if it ain't broke...

I agree whole-heartedly with Daniel Clancy that a game doesn't have to be innovative to be excellent.

That a game offers nothing new is not necessarily a strike against it. A game can alternatively excel by honing old ideas or combining the right elements.

I've written somewhere before that slapping together only top-notch gameplay elements does not always make a top-notch game. Some elements are individually great, but don't fit well together or fit better with others. And sometimes it's the recognition of compatibility between elements that usually appear separately, or the ordering and emphasis of elements, that makes a game phenomenal.

Don't be afraid to repeat something that's tried and true. Things are often become tradition or the most common of their kind because they're simply the best. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.