The big game companies are playing it safe. A full-featured game that has all the polish and effort expected so it can sit on the shelves at Best Buy or Gamespot costs millions, and takes dozens of programmers and dozens of artists to put together. Since the big companies are shelling out that much cash, they're not taking risks, so all we're seeing from them is sequels and games in known popular genres. Yet more racing games, John Madden Football XXXVIII, Quake 4, Doom 3, Starcraft 2, Final Fantasy 38, etc.

If you want more originality, try surfing around for Flash games. They're smaller, not as flashy as console games, but virtually anyone who can find some development and artistic talent can come up with one - lots of them were made by one person, or a team of a few people. There you'll find the creative, fun stuff.