You can be that reductionist about every genre if you try hard enough. All 2D platformers are nearly identical. Every Zelda game is basically the same. You can literally continue with this argument for hours as you reduce all of gaming to a few common gameplay mechanics. Everyone's not creative!
The problem is that the FPS genre has been greatly narrowed to a certain kind of fast paced FPS.
I mean, back in the days there were FPS a la Turok 2, FPS a la Goldeneye or FPS a la Medal of Honor, the genre was as varied as any other genre.
On the past generation, at least at the beginning, you had games as different as Prey, Condemned, Bioshock, CoD, Battlefield bad company, Darkness...
The huge success of the CoD series among the fact that the development costs of the tech-driven games has risen so much that any other kind of FPS that doesn't follow the CoD stereotipes, except for Bioshock that has a strong enough brand to survive by itself, has become unaffordable.
On the other hand, Nintendo is more risky. Galaxy to 3D-World, Zelda games change some core aspects in each iteration...
Derrick01 said:
Zelda especially rehashes the same goddamn world as a 20 year old game and plays mostly the same as it.
It may be impossible to be more wrong in so few words. I mean, have you ever played a Zelda game? This is not a Uncharted - Uncharted 2 - Uncharted 3 kind of evolution, there are more things involved than a graphical update and new assets...