I got into gaming in the early 90s. The broad and terrible glory of Palladium, 1st and 2nd Ed AD&D (and yes, 5th Ed is--to me--the real third edition; 3-4 are just dalliances into making a pen-and-paper computer game), Shadowrun, Battletech, and of course T2k.
I've seen tabletop games walk face-first into trying to simulate computer games on paper. When it first started, I loved the idea... right until I tried playing it.
I understand why that was attempted, after seeing CCGs pull the rug out from under them, and then MMOs yank the linoleum out too. I can understand why balance became such a big thing, too--the games that stole their market growth were huge on balance. The wrong lesson--that all characters should be basically interchangeable--was learned from it.
I really liked nWoD's Hunter. It's the first WoD thing I liked unreservedly. It really found the core essence of what it is to hunt monsters and managed to find a way to portray that. It also encourages customization: using the whole setting doesn't really work well, but picking a few hunter groups similar in power level does. So does picking a focus of the story (the hunting, the horror, the group dynamics, whatever)--it's pretty feasible to have a low-fantasy gritty (if quite Hollywood) shootout game, or a high-drama social game with the hunts being done essentially in the background (with interesting systems for doing them in the background, or close enough).
What has really excited me recently is Dungeon World (and Savage Worlds and all those other things by the same guys). This looks quite promising, and even if I don't enjoy it as such it's a very good statement on these games being about telling stories--not game-ifying a math test.
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