Out of all the games from my childhood, Halo 3 is one of the most enduring.

I was not old enough in 2007 to experience this game at the apex of it's hype, nor did I have a 360 at the time, but from the moment I was old enough to use the internet for things other than Flash games, I was absolutely enthralled.

I remember the days binge-watching machinimas and multiplayer gameplay videos and being in absolute awe and wonder at a game that was like nothing I knew of at the time. I remember my first time playing it at the game room of my school's annual carnival, where I got absolutely destroyed by teenagers who have obviously played more FPSes than me. I remember going to my best friend's house over the weekends and in the summer, where we would constantly replay The Covenant, and just dick around and kill each other in Forge mode. Even when I finally got my own 360 and a copy of Reach for my 10th birthday, I still thought of this game every single second as I was playing it.

And when I finally got my own copy of it a few years later and I could truly experience it on my own time and terms, my love for this game still burnt as bright as the Friday night in 2009 when I first watched Halo 3: War on the then-relevant Machinima.com.

And even now, at age 22, it still does.

There is still so much that holds up about this game: the gunplay, the art direction, the sound design, the cutscenes, the music; my God, the music.

But the main reason why I still love this game as much as I do nearly 16 years on, is that no other game, no matter how many times I play them, can capture the sense of wonder and awe this game still gives me. And it is that wonder and awe that reminds me why I still love this medium.

I jokingly refer to myself as the "7th gen advocate" (see my Backloggd bio), as despite it looked back in retrospect as one of the worst gens in gaming, I still look back on that time in gaming in a rather fond way.

Admittedly a lot of it is just nostalgia for simpler times when I was a child with a lot less to worry about than now, but I still remember how so many games releasing at the time captivated me in absolute awe, even if those games weren't actually good.

It still felt like a time to me when anything and everything was possible in this medium, that we could realize things that we can only dream of into works of art for everyone to experience.

And even if I am getting older and more jaded, as well as generally less interested in the games that have been coming out in more recent years, I still try to keep that sense of wonder in this medium alive.

I still think that even as the state of the industry keeps changing and things become more profit-driven, people with talent and passion will still come through and deliver games that capture that sense of wonder that 8 year old me experienced watching YouTube machinimas at the family computer.

And maybe it does get harder everyday to do so, but until the day I die, I will still believe.