I've played the vast majority of those titles. I'm a collector of games (or was, before the great decline). The majority listed are acceptable. It was a different era, a time when sequels were usually overall improvements. Design intended to push the player and demanded his/her full attention. Five second health regeneration and other modern design sensibilities were not up for consideration.
The titles of the past century that I do not consider to be worthy of their wild successes are those that are just old concepts wildly dumbed-down, but with shiny graphics. This is what the vast majority of the hugely popular games are post 2006.
We can also look at WII and PS3
These are post-2006. Precisely when I perceived the undeserving popularity phenomenon to have begun:
2007 by popularity
Kane & Lynch: a best seller, and as barebones as a TPS gets.
Uncharted: ditto the above.
Gears of War: ditto the above. Third person shooters were not new at this time. I had played plenty, and when I got my hands on these I was baffled.
Bioshock: AKA System Shock stripped of its brilliance and ironically hailed as a masterpiece once it got into the hands of the uninformed.
Mass Effect: laughable game design. Typical Bioware. Designs 3D real-time action/RPGs as if they were still limited to the constraints of isometric RTwP and does away with said perspective's few benefits by doing so. Basically gears of war with dialogue options & shitty RPG progression systems. And waifu.
Assassins Creed: had the fans of this game even played a stealth/action title before? Once again, I was baffled. The game played itself to some degree.
Crysis: the graphics whore game.
Resistance: Fall of Man: a linear barebones FPS reminiscent of a modern military shooter. Perhaps I gave up too soon, but first impressions really weren't good.
Crackdown: again, more confusion on my part. different from the TPS above in that it was open world, but again, not a new concept, rather it was the same formula as GTA, Mercenaries: Playground of destruction, DAH! etc, only without the fun.
Need for Speed Pro Street: A sequel to a long-running series where much of the content from previous installments was missing.
Transformers: the Game: slammed by even the critics, yet still sold well
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360 ... s-the-game
That's how I perceived the popular games of 2007 that I played, and it is a similar story for each and every year onward. There's likely some I missed.
One game of 2007 I enjoyed was STALKER, yet I'm not sure if it qualifies as even remotely popular.
I wish I could find a PC list though, would be easier. I'm not sure if I can really make any conclusion regarding quality of popular games, but popular games have certainly been getting more homogeneous. Wikipedia has this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_b ... g_PC_games but it is laughable[Better Source Needed].
I'm no fan of any of the top ten games there (I have no opinion on Warcraft or Diablo 3, not played them), but there's a lot of dreaded post-2006 titles there which can serve as a good explanation for the shit taste
I like how at least two mods are on that list. Valve has the PC market by the balls.