| Gears of War: E-Day | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Gears of War: E-Day drags the series screaming back into the dark times of Emergence Day. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Overview
What is Gears of War: E-Day?
Gears of War: E-Day is a third-person, action-adventure co-op shooter by The Coalition and Xbox Game Studios, released for Xbox Series X|S and PC. This is the sixth mainline installment in the Gears of War series and is set fourteen years before the original game.
Serving as an origin story, the game follows Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago as boots on the ground during Emergence Day, the Locust Horde's first planet-wide assault on humanity. E-Day was built with Unreal Engine 5 and is playable solo or with a team of four or twelve via various online co-op modes.
Gears of War: E-Day features:
⚫︎ Prequel Origin Story
⚫︎ Enhanced Movement and Verticality
⚫︎ Linear Campaign Design With Free Roam Segments
⚫︎ Multi-Squad Horde Siege
⚫︎ Classic Versus Mode With New Twists
⚫︎ Split-Screen 2-Player Campaign
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Gears of War: E-Day gameplay and story.
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| $69.99 Standard Edition |
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Gears of War: E-Day Review: One Hell of a Comeback for the Gears Franchise
Gears Full of Guts, Glory, Heart
Gears of War has been around for almost 20 years now, and somehow it has been seven years since we last got an actual mainline game. Gears 5 came out all the way back in 2019, which feels like an eternity ago when you put it that way. Now we have Gears of War: E-Day, and The Coalition is taking us all the way back to the beginning of the series.
That is probably the safest move for a franchise that's been around this long. E-Day does a lot of the stuff that makes Gears, well, Gears. Big guns, big monsters, big explosions, and a whole lot of shooting things from behind cover are all here. Yet as is usually the case with Gears, there’s more hiding underneath all that macho bravado. E-Day knows how ridiculous and grim its world can be, and it knows when to let both give way to something a little more sincere.
It is very much a Gears of War game, and it understands that the shooting and the spectacle can only carry you so far. There needs to be something worth shooting for, too. E-Day has more than enough explosions to satisfy the former, and its characters give the campaign plenty of the latter. It is, after all, a shooter with a lot of guts and heart.
It All Begins With E-Day
Fourteen years before Marcus Fenix became the grumpy face of Gears of War we know, he was just another frontline soldier caught off guard when the planet beneath his feet tore open and unleashed an unstoppable nightmare. That is the basic premise of E-Day. The Locust Horde suddenly emerges from beneath Sera, throwing humanity into a war it was completely unprepared for. You follow four soldiers trying to survive the first days of the invasion. Marcus and Dom are here, of course, alongside newcomers Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes, giving us a look at the event that eventually becomes the defining disaster of the entire series.
I find prequels like this interesting because the game has a pretty weird storytelling problem to deal with. We already know this world is going to become Gears of War. We know who Marcus and Dom become. We know the Locust are going to be a very big problem. E-Day cannot really surprise you with the fact that Emergence Day goes badly, so it has to make the journey itself worth following. Thankfully, there is enough happening around these characters to keep things grounded and human.
E-Day is very cinematic about it. The campaign has plenty of moments where you are basically watching the game flex. A building comes down, some enormous creature shows up, or the situation gets so ridiculous that you just have to sit there for a second and take it in. There are a lot of cool people doing cool people stuff here, and Gears is perfectly happy to let them look cool while doing it.
As such, this isn't a narrative that requires overthinking. It isn’t as profoundly tragic as other story-driven games out there. In fact, the story is as predictable as they come.
It is, though, a story full of heart. Sure, certain elements won't hold up under heavy scrutiny, like a massive creature somehow sneaking through a room without making a sound. But the rule of cool triumphs over strict logic here, and it's easy to forgive those moments when the reward is getting to blast giant underground monsters with ridiculous guns and giving your squadmates the most tender nod of approval after seeing each other again, alive and well.
The plot gives Marcus, Dom, Mags, and Reyes a reason to move from one disaster to the next, and that is usually enough. You get the setup for the Locust invasion, some well-done character drama along with it, then another excuse to pull out the Lancer and start shooting. It does not need to be much more complicated than that.
That heart mostly comes from the four people you spend the campaign with. Marcus and Dom naturally get more attention from fans who already know where their lives are headed, and E-Day gets to fill in more of the history behind their friendship. Carlos plays an important part in that story, particularly once his death starts affecting the decisions Marcus and Dom make during the first days of the invasion. It gives their relationship some context that you simply could not get from the later games alone.
Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes get much more room to develop because we are meeting them for the first time. Reyes ended up being my favorite. His "technical aptitude" gets Bravo Squad out of sticky situations at many points, but I think it is his personality that makes him work. He is a rookie who knows where his heart is. He is trying to keep up with people who have more experience than him, and he keeps doing his best even when he clearly has no idea what is coming next. In contrast, Marcus Fenix can growl his way through almost any problem. Reyes feels like a guy who actually has to figure things out, and that makes him much easier to relate to.
Sera will be a little harder for newcomers to fully understand. The planet looks like our own at first. You have cities, cars, soldiers, and all the other things you would expect from a human civilization. However, this is a planet with its own history, and years of Gears games have filled that history with events that a newcomer would have no reason to know.
E-Day does not dump all of that lore on you at once. You mostly pick things up as the story moves along, which keeps the campaign from becoming a history lesson before the Locust have even had a chance to ruin everyone's day. It does mean there are times when you have to fill in the blanks yourself. Longtime fans will have an easier time catching references such as Tai Kaliso from Gears of War 2. Someone coming into E-Day completely fresh will probably miss plenty of those details.
That still makes E-Day one of the more approachable ways to get into Gears of War. You do not need to know the entire history of Sera to understand why everyone is suddenly fighting for their lives. The game shows you enough of the Locust invasion to follow what is happening, and the rest can stay in the background until you decide you want to dig deeper. Outside of Gears of War Reloaded, I could see this being a pretty good modern starting point for someone who has never played the series.
Trapped Inside the Linear Corridors of an Ending World
The campaign itself sticks pretty closely to the Gears formula. You follow a narrow path until the game opens up into another big combat area, clear out the Locust, then head back into another narrow path. It is a rhythm that works extremely well for the shooting, though it starts to feel repetitive when you look at the story. Emergence Day is supposed to be this enormous catastrophe spreading across Sera, yet I spent a lot of time being guided through whatever hallway the campaign needed me to walk through next.
The chapters that open up in Acts 2 through 4 were my favorite parts of the campaign. These sections give you room to explore ruined neighborhoods at your own pace, and the secondary objectives can lead to little stories about soldiers and civilians who would otherwise be faceless and nameless. Those detours make the scale of Emergence Day easier to appreciate because you get to see what is happening to people outside Marcus and Dom's immediate circle.
The catch is that E-Day never fully lets go of its linear design. You can explore these areas, but you are still working within the boundaries of the mission. There is no wandering off to some completely unrelated part of the city because you saw something interesting in the distance. Trust me, I tried. Eventually, every path brings you back to the objective and the next big firefight.
This is still the cover shooter from the early Xbox days. Therefore, it retains that linearity in its DNA. You know where the game wants you to go, and you usually have a pretty good idea of what is waiting once you get there. Find cover, work through enemies, move forward, repeat. It is a very familiar Gears rhythm, one I had hoped, six games in, would eventually make room for something new.
The difficulty keeps climbing, though, so knowing the rhythm does not always mean the fights are easy. The game gradually throws more things at you until keeping track of everything becomes its own problem. An encounter can start with a few enemies in front of you, then suddenly you have something forcing you out of cover while another enemy is attacking you from a completely different angle. By the later Acts, there were fights where I finished them and genuinely felt like my fingers needed a break. The cover is a mere suggestion at that point.
You are being pushed forward through a war that is getting increasingly out of control. The combat reflects that. There is very little time to settle down once the giant monstrosities with plated armor come rushing at you. You clear one group and start moving again, then you are already preparing for whatever is coming next.
It is fun. It is very fun.
But being fun doesn't exempt it from repetition. Outside of straightforward shootouts, mission objectives rarely vary. After a while, I grew tired of seeing the exact same solutions pop up. I’d start dreading certain encounters simply because I knew the drill: whip out the Longshot, back away, and pick off targets from afar.
It works, which is the real issue. Hand me a solid vantage point, and I can clear out whole rooms before the enemy even touches me. It turns into a tedious routine, no matter how much artificial challenge is thrown your way.
A Return to Form With Some Neat New Tricks and Smarter AI
Thankfully, the free-roam sections give the campaign a bit of a break from all that. E-Day does away with the massive desert sections from Gears 5 and gives you smaller areas that you can actually explore. You can walk around the city blocks, look for collectibles and other goodies, then get back to the main objective when you are ready.
I much prefer this setup. The areas are small enough that you are not spending half your time figuring out where you are supposed to go, yet there is enough space to wander around and find things on your own. It feels like an actual place, thanks in large part to the civilians taking part in the insanity of the war.
The game gives you some new movement options for you to peruse as you explore, though I am not convinced all of them needed to be here. You still feel the sluggishness of the characters’ tank-like builds, but E-Day introduces jumping, sliding, and the ability to mantle around the environment without first having to stick yourself to cover. The latter two can come in handy when a fight gets messy. Jumping never really clicked with me. It does not feel all that different from vaulting over something, so I rarely thought about it once I got used to having the button there.
Sliding is more useful when you are trying to get out of a bad position. There were plenty of moments where I had to get from one piece of cover to another quickly, and being able to slide into position made those escapes feel less clunky. It works best when the game starts throwing enemies at you from several directions and staying where you are is no longer an option.
The change I am most happy to report, though, is how competent the AI squadmates actually were. Twice, I decided to let them handle a shootout without me. I did not fire a single bullet; I just watched them take on wave after wave of enemies.
They did really well. Their aim was all over the place, sure, with plenty of shots hitting walls right next to their targets, yet they still managed to clear the whole fight within a couple of minutes. Watching them made me realize their positioning was much better than their aim. They knew when to stay out of my line of fire, repositioned themselves when I ducked into nearby cover, and found good spots when they needed to provide covering fire.
I started paying closer attention to what they were doing after that. If I moved into cover, they would adjust their positions around me. If I changed where I was fighting from, they would find somewhere else to stand. They never seemed particularly interested in getting directly in front of me, which is a small mercy when I am trying to shoot something. They would come help when I was in trouble, as well.
The game also has split-screen co-op, which is a fantastic inclusion given how scarce local co-op has become in shooters. It worked well enough for a full playthrough, though it brought along a handful of technical issues worth mentioning.
Technical Issues Are There But Do Not Fully Ruin the Experience
It was here that some of the technical issues became much harder to ignore. I had already noticed some pop-ins and occasional lag during my solo playthrough, but they were far more obvious with two players on screen. Throw a bunch of explosions and particle effects into the middle of a firefight, and the game could start looking a little rough.
Most of these issues are easy enough to shrug off on their own, but they become harder to ignore when a glitch suddenly pulls you out of the moment. The strangest one happened in Act 2, Chapter 3, after I had already finished a boss fight and been told to move on. I went back to a nearby supply crate for some ammunition, then returned to find the same boss had spawned all over again. The game clearly knew I had already finished the encounter because Marcus could not actually shoot them. I could reproduce said glitch, so it was not just some one-time fluke.
Other moments had the same general problem on a smaller scale. My squadmates once remained on a tram after the story had moved on without them, and I had to finish a firefight alone until the next checkpoint brought them back. The Longshot's scope occasionally failed to zoom properly. Even opening a supply cache can feel awkward when an enemy kills you before the game lets you switch weapons, despite the weapon being visibly strapped to Marcus' back.
Ragdolls can get pretty goofy, and objects can still pop into the world when they probably should have been there already. These technical issues are easy enough to shrug off when everything else is working, yet they become more noticeable when they happen alongside a glitch that has already pulled you out of the moment.
I played a review build, so I am not going to let these glitches weigh heavily on my final score. Microsoft and The Coalition appear to be well aware of them. They are annoying when they happen, but none of them stopped me from finishing the campaign. Most were fixed with a quick return to the main menu and Continue, and I was able to carry on without losing any progress.
There is a good chance some of these problems will be cleaned up before launch. They were still part of my experience with this build, so they are worth pointing out even if they never became a serious problem.
Is Gears of War: E-Day Worth It?
Yes, Rough Edges and All
Gears of War: E-Day asks for the full seventy dollars at checkout, which feels about right for a full-scale return to one of Microsoft’s biggest franchises. My own run through the campaign hit nearly thirty hours by the time the credits rolled, though that factors in plenty of side objectives, a fair bit of collectible hunting, and all the stupid deaths I managed to rack up along the way. Runtime is always going to swing wildly depending on how you tackle these games, but you are getting a massive chunk of campaign for your money.
Fans of the franchise do not need any convincing here since this is a brilliant return to the series that nails the exact tone it is going for. Newcomers will find it an easy place to jump in and start tracking the Locust War from the ground floor, even if some of the mechanics feel a bit different from older entries. It does run into a few rough patches in terms of technical polish at launch, but none of those jagged edges are anything a swift patch cannot smooth out.
Mostly, I am just thrilled that this release might crack the door wide open for more Gears games and stories down the line. There is a lot more of Sera that I would like to see, and after spending almost 30 hours with E-Day, I am ready to see where the series goes next.
Gears of War: E-Day FAQ
Can You Play Gears of War: E-Day Without Playing the Previous Games?
Yes. E-Day is designed as a prequel, so you can jump in without knowing the full history of Gears of War. Longtime fans will catch references and get more out of certain character moments, but the campaign gives newcomers enough context to understand the Locust invasion and the characters involved.
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