lots of good and bad stuff in both the AAA and indie spheres. for every creatively bankrupt AAA — and there are a lot of them — there are several more indie pixel platformer roguelike metroidvanias and procedurally generated suvive-'em-ups

i'm with you on iterative laundry-list-and-icon-heavy-open-world games that are light on good "feel" and mechanics. i keep banging my head against the first hour or so of middle earth: shadow of war, hoping to experience the nemesis system, but i can't seem to get past the awful controls, combat-by-numbers, and map clutter. the irony of burying an amazing innovation like the nemesis system under open world bloat is pretty good though