what many games do now), that's fine, but don't act like it's not the "turn-brain-off-and-lo
ok-at-pretty-images Marvel Movie" of the gaming industry. because that's what these mainstream AAA games are. they are literally designed to be "beatable" by people who barely play videogames, just like Marvel Movies are designed to be enjoyable by people that simply want to watch mindless action.
this is why puzzles and platforming are dumbed down to no end these days, because those are elements a difficulty selection can not make easier without the developers adjusting them per difficulty setting, which in some cases would mean to actually change the level layout which would mean artists and leveldesigners would need to change whole segments of levels just so there can be an easy platforming mode.
so the easy way out in that case is to just have these elements in the game to mimic gameplay diversity, but have them be so automated and handholdy that noone can ever get stuck there.
making combat easy for everyone is not that complicated since all you really need to do as a developer here is to adjust damage values. so combat usually isn't dumbed down, it's only dumbed down if you play on the lower difficulty settings. which can be jarring when you play on Very Hard and encounters are ridiculously hard, but then the puzzle section gets basically solved for you as if you're a preschooler having helicopter parents with you.
or you go through a ridiculously hard boss fight, and afterwards the game tells you "hey press B to crouch here!" when you want to leave the area. because that's what the average player these days needs, it needs the game to tell them what to do because the average players these days aren't hobbyists, the average player nowadays is just like the average music listener, or average movie watcher.
they are not typically involved enough in games to be expected by the developers to know where the crouch button is or that they have to crouch in order to get behind that wall that blocks the way.