However I don’t think the bulk of the problem with genres, lies in the genres themselves, but in some sort of western cultural imperative. Since the romanticism in late 18th century, overthrowing previous models and being orginal has gained focus in many of the human activities (science, art, entertainment, etc.). There’s this idea of “breakthrough” and “innovation” that generates an impressive amount of pressure among people.

I’m not saying by any means that these ideas are wrong, but genres all in all are some kind of “average”. There’s so much innovation, if everybody designs portal, or braid, these two games wouldn’t be consider innovative at all. Not everyone will be a rock star developer so gifted that will create game after game blowing minds around the globe with their powerful and innovative gameplay mechanics or whatever.
So….
1) Innovation -or at least trying it- it’s good. Hell it’s excellent! Maybe an idea didn’t work, or a project fails to launch, or maybe it’s a hit but please, please…
2) GAMEPLAY is what makes a game. Great games can still be done with no trace of innovation at all. Think La-Mulana; Cave Story isn’t all that original after all. Super Mario World is a refinement of existing mechanics.
3) I can not stress this enough, innovation is good. But I’d -and maybe it’s me- rather play an average game that is fun, than some game that for some reason couldn’t pull it off and ended up broken. I remember reading somewhere in the net that innovation is what we call a new gameplay mechanic that actually works, and a gimmick is what we call it when it doesn’t.
4) Finally, average is not mediocracy. COMI is an average game, just as Enclosure is. The same could be said about Starcraft 2. But the polish that went into these titles adds up to create an excellent and fun experience

I think that ‘Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’ is a pretty good candidate in that it doesn’t bring anything new to the “Metroid” series that wasn’t already introduced in 1 and 2, aside from the different control input and the “corruption” bar (itself a refinement of a boss mechanic in the original Metroid Prime). The graphics are better, the story is fleshed out a little more, the pacing and level design of the game has clearly been better thought through (a minimum of long, long treks back and forth; plenty of areas which change as you advance though the game) and the layout is a lot more intuitive (I actually managed to get 100 % item completion without having to resort to an online guide, partly thanks to the map feature which tells you roughly where upgrades should be).

I have to say, I really enjoyed it – and, after my experience with 2, I didn’t think that I was going to.