Perhaps it's my age, but my word, I am bored with first person shooters.  The whole genre seems tired and out of steam and was last cutting-edge in 2004 with Half-Life 2 and its amazing storylines, brilliantly-imagined world and deep characters.  Since then, Call of Duty games have perpetuated their Earth-bound, wartime reign, with the focus on what's new in terms of graphics and, when your graphics are limited by the capability of the console or computer, advances are going to be in minute, dolly steps.

The last time I enjoyed an FPS was Bioshock.  The first one.  In 2007.  And to be honest, it wasn't exactly a stand-out experience either.  What FPSes do these days is to bring one or two new gaming elements to the table, but haven't we seen it all before?  Didn't we control enemies in Jedi Outcast using the mind trick?  Haven't we thrown objects around in Half-Life 2?  Weren't scripted events in the place of cut-scenes impressively implemented in the original Half-Life?  We've seen that crossbow before, haven't we?  So what is new?  Who cares about advancement in enemy AI when they don't last ten seconds on your screen?  We've done squad-based teams before and didn't really enjoy it.  So you've managed to get a sharper texture on that hat, who cares, let's see some innovation, something exciting and new, shiny a fresh, get the FPS genre out of the doldrums with something mind-blowing!  Something like Oblivion, which wasn't a FPS, but used the FPS format to further the RPG genre.  We're bored of hordes, bring us something clever!

The reason FPSes sell is the multiplayer.  As soon as a new FPS game comes out, people flock online to show their pwnage, and many don't even touch the single-player campaign unless it's, say, shrouded in controversy, eh, Infinty Ward?  So the reason FPSes are still so popular is that people think they're getting something new and that they have to keep up with the times to buy the latest game for the online portion.  But actually, if the whole world realised they were getting the same old rubbish with the shit wiped off and the dog-ears smoothed out, then perhaps it wouldn't buy Modern Warfare 3 and everyone would continue to play Modern Warfare 2 until something new and amazing came out that developers actually had to use their imaginations to create.

But of course, that's not going to happen and we'll continue to get one or two new things, a slightly different setting, a shuffling of the same deck with a lick of paint and a dab of polish.  And how better to show that than this here E3 trailer for forthcoming XCom, where the only new thing appears to be that they've borrowed the black oil enemies from Prince of Persia.  Oh well.