Way too many shooters in this gen. I miss the action RPGs and platformers of the past gen; compared to that this generation is generally sterile. Will wee see another okami this gen? Another beyond good and evil? The games that most ppl care about now and the games that make the headlines are just shooters. I really only see hints of the games of old in the ps3 lineup (forget about wii) but those games arent getting ppl riled up.
I've been thinking of how to reply to this post for the last couple of days, because generally I agree with you. This gen has become somewhat "shooter heavy" and, as much as I enjoy a good shooter, there's a lot of dross that's found its way onto the HD consoles. And yes, it's the Halo, Resistance, Gears and Killzone titles that seem to get all the press.
But I also don't entirely agree with you, because there have been some gems this generation that have maybe unfairly fallen under the radar. Just, ironically enough, as Beyond Good and Evil did before. Titles such as Kameo, Valkyria Chronicles, Eternal Sonata, Viva Pinanta, Siren, Folklore and even Rare's attempt to reinvigorate the platforming genre with Nuts and Bolts... there games are all worthy of having a place in the discerning gamers collection. That doesn't mean that are all faultless, but there's enough originality along with solid core gameplay to make them worthwhile purchases.
However, what I think has saved this generation for me, and indeed made it the best generation so far in my eyes are the smaller marketplace-type titles. I wouldn't have bought Braid as a PS2 boxed product, but I bought it over Live. TrialsHD would never have seen me order it on physical media, but I'll download it for about £10. Games such as Pixeljunk Eden, flow, flower, Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars, Critter Crunch, 'Splosion Man and many others. On top of that you have re-issues of classics, many of them updated to take advantage of the power of the new consoles such as Bionic Commando Rearmed, RezHD, Pacman Championship Edition and others.
Microsoft, through either extraordinary vision or blind luck (or a little of both) heavily promoted the concept of small, downloadable titles and has maintained a release schedule of (usually) 2 titles a week since launch. Sony, while slow to catch on, eventually saw the benefit and now have a pretty decent release schedule of smaller titles over PSN.
These outlets (along with the WiiWare store I suppose, though I don't have a Wii so know little about it) have allowed smaller developers to take risks on newer game concepts that just can't get funding in the era of $20m budgets.
So along with a good number of high quality "blockbuster" games and also many boxed games that are well worth playing, there's also an ever growing library of unique, fun games to be bought over PSN/Live for the price of a couple of beers.
Me? I'm lovin' it
