Bio Mass: The Importance of Original Thinking

Joshua Ostroff of Exclaim! Magazine (Canada) writes:

The gaming industry thinks of itself in terms of generations. But though such talk promotes revolution, not evolution, each hardware jump is not necessarily accompanied by an equivalent leap in content.

This fall is the first with all three next-gen consoles out in the wild, but most of the big games are coming saddled with a numeral or slightly altered suffix: Halo 3, Guitar Hero 3, Virtua Fighter 5, Fable 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Metroid Prime 3, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, and a Zelda DS game. And let's not even get into the slightly updated sports titles.

While this seems indicative of a creatively bankrupt industry, the year's most exciting games thus far are two unprecedented pieces of original IPs: BioShock and Mass Effect.