I'm not excited for Black Ops 2, but I would be if the price tag were less insane. I think the Call of Duty games do an excellent job of providing a varied, intense military-themed amusement park ride. Sure, there's no substance there and (Modern Warfare 1 aside) no real intelligence, but things blowing up real good is all I ask sometimes. The trouble is, they've tacked on some silly competitive shooter that I don't care a fig about and people are more than happy to pay $60 for that when I want to pay about $15 for the park ride.
In terms of innovation and creativity...well, your best bet is a PC, unfortunately. Most of the AAA games are the same as on console (since they are, after all, console ports), improved perhaps by better hardware and input methods, but not changed designwise. But there's a wide open indie space providing all sorts of weird little things (and 800 million match 3 clones and hidden object games, don't get me wrong), not to mention the different mentality that comes from games from Germany and Eastern Europe, where PCs are still king and hardly anyone develops for console. When you get a chance, check out Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, for a vision of shootering quite different from the Call of Duty fare; Cryostasis, for weird cold Russian horror; Pathologic for an utterly mad survival experience informed by death and plague (it's not fun, but it's not meant to be. It is amazing, though.), etc.
But as long as you're stuck on console, occasional glimmers of originality shine through. Take, for example, budget wonder Deadly Premonition, an open world mystery/survival horror game with last-gen visuals, Twin Peaks influence, clunky controls and combat, and a heaping helping of quirk.
