Playing Gears of War 3 has really made me feel the age of 7th gen games.

I don't know why I've been on a 7th gen game kick as of late. Maybe it has to do with the closing of the Xbox 360 online store and the feeling that the gen is finally actually ending, as opposed to the way its life seemed to stretch on so long thanks to digital stores still being open and the constant stream of remasters (which themselves haven't actually ended.) Maybe it's a retreat into nostalgia during a time when the world feels chaotic and bad. Regardless, I've found myself drawn to older games more and more, and 7th gen games specifically. I've been finishing off a bunch of half finished games including Sonic Unleashed, Mirror's Edge, Killzone 2, and now Gears of War 3, a game I started in 2017 and stopped playing after my co-op partner got busy (I'm soldiering on alone now, which is resonant to the game's story.)

The thing is that I've never stopped playing 7th gen games altogether, thanks to backwards compatibility among other things, but while they've definitely aged over the years they hadn't started really feeling old until recently. And of course they are old. This year will mark the 20th anniversary of the Xbox 360's release, and if you go back 20 years from Xbox 360 you are at the very beginning of the NES era.

Of course game tech has not advanced nearly as quickly since then as it did in the 20 years between 1985-2005, and there are plenty of new games being released today that would be perfectly at home on the 360 (ranging from indies like Balatro to much of Nintendo's output on the Switch, which is somewhat comparable in power to the 360) but design has also marched on and the combination of the two leave a game like Gears 3 feeling...old.

Playing Gears 3 does feel modern in some ways. The Xbox Series X version shines up the visuals so it runs smoothly and in high resolution, though nowhere near as gorgeous as a modern game like Monster Hunter Wilds, and the controls feel a little bit off without the modern levels of autoaim, but not bad by any means. The high production values still can't be matched by any modern indie game, though they fall short of today's big budget games in many ways. The environments the game chooses, bombed out buildings and wastelands, help make up for the lack of visual density, which would really show through if they were meant to be more foliage dense or populated with people or animals like you would see in Monster Hunter.

But the game's linearity, its restrictive movement in the environment with invisible walls and places you can't backtrack, and its tendency to use hard coded cut scenes all cut against modern trends to some degree. Also its UI and online integration, cutting edge at the time, feel extremely dated 14 years later. It feels closer to an original Xbox game in many ways, with very functional option and stats screens that use fonts intended to still be readable on an older display, and not a lot of style in those places. Basic animation and AI routines also make it feel old. It's hard to point to just one thing really, it's the combination of factors. We haven't seen the massive graphical jumps from generation to generation that we used to, and design has definitely stagnated in many ways, but the incremental changes in almost every facet add up.

I am not sure what my point is here or even if I have a point. Part of it is that I feel a little bit like I missed the boat on playing some of these games, not just in terms of long dead multiplayer features but in terms of being able to appreciate them on their own terms (though I wouldn't say I'm not enjoying Gears 3, just that it feels old) and part of it is just appreciating the areas where games have improved and evolved, many of them in positive directions. I also played Pikmin 1 this year for the first full playthrough and I thought that was great, so older 3D games can maintain their charm. I just remember how thrilling games from this era were when they were new. How something like Bulletstorm felt so exciting to play. And now they're old. And I'm old. And time is marching by.

Marcus Fenix can fight the locust with chainlancer and grenade but he can't do anything against the onslaught of time. None of us can. Not even in a video game.*

*Some notable exceptions