2002 was a watershed year. System requirements suddenly just jumped up to double the previous year. Game developers of the time set minimum and recommended specs way to low in my opinion, listing a P3 (and even P2 in some cases) as acceptable for most games, but in practice following such requirements would result in the game looking and running like ass.
Some examples that come to mind off-hand would be the previously mentioned NOLF2, Dungeon Siege, NWN, Morrowind, GTA III and NFS: HP2. Even WCIII requires a GF4 Ti/ Radeon 8500 if you want to play at 1024x768 with all the bells and whistles. And of course, such cards require a reasonably fast P4/ Athlon processor.
The next major jump was 2004, with the release of titles such as HL2, Far Cry, TLotR: TBfME, Vampires Bloodlines, etc. Those started making even a very fast c. 2002 system seem slow.