I'd like to take just a moment to bring up a trend in games that has been troubling me of late.  It's not sequelitis, or each game trying to be a blockbuster, or anything like that--it's the lack of a customizable control scheme. 

By the end of the SNES's glorious reign, it seemed like pretty much every game gave you the obligatory A, B, and C options for button layout, but then there was the Free or Edit option, where you could map the functions to whatever buttons you want.  This seemed to continue through the PS/Saturn/N64 era, but in the current generation of games it seems like more and more often I pop in new game, go to the options menu (I always tweak the options before starting a new game), and I scroll through the pre-selected control schemes (sometimes a LOT of them), but end up looping back to the first one without seeing an Edit option.

I'm not a game designer, but this seems like a fairly simple option to give your players in most games.  Why would they take away the ability to play the game in the way most comfortable to us?  Do they assume, like those guys that drive around the neighborhood with stereos louder than an average heavy construction site, that their personal tastes are so superb that we should all share in them whether we like it or not?

How can we feel in control of the character without being in control of our controls?