As a general response to the cry that games need to be more creative... there are creative games, but people aren't buying them. People's wallets are telling the industry to make more Call of Duty games above all else.
Publishers simply can't afford to throw down the money on a AAA budget concept that's creative when they could more easily put out another Final Fantasy, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Gears of War, etc. and be 99% certainly they will turn a tidy profit.
Creative games do exist. Most of them are smaller. There are lots of creative games on PSN and XBLA, but people either don't like them on the small scale, or they simply don't buy them because their too busy playing MW2 multiplayer to death.
It's the same way people b**ch about DLC announced immediately after the game launches, but if you look at the numbers, DLC performs best if released within a month of launch. You can't blame the industry for painting by numbers.
