I watched that ten minute or so E3 demo, and while the graphics looked mesmerizing, the gameplay looked extremely last gen.

The enemies, sometimes only like 10 feet away, sometimes at point blank range (see the part where he first uses a grapple hook to a lookout hut), mow him down with automatic weapons, and he seems to take barely any damage whatsoever. It doesn't have to be Ghost Recon here, but I'd expect at least a foggy red screen cover your view Call of Duty style. This type of invincibility is okay in Unreal and Halo, sci-fi games where your suffocated in armor, but not in this realistic looking game where he doesn't even seem to be wearing a bulletproof vest.

The next issue was with the typical flaw seen much more commonly in games from before 2005, where enemies would refuse to shoot him, or take any action, even as he was standing still right in their view. Enemies would be surrounding him on the ground, shooting and hitting him as he walked around the roof. But upon standing still while the demonstrator talked, all of a sudden those enemies stop firing. If he simply stayed still on the roof, would they ever come after him? It just felt Goldeneye 64 -ish to me. (The A.I.)

And he could stand directly in front of an enemy, take his time lining up the hooks to the gas canister right next to the enemy, without being fired at. As if the enemies just stand around waiting for you to kill them with style.

Oh and the way opening your parachute when your only two feet off the ground magically gusts you up twenty feet in the air, plus bullets and fire do no damage to it, and it magically ghosts through trees and powerlines. They could have at least gave him a jet pack/compressed air tool to explain the burst of power.

Standing perfectly unphased on the rooftop of an SUV driving like 70 miles per hour is pretty weird too. Even the way he hops onto the other moving SUV is more like a sidestep hop than the lunging struggle seen in other movies/videogames.

I wouldn't have given a second thought to these things if not for Brad Shoemaker and others considering this for their "Game of Show" from E3 2009.

It seems that those 2002-ish games made a lasting impact on the game industry, with so many games now combining elements from any two of them to make something new.

Everyday there comes another new title, set in an "open world", requiring you to sneak past enemies, climb tall buildings, and slice through foes in the third person, starring a jaded hero wearing something like a hooded sweatshirt. And then comes the games that are further clones of the first set, like inFAMOUS and Prototype are to Assassin's Creed, which itself was to the 2002 games.

And I'm not saying it is a terrible situation, those four games were, well besides Spiderman, great. But I think the formula is set to run dry. And before long, games like Final Fantasy VS. 13 will give way to, "well what if we made a Devil May Cry God of War type game set in the Lego universe? With a hoodie and 5:00 shadow?" Its like we can simply break down games announced at E3 nowadays as "well here a GTA sandbox game. Heres a new Devil May Cry type game. Here is a stealth action game only this time starring a sexy woman. Here is a World War 2 FPS, only this time you play from Ireland's perspective, heres a Superpower game in NYC only it takes place in the 1950's..."

I feels so weird seeing scripted viral marketing type threads like, "This game PWNS Gran Turismo graphically (56k warning)", and "Nintendo is simply putting more smiles on faces", and "twenty million people have downloaded this amazing Nike avatar shirt TCHBO!" bullshit.