To be honest, most innovative games these days are indie games. When was the last time an AAA-title was innovative/tried to bring fresh ideas to a genre? And what was it?

I would say that Mirror's Edge was quite innovative. Is there a newer game? L.A.Noire?

Edit. Title should probably say "latest" but you get the point :)

Define AAA title first. :p

Starcraft 2, lots of people around here would disagree I guess. :p

Assassins creed, in some respects. To bad the first game was just a trial phase for the second.

Other than that? Portal, or rather Portal 2. Same as above, with less remorse (didn't you hear? it's awesome).

He said last, not least.

And i've got nothing. Maybe Portal.

This shit right here.

Also, to a much lesser degree, Brink. It got a bad rap for a poor start, but it's since shaped into something entirely unique among multiplayer FPS games, which is pretty damn hard when the genre is so well covered.

Aside from that... All that I can think of is Mirror's Edge (as you said) and Sanctum, an indie FPS/TD game I got when it was on sale during the Steam summer sale and have been absolutely amazed by.

Portal and Portal 2 are both based on Indy games concept that Valve bought I wouldn't really call that "innovative", the originals were but the Portal games are basically polished remake of those.

While not truly revolutionary in any way, Borderlands is one of my absolute favs of the last 5 years in terms of "hey, i haven't played a game like this before, it's kinda cool" - value.

Demon's Souls' multiplayer component must also be mentioned.

oh yeah demon's souls would count too

I would say that Starcraft 2 was an amazing (and in fact probably one of the best) refinement of a game, but very little if anything in it was innovative. They just took everything they knew worked, crammed them together and polished until it became the game it is.

I would say Portal 2 if it wasn't just a refinement of Portal 1 which wasn't a AAA title... This is a difficult question to answer, I'll have to get back to you on this.

Thief.

It created a genre.

I must have missed something. In what way exactly was LBP2 innovative? If fact, in what way was it anything other than a rehash of LBP1? LBP1 was innovative though.

Innovative eh? Arkham Asylum, I'd say. More than just a beat-em-up and more than just an open-world game.

You can call StarCraft 2 lots of things, but innovative is not one of them. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, the singleplayer part at least, but it is not innovative, unless you want to count the editor, which enables other people to be innovative. I don't consider the editor a part of the game itself though.

maybe I should have said Little Big Planet as far as innovation, but I wanted to recommend LBP2 over the first. It's way better