Games of the Generation: Gears of War

So let me get it out of the way.  I didn't love Gears of War, I didn't even particularly like it.  I thought it was a fun cooperative experience, but overall I found it to be one of the more overrated games I've played.  So why game of the generation?

Gears of War heralded in the Seventh Console Generation.  As soon as the first ads came out with in-engine cut scenes that looked like CG films, the generation truly started.  The visual fidelity in the game was quite simply unmatched.  Nothing ever looked like that before.  From the material system to the particle and hit effects, it completely redefined video game visuals.

There have been a few games that just set a visual bar.  Where after the game comes out, the rules are fundamentally changed forever.  Doom, Quake, Unreal, Half Life 2, and Gears of War was one such game.  There was simply video game visual before Gears and after Gears.  And this isn't just some love letter to the Unreal Engine team, the art in the game is just fantastic, and the design fits with the engine and art to really make a showcase for the greatest strength that Epic has, the ability to push incredible visuals.

And for all that it had novel mechanics.  Take Killswitch, mix in a little Full Spectrum Warrior, change the camera so you can see your avatar in mind-melting detail, and boom: Next Gen is here.  I didn't love waiting for dudes to pop their heads out in order to get the rare headshot, but I was a fan of the few times I was able to pull off a really nice flank.  I liked the names of the difficulty selection items:  casual and hardcore, as if a "casual" gamer would play it.  Of course some must have, since it went on to sell over five million copies.  There were clever mechanics tricks like action reloading.  Sure the A Button was ridiculously overloaded, but it must be said that Gears of war laid the blueprint for third person shooters for the rest of the generation.  You like Uncharted? Thank Gears.  Similar to the visuals, there were third person shooters before Gears and After Gears.

I didn't really care much for the story or characters, but there is something to the overall notion of how the game was built that feels lost in modern games.  The weapons, though they may be adolescent male power fantasy weapons, feel unique, and weird.  A chainsaw Bayonet is a quirky idea, the Torque Bow, just.... different.  I feel like Gears was one of the last games to come out before the Great Homogenization of games that happened this generation.  It's a throwback to a more creative age of shooter design. Realism wasn't the be-all end-all. 

I didn't find the game's scripting to be all that polished, I ran into several bugs, and found some of the encounters lackluster, but the visuals were polished to a high sheen.  The level where it's raining, was just one of those mind-blowing moments visually.  From the splashes of raindrops to the water dripping down that stops at your body, creating a particle effect.  The overall attention to detail in the environment was ground breaking.  And all this with a relatively small development team.

So even if I didn't love Gears, I have to give it credit as an absolute milestone game of the seventh generation.