Spore was undoubtedly one of the most (if not the most) innovative game of the decade. It would have been rewarded for it as well, if EA hadn't made some monumentally poor decisions. The absolute worst decision was, a year before release, to shift the target demographic of the game from scientifically minded experienced gamers to people who have every expansion pack to every The Sims game. That right there is what killed Spore.

Arkham Asylum.

When opening the topic I was thinking Mirror's Edge. But Heavy Rain is newer, and while PS3 exclusive it's definitely an AAA title and innovative enough.

Heavy Rain isn't that innovative, it's an evolution of Shenmue and Fahrenheit style games.

Which is why they've been calling them games all the time right?
do you mean indigo prophecy/farenheit? Heavy rain is just an evolution not innovation sorry...

Like I said earlier you do not get innovation in AAA titles it's too much of a risk, Spore is probably the closest to being innovative in a long long time even that is built on demo scene games

Key point - "Innovation" != "Doing something for the first time".

Just out of interest, I remember an outcry that Spore had some terrible DRM when first released, has that been repealed in a patch at all? If so I might give it a go.

I don't know whether anything has been patched out (I haven't touched it since I left it in disgust originally), but at launch it had SecuROM with limited activations. I do believe there's a revoke tool for it now. Oh, and at launch, they'd forgotten to add the CD keys from the Galactic Edition to the activation servers. Guess which edition I bought?

No but it does mean being original... even the developer of Heavy rain calls it an evolution of indigo prophecy but as I said you don't really get it in AAA titles you can't afford to spend 20million+ on a game that might only sell to 20 people so you do a small game to test the innovation a B movie of a game if you will
The install limitations were lifted and the call homes made rarer (price you pay for it being playable without the disk apparently)

This is my answer for innovative.

When I think of AAA, I think of common denominator. The games that get lots of cash and lots of marketing are typically focused at generic content that can straddle the line between genres to get as many people in as possible.

Innovative games, lean towards a target audience and hence, almost by definition, aren't AAA games. The Thief franchise defined a genre because it targeted a group and gave an unique experience regardless of what everyone else was doing. Other studios have done this, but they don't seem to stand out as much to me. Deus EX is another one that comes to mind and its sequel was an attempt to AAA the innovation. It didn't work.

IMHO the BEST games are the ones that target an audience and try to bring them a unique experience. (this rarely, if ever equals AAA).

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA was quite innovative. It's not exactly AAA, but then again it has no shortage of A's.

It's possible to innovate without being risky. Look at Medal of Honor Airborne. Alright, it wasn't a fantastic game, but it took several staples of the FPS genre and innovated with them (chief of all giving you iron-sight leaning, making cover actually useful without implementing a cover mechanic).

The idea of an 'innovative' game is, to me, a flawed idea. A lot of games have something innovative about them, even something championed for being sterile and unoriginal like Call of Duty contains innovation somewhere, even if it's just something minor like a new way of doing rewards in multiplayer or something.

Of course, another argument would be as to why we put so much stock in innovation anyway. Innovation doesn't make a game good, nor does a lack of it make it bad. The real problem the industry has is believing repetition + expansion to be refinement (that is, doing the same thing again + extra stuff = a new release, rather than just doing the same thing again but better).

Naw, 's just a tunnel runner. :p

I was going to buy it, but then it came with that onerous DRM, and ultimately they cut out most of the features that had intrigued me in the first place.

In the end, the sense I got is that I was wise not to pay for it in its finished state.