I personally am becoming quite jaded to improvements in graphics. There comes a point where enough's enough. Rather than painstakingly trying to climb back up out of the uncanny valley I would much prefer if games just stayed safely at a comfortable graphical level and worked on improvements in story and gameplay.

Fable 2's graphics have not bothered me in the slightest yet because there is so much other stuff going on.

I think now is the point that the 'graphics' have set in, and where HD graphics are beginning to crawl forward in terms of what they can do until new SDKs and budgets can give us "insane" games, graphically.

So now what matters is gameplay, and the like, since we're not in awe anymore.

Personally? This generation is great. I've played dozens of incredible games, just like I did in the PS1/N64 era, just like in the SNES/Gen era, and like the PS2/XB era (except I rarely did a lot of console gaming then).

Each generation will have it's "must haves" and unimpressive games. Compare 2000-2003 to what we have now, and I think there are some great games already out.

But lets not forget what impressed gamers after '03 for last-gen:

Resident Evil 4
Final Fantasy XII
San Andreas
God of War 1/2
Okami
Metal Gear 3: Snake Eater
Guitar Hero 1-3
Shadow of the Colossus
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
Dragon Quest VIII
Gran Turismo 4
Metroid Prime 2
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Ninja Gaiden/Black
Project Gotham Racing 2
Forza Motorsports
Psyconauts

And the list goes on and on. Point is that just because 3 years passed last generation (the mid-way point), they saved the best for last. This generation is the same way: Given time, new masterpieces will come out. We're getting awesome games now, and the time to deliver awesome games has been shortened, so it only makes me wonder what sort of awesome is coming up.

PS with the Chrono Trigger analogy: Chrono Trigger was one of the oldest games for the SNES when it came out. The system had already been out for 5+ years when it made it's debut. The same can be said for FFVI, SMRPG, DKC, KI, and other masterpiece SNES classics. As a system ages, the true gems come out. It's been that way every generation.

Kylie - The reason you've been unimpressed is that you don't own a X360 :)

I do think that hype is damaging some games, but I am still blown away by many

hehe, thats was what I was thinking when I saw his post and then I chuckled when I scrolled down to your response...

I think people forget that a game development has a set finite amount of resources. The more money and time you spend on graphics, the less money and time you spend on story, gameplay, etc.

Look at Lair... imagine if they spent less time/money on improving the graphics? The game wouldn't of needed to be patched months later if they had spent that energy on mechanics.

I stopped being impressed by anything after watching Knight Rider 14yrs ago. Everything when compared to KITT is a perpetual disappointment.

I think the problem here is that most of you are getting too old to enjoy video games... maybe you should get a wii! :P

Squrriel, isn´t that the natural course of things?....At first, you´re impressed by the new thing on the block, then as time goes by, your excitement naturally goes down because what was new is now getting old.

Uncharted and MGS4 really gave my the WOW factor this generation. I could say GeOW, but it's really not my type of game. This week, Fable 2 and LBP both did it for me. Very impressed.

Haha just figuring that out now. Once you realize that most of the games have been graphical updates of games that releases in the N64/PS1 era you'll see how monotonous games have really becomes. And sure we'll get a LittleBigPlanet or Wii Sports every now and then but most likely we are just going to keep getting Resistance or Gears 2 or whatever the stereotype of the month is. And sure they look nice and sure they play well... no doubt good games but they've been good for 10 fucking years... don't ya think we deserve something more. But of course the root of the problem is these are the games we continue to buy and the reviewers praise so we probably won't get more.

Hopefully we can start to build on those titles past simply updating them and yes WiiMotionPlus does intrigue me to get more uniquely played games and with games releasing on Wiiware, XBLA, and PSN which seem to be more creative than the retail games.