“Remember back in the days of 2D graphics?”

This rhetorical question is usually followed by some old timer rant on 3D games being crappy because it’s all about the graphics. Grandpa will then go on to rant about all games looking the same nowdays before giving himself a hernia and ending up on an NHS waiting list for the rest of his miserable life. Pining away on grapes and Quality Street, while demanding his dutiful relatives seek him out the rarest Gameboy cartridges.

So I won’t say that, in the hope that fate does not await me after this article. I grew up in the days of 2D gaming, first with the Master System (with about two games because we were poor Northerners living down a mine) and then, when I was about five, I got a Mega-Drive, and Sonic the Hedgehog. My life was essentially bound to gaming since then. It sounds sad, but all the key events in my life are sorted in my mind by what game I was playing at the time. So you may want to stop reading now, call me a nostalgia ridden old prat (despite being only twenty) and take me out behind the shed to put me out of my misery. What these games showed me was a world of colour, every game worth buying had it’s own individual style that was vastly different from the rest. Because the games aimed for a more cartoony aesthetic, based on the limitations on the hardware, and the fact that gaming was considered a child’s hobby.

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What is Gears of War? Is Cliff Bleszinski really all that talented? Gears of War is a welcome change of pace. Cliffy B. is talented, his writers aren’t, and I’m probably going to get flak for saying this, but neither are his artists. The Gears setting is gross and putrid and ugly and unsightly; a blight on this Earth. However, the gameplay hidden beneath is gold. Say what you will about its shotgun and chainsaw dominance, but the game is a mystical piece of work. I don’t like Cliffy, I think he’s a douche, I think he’s stupid, I think he’s a cliche typical fratboy out to please them as far as the context of Gears goes; but when it comes to gameplay and content, he shines. I respect his choices with GoW, the first and the second. He designed a game that was no longer about skill and dexterity with the analog sticks, and it’s not about holding down the trigger. It’s about timing. To be a bit speculative, it’s the future of turn based gaming.
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