Like we’re not triple-A machine possessors at this point. A friend and I played in the era of the original Age of Empires, and StarCraft; Worms, and Dune. We were core SNES-PS2 era. We were never the ultra competitive hotkey speed run strategy types, but just played for fun.
Anyone out there in your late 30s to early 40s that have managed to connect to old friends despite long distances, what are you playing now?
I’d agree with the others who said to go for games that can be played as co-op, rather than competitive with each other.
Some good ones include: Don’t Starve Together, Valheim, Deep Rock Galactic, Minecraft, Portal 2 (main co-op campaign, and the somewhat hidden co-op free dlc campaign that also exists and is imo even better).
Most survival games that have multiplayer have a co-op/no friendly fire option, and they have adjustable difficulty oftentimes, so you can set it up to be as easy or hard as you want.
Or you could go fully the other way and try the old classic Magica (not Magica 2, the first game is much better) and kill each other in ridiculous ways
My top recommendation for you though is Divinity Original Sin 2, and Divinity Original Sin 1 as well. The second game especially is the king of co-op RPG’s, and both have an incredibly fun combat system, to the point that part of the game would be fun even without the rest of it. And each player in the 2nd game can play a pre-made character with their own story, or they can make a custom character.
Edit: actually I’m not sure of the system requirements for the divinity games, so my top recommendation is now Minecraft and other survival games. They can be really good for hang-out games partly because you can usually wander off and do your own thing while you talk if you want, or you can collaborate, and they leave a lot of room for talking about stuff besides the game.
I’d also suggest trying synchronized movie/tv watching, if ya’ll are the sort to enjoy talking over movies or tv like that. Just pick one, set up voice chat, and press play at the same time. Bonus points for “so bad it’s good” movies like birdemic etc.