I'm not a game journalist and have no specific interest or reason to be bitter about a particular age, as I have been playing games quite uninterruptedly since the 80s to now, including those years I don't like. Which were in fact quite good years of my life that I don't have any reason at all to be bitter about. And in which I played a lot of videogames, but mostly from the 90s because the games of the time weren't just hooking me in that much (even though I tried many).
GTA3 is a sequel and the vast majority of gameplay ideas were already in GTA (1997). WoW indeed is popular but a grindfest and tremendously shallow compared to UO. Halo has nothing original with respect to e.g. Quake and you will still find many people playing HD overhauls of Quake I, you'll have a hard time finding anyone playing Halo. The dance games started AFAIR in 1998 with DDR. MGS is from 1998 and in the early 2000s we only saw sequels. Metroid Prime, yeah, that was an outlier!
By the way, it isn't elitism either, few games were more mainstream that e.g. Super Mario Bros, World, Kart or 64 and I count those as masterpieces.
As I say it is subjective, probably there's many people that like games from that generation, but I can perfectly see where the game journalists you mention are coming from. It was a boring period of sequels and incremental ideas. For someone who hadn't ever played a FPS, yes, Halo could be good because it was their first, but those of us who had played Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem, Blood, Quake, etc. were like "So what?" But it's not elitism. I can see the worth in many mainstream games from other periods when they are really good and original, e.g. I see Pokémon Go as revolutionary with all the elitist bashing it gets! But the vast majority of games of the early 2000s were just reskings of things done earlier, and often better.
Sure, all the SNES RPGs, fighters and platformers were extremely original, every single one of them :) And Nintendo first party games of course. So many original games. Mario Party 7 was a blast and nothing like Mario Party 6!
My main point, though, was about the impact. GTA3 was a revelation for millions of people who have not even heard of GTA1 and GTA2. Saying it's "a sequel" is as meaningful as saying FF XI is a sequel. Millions of people first online shooter was Halo (2), not Quake. Millions of people first MMO was WoW, not UO. MGS2 was the game people could not believe it's real time, it was nothing like MGS1 on PSX.
In the 6th generation games became mainstream. I dare you to name a movie, where adults play games, made before 1999. I don't recall a single one. After 2000 it's a common scene where young and not so young adults play games. The main guy in House of Card plays games. This alone makes the 6th gen special even if you don't care about all the original games it produced.
PS. Actually, an adult plays game in Clerks, though the scene is to show how nerdy he is.
GTA3 is a sequel and the vast majority of gameplay ideas were already in GTA (1997). WoW indeed is popular but a grindfest and tremendously shallow compared to UO. Halo has nothing original with respect to e.g. Quake and you will still find many people playing HD overhauls of Quake I, you'll have a hard time finding anyone playing Halo. The dance games started AFAIR in 1998 with DDR. MGS is from 1998 and in the early 2000s we only saw sequels. Metroid Prime, yeah, that was an outlier!
By the way, it isn't elitism either, few games were more mainstream that e.g. Super Mario Bros, World, Kart or 64 and I count those as masterpieces.
As I say it is subjective, probably there's many people that like games from that generation, but I can perfectly see where the game journalists you mention are coming from. It was a boring period of sequels and incremental ideas. For someone who hadn't ever played a FPS, yes, Halo could be good because it was their first, but those of us who had played Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem, Blood, Quake, etc. were like "So what?" But it's not elitism. I can see the worth in many mainstream games from other periods when they are really good and original, e.g. I see Pokémon Go as revolutionary with all the elitist bashing it gets! But the vast majority of games of the early 2000s were just reskings of things done earlier, and often better.