Join the club. Games like Second Son and Deadrising 3 are amazing and great progression for the franchises. But they get scored lower than their predecessors because of the "lack of innovation" from a good chunk of reviewers. I honestly don't get some of the reviewers. 

Except it's never that simple. Some franchises get off the hook and get great scores while others don't. 

The obsession with innovation is about not wanting to play through the same experience over and over again.  It's about expecting developers to continuously improve over time.  We rate games within the context of the medium.  After playing through a slew of open world games, it's going to be hard for one to leave an impression without doing something new.

Perfecting an already existing formula is enough to create an excellent game, at the hands of a competent developer. What does GTA V and The Last of Us have when it comes to "surprises" or "innovations"? Or, hell, Mario Kart 8 got an 89. Multiple games on the series have 90+. The series isn't exactly known for innovating on every single instalment, but for what the game proposes to be, it probably has unmatched quality.

Sometimes, it just feels like a huge double standard really. I'm not saying Watch Dogs or Second Son are anywhere near The Last of Us or GTA V. But listing "lack of innovation" as one of the flaws is horrible, not everybody needs to reinvent the wheel.

But the game isn't the same experience. It looks completely different from every other open world game. It's way different than say another mario game that still gets great scores. Countless examples like that exist in the industry.

I can't help but notice the double standards in reviews either. It's hard to ignore it now.

I still don't understand what you mean with "We rate games within the context of the medium".

And not wanting to play through the same experience over and over again? I'm sorry, I can't take this argument seriously when Mario Kart Super Circuit and a bunch of Tony Hawk games are 90+ games. I'm not attacking either, I have a good fun with MK (though Super Circuit is terrible), and Tony Hawk is my favorite sports series. I just fail to understand why for some games, open world games in particular, its mandatory to surprise or "give something new".

It depends on a few different factors.  Let's compare Super Mario 3D World to Watchdogs.  Super Mario 3D World, aside from 4 player mechanics and some great level design, doesn't really revolutionize the platformer genre.  But, how many 3D platformers have we had over the last few years?  There's been... uhhhhhh... Mario... and uhhhhhh... Epic Mickey... and De Blob..?  I'm sure there were some crappy kids movie games, but there are few major releases.

On the other hand, Watchdogs is an open world game.  We just had GTA a little while ago.  Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, the Assassin's Creed Series, Arkham City/Origins, Saints Row, Just Cause, Mafia, Yakuza, Infamous, and so on.  I'm not saying all of these games are the same, but there are a LOT of open world games out there.  So, it's going to be harder for an open world game to impress than a 3D platformer.  

I should of course note that I haven't played Watchdogs yet, but if you give me a game with an open world and a gun, it's going to be hard to impress me.

So uhhhh... give me a chance to reply maybe instead of quoting the same post multiple times?

Anyway, I haven't played Last of Us, or GTA V, nor do I care to.  I've only played about 4 races of Mario Kart 8, and I'm guessing you don't own it either.  Three entries of the series scored above 90.  Super Mario Kart, which basically invented its genre, Mario Kart DS, which was a pretty substantial leap as the first title with online plus had a ton of modes.  Then you have Super Circuit, which I didn't really like either.   And, I have seen complaints about the lack of innovation in Mario Kart.  The score isn't simply a measure of how innovative a game is.  Mario Kart may just be more fun than watchdogs in general.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel, but you need to improve it somehow.  Otherwise, why is this game going to excite me?  If you have the same meal for dinner every night, you're going to get sick of it.  If you choose to make a game in a genre that is heavily over-represented, you need to seperate yourself from the pack somehow.

Strawman arguments... but w/e.  The Tony hawk games that scored 90+ were 1,2,3, and Underground.  The first three were awesome games, and Underground was the first to take the formula open world.  After that, the series consistently scored lower and lower. What was the common complaint?  Lack of innovation.  So, not a double standard at all.  Just took us longer to get sick of it because there weren't like 12 other skateboarding franchises.

Btw that's why it's mandatory to surprise.  Cause there are tons of other open world games on the market.  There are like 2 skateboarding franchises (I think that's down to 0 now) and maybe about 4 Kart racing franchises apart from things like hello kitty.  And that's also what I mean by within the context of the medium.  How many games are doing what Mario Kart does as well as better?  You could maybe make an argument for Sonic and Sega, but that's about it.  It's an experience that comes along once every Nintendo console.  There is a new open world game every month or two. 

I've not played the game.  It may be awesome, and I never said it wasn't.  All I said was that lack of innovation was a valid critique.

I'm not quoting the same post multiple times. It's just another guy who coincidentally quoted your post at the same time.

But anyway, I strongly disagree with it being basically the same meal. Out of all the major open-world games, pretty much all of them play differently from each other. I'm gonna exemplify with the ones you've mentioned in a previous post:

RDR and GTA are kinda similar, only the former is more serious and on the Wild West. It's the same dev, so it's only natural. inFamous gives you super-powers, AC puts a lot of emphasis on free running and climbing, the Arkham games are about the combat and the gadgets, Just Cause is about over-the-top action and LA Noire's status as "open world" is questionable, imo.

Those are the ones I've played anyway, and all of them felt extremely different from each other. And if you look at the scores, they are pretty fair (how AC3 was kind of a disappointment and AC4 a surprise, for example), and none of them complain about "lack of innovation". But there are a bunch of Second Son reviews out there who list lack of innovation as a flaw for the game, giving the impression it would have scored higher if not for it, and that's my issue with it. Granted, I haven't played SS, but I can only assume it plays similarly to the first two inFamous - naturally, since it's the same series.

Now, maybe Watch Dogs is indeed a generic open-world game that tries to be GTA too hard, who knows? But if it's just a game that follows the GTA formula with a relatively small twist to it, and does it in a competent way, then lack of innovation is not as valid as it is for Arkham Origins for example.

Edit: The PS2 version of Tony Hawk 4 also scored over 90. It's actually the second highest of the series, losing only to THPS3.