You do make some good points....
Technical achievements have been a huge part of this gen. It's like devs stopped caring about the simple things that made gaming addicting and moved onto seeing who could put out the best eye candy. I was really damn stoked about KZ2 before it was out, then when I finally bought it I was disappointed and a few classes/balance issues ruined the game for me. The campaign felt generic. Sure the graphics were pretty but, I bought a ps3 to play games.
The only game that's considered a "graphical powerhorse" that ever kept me hooked was MGS4 (well, the visuals are abit outdated now). I loved it because some of it's features obviously weren't realistic, but they were fun. I could be walking around with a tiny pistol then pull out a massive ass railgun at anytime, or use any of the other 40'ish weps in my inven. The game had so many fun items/gadgets/game mechanics to mess around with. I went through the campaign several times picking up new stuff in each playthrough.
Though I guess nowadays, there's no need for actually adding content for replayability when you could just add virtual trophies that do nothin, right? : l
