Why does Gears of War still hold up?

 "Wha- are you kidding? You are the support!"

You're trudging across the war-torn streets of a fallen world, trading mud covered lead with monstrous bullet sponges, lost irrevocably in the haze of sweaty action, and then you stop and think: it's 2021, why am I still playing the original Gears of War? So many times I've come back to Gears of War from 2006 and everytime I treat is as my personal time-capsule moment; a chance for me to take a nostalgic look back at a game which once ruled my days and nights. Of course, I'm only looking for a single night- and then before you know it a week has passed and I've beaten the campaign again. I'm being serious, it's a legitimate problem of mine, so many other games I can appreciate for a quick play session but never Gears. It gets me wrapped up under its spell, and it's not even as though it's a particular personal favourite game of mine or anything, in fact it's not even in my top 10. And when I look at it objectively, every aspect of the game should repel me from it given the many advances the 3rd person shooter genre has gone through which should all render this game moot. And yet somehow, against all odds, Gears of War still holds up; and I'm itching to know why.

Gears of War isn't just a third person shooter action game, mind you, it's the third person shooter action game; the one which was so influential to the genre that many of it's quirks and features became staples of the genre that still get replicated by the few third person shooter games that are still made today. (However, it's so difficult to nail a good feeling third person shooter that there's not actually that many modern examples to contrast against.) So many features owe their direct genesis to Gears that even a lot of the now redundant aspects (or just abandoned ones) of the genre came from here, a fact which should inherently make this a ridiculously dated game. But it stands out despite all of that. Cover based shooting, vaulting, swapping between cover; we're talking fundamentals here that would not be possible without the hard work of the folks over at Epic Games, and despite over a decade of reiteration and improvement there's something special about the way the original Gears handled it. Something earthy and primordial that may have been improved upon here and there, but never whole-sale supplanted. 

Exploring Gears again has made me realise that there's actually a plethora of features and ideas in this game that don't work in the modern landscape, and yet they kind of do here. One being a trademark not so much of the future but the upgrade in technology for the time as a consequence of the new Console age. People never can get enough of playing with the shiny new toy and they, gods willing, never will. So forever will we see games that throw in something that doesn't really help the gameplay or benefit the aesthetic, just because they can today and they couldn't yesterday. Point-in-case; motion blur. A stand-out of the age that has become so disparaged in the years to the point where it's genuinely bewildering when you play a game that has is turned on as default. Why? Because it's just ugly, hides the graphics of what you're playing, makes the frames look like they're chugging, and is just stupid. 

And yet Gears pretty much pioneered motion blur during gameplay back in the day. Every time you went to do the iconic Gears ground-sprint; the camera would zoom in and blur the surroundings as you hoofed it; but for some reason it works. I think it comes back to the in-your-face attitude of the Gears world and the way they try to bring you as close to the mud and dirt of the battlefield short of making it first person. (No idea why the series never went First person as an offshoot for this franchise, I think it'd really work.) The blur is supposed to bring you into the moment, and it truly does. Of course, mechanically I think it also works because the sprint brings the camera so close and into the butt of Marcus that you literally cannot see the world around you, thus you can't dwell on how ugly everything looks. Sprinting in Gears is never really what you do when you want to cover a distance (definitely not with the tanky handling) but more when you're closing in for the kill; so visual information doesn't need to be imparted all that much and the developers focused more on heightening the intensity of the moment. A sublime idea, that quickly got lost in the plethora of imitators. (Did The Nintendo Wii's 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' need motion blur for sprinting around the Hogwarts Campus? No. It didn't.)

Here's another aspect of the game that's been criticised into the ground and back again: The visual stylings of brown and grey. Back in the day there was a perception that as video games were approaching the visual complexity to look 'realistic' that meant they had to embrace muted colour palettes in order to match that aesthetic. This of course aged badly as a concept so that even other developers would point and laugh about the fact anyone actually thought this way. Uncharted 2 famously featured a 'Next Gen' filter which just desaturated the screen in mocking homage to this period. Gears sort of spearheaded this movement once again except, again, it actually kind of works for Gears' world. Remember that Sera is a world living in the aftermath of an almost total fallout-event, it's a fallen dead world. So a visual that lacks the colours of life we're so used to seeing; (blue, green, etc) matches the story of the world that's being explored. Does this make the screen less appealing to look at? Yes. But is it uncalled for? No, I think it's rather fitting. Just a shame so many other games of the time decided to copy it. (Even Gears started to adopt more colour as the games went on, realising that otherwise the games would look dull.)

Level structure and gimmicks is something else that has moved on vastly since the first Gears game, and as such we don't really see many action-game story beats like the mine-cart level. And there's a good reason for that being phased out; sitting in a box and having to shoot enemies as they come to you is never fun. Movement is important to action adventure video games for reasons so fundamental it isn't even really worth listing them. Sticking them in any sort of forced turret section is already iffy, Gears 2 just about get away with a limited movement section right at the beginning only because the whole set piece is so cool. But getting thrown into a minecart and carted around is dated and feels like it only really exists as everyone's attempt to homage 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'. Here's one I actually cannot defend, I do not like the minecart level, but it doesn't bring down the entire game and it functionally serves as a bridge between a rather slow-paced ambush-centric part of the game to an upcoming more heavy action event. So I can say it's purpose is at least functional, if nothing else.

And then there's some features that most of the industry have left behind altogether, realising how bad of a turn the developers did them. Such as half-hearted squad command features like Gears has. You know what I'm talking about; games wherein your AI teammates need to be commanded around the battlefield like dolls, although the heart of the game clearly isn't in it so the commands you have are ludicrously limited or prohibitive. (I'm talking: 'Stand here' 'Go there' 'Wait' 'Follow me') Yet again, Gears did it to begin with, and in fact Gears is still doing it to this day. Whilst other games have acknowledged that such systems work better in the hands of tactical developers, Gears still insists on rudimentary squad commands so that they turn around, stick out their tongues, and insist they have tactical cohesion in their game. Honestly, these systems can be forgotten about in all but the most trying times, so I don't find them too annoying. It's just endearing, really, to see this slightly mismatched mechanic in a game that doesn't really need it, but the attempt is earnest at trying to enrich the gameplay. I like that.

My respect for Gears of War in today's day and age is more than a little nostalgia seeped, and I'm not sure if I would even recommend anyone try it out if they've never played the series before and are curious. But I'll be damned if I'll throw that game under the bus, file away my happy memories and label it a bygone relic. Much of what Gears represents is a time of gaming where the art of some of the most homogenised genres was still being written, and ideas that are now so very tired were once fresh and celebrated. That alone imbues this vitality into a game that shouldn't rightly have any left, as though you can feel the sense of "We're doing something special here" that the developers baked into the foundations of this product so very long ago, like the spirit of a time capsule. It may be inexplicable, it might be illogical, and you may not have understood a single opinion I expressed today, but despite everything I affirm that Gears of War 1 is one of the most enduring games of it's kin for the modern age. And that's a respectable accomplishment in my book.