@Loremaster
First things first, I am not really a hard-core player. I played few games last years. Since my computers and me are getting old, I already know witch genres I like to play alone (99.999% strategy but not of any kind) and with friends (not competitive coop games of any kind, mainly ARPG). I can fill (and enjoy) my playing time with those genres, a thing that did not happen in the past. Goodness of a mature industry.
For my taste, I dare to claim as the jewel of the year, if not of the history, to
Factorio, a 2D cooperative RTS brain-breaker on early access. A game made for me and mine: cooperative, no story-line, no bodering cut-offs, adult visuals and a straight gameplay with infinite strategies to try out against a relaxed clock. Just great.
The proof of the crime:
More than a hundred hours played per month... I am wondering how could it happen xP
An other game I enjoyed a lot this year is
Ori and the blind forest. Just a platformer but sweet and beautiful. Sweet controls, sweet visuals, sweet music, sweet story... suberb in every aspect of the game. Nothing to envy of any other game on its genre and impossible to develop ten years ago. Any rant about this game is just a matter of taste. I can't consider this game worst than any other platformer in the past, and looking to its technical excelence, I can only say that it is better. Almost a little bit.
As mentioned by others, I think most AAA game productions felt in the same insipid generalized style that makes games, cinema, music, food, clothes, everything at the end, unremarkable. But I also think that mature industries are able to build better products, as the examples above, than an adolescent one and that is why I claimed that todays best games are better than old times best games in everything (for my taste), what does not mean that the average must be better in consequence.
Personally, I think your question hides a false dilema because the jewels of each era or style are uncomparable. Nobody can objetively sort them by quality, just by taste. Between Picasso and Dalí, who is better?
