In my opinion DayZ is the most inventive game concept right now, and it's not even all that inventive when you consider that zombie apocalypses have been seen in movies and comics since at least the 1960's. DayZ as an open-world apocalypse survival sandbox is an amazing experience. But DayZ as a form of fun entertainment is a bit lacking; even most of the DayZ community agrees that you'd have to be a masochist to play it for more than a couple of weeks without getting bored of dying (or getting murdered from a klick away by you know not who) and losing everything you worked your ass off for hours to acquire over and over and over again. I gave it a fair two months, but after that I was done with nothing to show for it but a deep disappointment in the community. Every week the developer makes the game less player-friendly and community-centric, and every week more and more players get fed up with it and go play something else. Which is one of the many reasons that community is slowly but surely dying off. The hackers are getting to be a real pain in the ass too.
There's a good and inventive idea there but the developer is more interested in turning it into some kind of mockery of gaming (he calls it an 'anti-game') instead of an actual game. Simulation games have a fine line they must walk, lest they become boring and tedious. Other developers are starting to realize the monetary potential of the concept, but they seem to be taking it in a slightly more 'pay2win/microtransaction' direction (
The War Z as a reference) and in my opinion, those are the worst kinds of games. It seems like we might be doomed to endure more mediocrity in the twenty-teens.
Black & White 2 has been on shelves for over three years now, and to be honest, it wasn't inventive even then. Consider that this is a sequel to Black & White, which has been around since 2001. The original game was inventive and fresh. B&W2 has more-or-less the same features and gameplay that the original had.
Like almost every other game appearing on shelves these days, the core concept was fleshed out over a decade ago. I'm not saying B&W2 was a bad game because it wasn't, but calling it new and inventive is akin to calling Halo the most original FPS in history; in my opinion it's just more of the same mediocrity. Maybe even a bit on the late side, considering the sequel took eight years to see the light of day.