I have to agree, some games are starting to get boring, everyone is ripping everyone else off. But then, as someone else pointed out, you have to find the needle in the hay stack, like portal

. Half life 2 used to be quite original, but I think Im going to have to agree with zero punctuation on this one, the most recent episode feels like a filler, and all the new crap they are piling on like achievements are pointless.
Some games without story lines are fun, such as CSS and TF2 (the first more then the latter in my opinion). But it seems like your paying a lot and not getting alot. CSS and TF2 were planned ingeniously by being bound with half life 2 and orange box, but purchasing them on their own, I could probably never do.
But games that try to have a story line and utterly fail, those are the ones I dont like. Such as the original far cry, the cuts scenes leave you in a "WTF just happened" sort of state. Some newer ones. COD4 and Crysis, yeah, great graphics probably what made up for the lack in story line. I could see it, and it made since, and it was fun, but wasnt the same as the good ol days of playing Halo.
I think a lot of the lack of story line may be the supid fan boys. All they care about are graphics and/or dont have the brain power to comprehend a good story so the programers dont come up with one. Also new games are being shoved out the door so quick that they may not have time to think up a good story. Hopefully far cry 2 which is caring more about the characters and how they interact with the enviroment, will change the gaming industry from "graphics only" back to "story, interaction, and graphics to tie it all together".
EDIT: Because I havnt talked enough. I just wanted to mention the mod blackmesa source for half life 2. It goes to show that you dont need to biggest, best, next greatest engine to have a good game. They dont even have a game out, its the story line (granted it is stolen off of valve but its supposedly reworked a bit) that keeps people asking for updates on how the game is coming.