My first randomness

Innovation makes everything lemony-fresh. Familiarity breeds contempt. This is why I am kind of upset as to the current direction of gaming. Fallout 3 took the series to a FPS/RPG hybrid instead of a turn-based strategy game. It added a new feel to the game, but it added a new feel to the game. It turned the franchise from what it was into something I thought felt like a futuristic elder scrolls game. This is not to say it's a bad game. I just can't play it for more than 30 minutes without thinking of the similarities between it and the elder scrolls. Then the contempt comes in and I have to put it down.

This isn't to say games can't or shouldn't add new features or other innovations. Mario brothers have been doing it for years... they've come a long way from their 8 bit roots, adding new things and even revamping the game to a completely different feel of gameplay (mario galaxy and paper mario come to mind) which were genuinely fun to play, and didn't breed any of the contempt I feel being familiar to other games.

This is what worries me though. With the continuation of so many series and the re-hash of other older games (Gauntlet, Alien Syndrome, and Wolfenstein come to mind, there are many, many more), innovations are being thrown in to make it more "modern" and end up leaving the games feeling gimicky... some even to pull off a mediocre game from their "innovations". Most end up being put on my shelf as "just another FPS/Brawler/RPG" rather than the games I loved for their stories or gameplay.