It doesn't necesssarily have to be something that's new; it could also be something that's, comparably, so rare that it seems new. Take space sims, for example; there haven't been that many made, so a new one would create quite a stir. Most gamers have never even heard of Descent, so seeing a trailer for a Descent-like game would probably leave them saying, "Whoa! What was that?" I'm not against making games like older ones; I'm just against taking it to the extreme that the game industry has over the past few years, with the FPS/RPG of the month. I want more good adventure games, like the Myst series. I want space sims and Descent-like games. I want some new platformers with radical gameplay differences, like the Ratchet and Clank series and its focus on weapons of mass destruction
. In short, I want to see more variety. I really haven't bought a PC game made in the past three years; there hasn't been a single one that interested me, and besides, the system requirements have become so absurdly high that I don't have the machine to run them. Out of all the gaming industry, I think the RTS genre may have done the best; each game seems to have something innovative, like the rich storyline and god powers of Age of Mythology, the great environmental interaction of the upcoming Battle for Middle-Earth, or the strategical combat of Rome: Total War. I'm not a huge RTS fan, but I have played a few, and from what I can tell, the genre is still innovating and still creating new gameplay concepts, something that seems to have halted in the FPS club. By the way, you speak of HL2 as being "innovative": what specifically are you referring to? I don't know any real specifics about the game.
Something else may explain my behavior: those of us who play the Descent series generally look down on people who play FPSes; we call them "groundpounders" and decry their lack of trichording skeelz
. In the words of the old D1 trailer, "360>0, Descent>Doom."
Elitist, possibly arrogant attitude? Yep. Well deserved? Oh yeah
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