Looking through the latest issue of PC Gamer, it's really quite obvious how the settings for most PC games appear to fall within one of the following categories:

FANTASY
- Medieval "fantasy" (Age of Empires)
- Tolkienesque fantasy (Dungeons & Dragons)

WAR
- Historical warfare (Battlefield 1942)
- Modern warfare (American Army)

SCI-FI
- Near-future and/or cyberpunk sci-fi (Half-Life 2; Deus Ex)
- Spaceships-big-guns-and-aliens sci-fi (Halo)
- Licenses (Star Wars; Star Trek; TRON)

CONTEMPORARY NON-FANTASY
- Mostly sports and racing (MotoGP 2; Tony Hawk 4)

The few exceptions stand out. In this issue, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, which has a contemporary setting - though with fantastic elements, of course.

It's not a whole lot better on the consoles, and although the genres are different - more action-adventure and platform games - the settings are the same, and they blend into one another (so it's fantasy and sci-fi? How original!). The ones that do stick out - Grand Theft Auto, Super Monkey Ball - are like breaths of cool, fresh air in a hot and dry desert. A desert of mediocrity. Because, while there are fewer bad games than there used to be, there's also much less variety, and fewer great ones.

But I've talked about genres, quality, and originality before, at length. What strikes me the most is how similar all the settings are. If it's not: a) fantasy; b) sci-fi; or c) a licensed setting (typically fantasy or sci-fi) - it's d) World War II. Bored now. Time for something new and refreshing. A detective game set in late 1930s Hollywood, for example; or a 1970s, New York based police action-adventure.

Anything but elves and robots...or robotic elves.  ¶ 18:14