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If you want to see exactly how inane this is, go out and rent the brain-dead Paul Verhoeven film, Starship Troopers. The movie stank so bad that nothing came of it after its release. It's essentially a video game turned into a movie—all the elements are there, including an idiotic "boss" that is just some huge flabby bug—and it shows you just how lame these games actually are.
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This judgement on Starship Troopers immediately disqualified this guy's article in my opinion. The only thing brain-dead I can see here is a whining, immature, passive consumer who is not ready to apply some intellect to what he sees or plays.
I can understand his frustration with the gaming industry, though, as can probably quite a few people here on Abandonia, too. But I was wondering why he gets into an argument with his kids about it. What do they care if their father already played a similar game like ten years ago? If the first FPS they played is Far Cry, they are gonna love it, no matter if DOOM already had all the basic elements (well, maybe not in this particular comparison, but you get my point). And of course the industry lives off these kids and not off their fathers.
I think a critique of the gaming industry has to be a bit more differntiated. I mean, WTF, you can trace every thought back to Plato, so what, are we gonna kill ourselves now? The fact that all basic ideas have already been there doesn't mean we can't work with them, does it? A game does not have to be entirely new in all of its basic elements to be good. To be good, a game must be fun to play. Period. It's the same with music, with literature, with art. Everything has already been there. But if you make new combinations out of old elements, it's still creative and the result can be great.
I think you can criticise the gaming industry for going for better graphics only, mostly, but you can hardly criticise them for using the basic genres.