It's long been my opinion that todays copmuter games are generally shite. You get the odd good one, but as you say, 19/20 are sequels? Mad. I relaly love when little games like crayon physics and such are released, takes me back to simplre more fun games.
Nowadays, gaming is pure competition, not really about the actual enjoyment of the game. These days the idea of making a game without multiplayer seems like a fools errand, how could it be fun, seems all the creativity has gone and developers are relying on human interaction to improve the playing experience. It takes a bit more creativity and passion to make a game that can entrance the player all on it's own, instead of thinking we'll achieve that by adding voice chat and squad capability.
I grew up with games like zelda, mario cart, super smash bro's etc, being some of the best games in the world, today this seems to be one of the more sought after downloads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HfCqw_8iKo