As a hallmark of the Xbox 360 era, “Gears of War” was a franchise that really cemented the nitty gritty third-person cover shooter genre into the cultural video game zeitgeist. The muted earth tones of the first three games set the stage for a bloody and visceral world filled with war and monsters. When the series shifted to the Xbox One, the fourth and fifth entries explored new colors and environments, with the former having a darker color palette with starker contrast and the latter introducing a new bright icy setting.
“Gears of War” doesn’t hold the same gravitas as it did 20 years ago, but “Gears of War: E-Day” is the best the series has been in a long, long time. While its campaign is fairly by-the-numbers standard for a third-person shooter, the game’s cast is engaging enough to elevate it. The pacing can be a bit of a slog sometimes, but the fantastic movement, gunplay, and visuals make all-out firefights an experience to behold.
“Gears of War: E-Day” is a prequel to the series, exploring the fated “Emergence Day” where the primary antagonists, the vile Locust, suddenly burst from underneath planet Sera and slaughtered a quarter of the global population. The story follows series protagonist Marcus Fenix once again, this time 15 years younger than he was in the first Gears game, as they come to terms with this apocalypse and try to salvage what’s left. Tagging along are his best friend Dom and two new characters in Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes. Marcus and Dom surprisingly aren’t the stars here, as they don’t get nearly as much character background exploration as they do in later entries.
Being the new kids on the block, Mags and Lucas get the spotlight. Mags is a combat veteran whose mysterious chronic cough has you worried about what her ultimate fate will be, while Lucas is the young buck who’s overly curious and loves to spit random trivia about the surroundings during the group’s journey. These two inject much needed personality between Marcus and Dom’s frequent bouts of hardheadedness and masculine bravado.
Emergence Day covers three days in the Gears universe, but there’s quite a lot that happens during them. What’s impressive is how developer The Coalition is able to stretch those three days into a fully-fledged and realized campaign. Much of it is thanks to the excellent environmental design. Mainly taking place in the city of Kalona, you’ll be scouring the ruined streets and dilapidated buildings multiple times through the game’s six chapters. But each time, the levels and routes are smartly remixed with the surroundings looking decrepit as the story progresses. There are also separate areas like a forest and an underground cave that add more variety in between exploring Kalona.
“E-Day” heavily leans into its horror aspects more than any other entry in the series in a way that’s not scary like “Resident Evil,” but more unsettling as you can see the carnage around the city. Dead civilian bodies and Locust corpses completely litter the streets, showing how devastating Emergence Day truly was.
In terms of level design, most of the missions are linear corridor shoot outs, with tight spaces and cover to duck behind, creating a sense of tension as enemies shoot from afar as well as close in on you. However, there are a few open-zone missions where you have more freedom to explore ruined Kalona. Here, you can take on secondary objectives that act like side quests, which usually involve mowing down incoming enemies. They’re worth doing though, as they reward mods that help augment weapons.
Mods and collectibles are scattered throughout these sections, which incentivizes exploration. But the issue is that it bogs down the story’s pacing. These areas aren’t so big that they require fast travel or anything like that, but a faster mode of transportation would’ve definitely been appreciated other than simply running around.
The gameplay and movement in “E-Day” is better than ever before too. The shooting feels incredible, with every shot feeling satisfying as blood pours from Locust bodies and heads. The assortment of guns include snipers, shotguns, assault rifles, and pistols, so there’s plenty to choose from. The aforementioned mods you find and equip can be customized to fit your playstyle and make every gun feel different.
Perhaps the biggest change is that players no longer “roadie-run,” where characters run stiffly in a straight line with little horizontal movement. It’s been replaced with a normal and flexible run. While the roadie-run was a staple in the Gears series, giving it a heavier feel, this change allows for more versatile movement, making it easier to jump cover or get to higher elevation. This’ll certainly be polarizing to veterans, but it makes moving around feel much less rigid.
I played much of “E-Day” by myself, but I ran a few missions in co-op with a review buddy (with up to four players). Inviting friends is mostly a seamless process, especially if you’re both playing on the same platform (Xbox or PC). But sometimes cross-platform invitations can be tricky. My buddy played the Steam version while I was on Xbox. I was able to join his sessions without any issues, but he didn’t see my invitations when I sent them to him.
Performance may vary as well. In solo play, everything ran without a hitch, but when playing in co-op, some visual and framerate hiccups can occur, especially when multiple enemies are on the screen simultaneously.
“E-Day” also has competitive multiplayer in the form of Siege Horde and Versus modes. The former has up to three squads of four survive against waves of Locusts and tackle various objectives while the latter pits players against each other in a test of skill. Unfortunately, the servers weren’t online during this review period so I can’t comment on their finished status. However, these modes provide extra content and replayability aside from the single-player campaign, something that “Halo: Campaign Evolved” couldn’t offer earlier this year.
“Gears of War: E-Day” and its campaign is one of the best, if not the absolute best in the series to date. It feels modern and slick while retaining its core gameplay mechanics and refining them. Along with phenomenal art direction and environments, it’s a beauty to watch through too. The open-zone levels feel sluggish at times, but that doesn’t stop “E-Day” from being a bloody great time.
Microsoft provided a review copy of this game. It is available on October 6 on Xbox Series X|S and PC. Those who purchase the Premium or Collector’s Editions can start playing on October 1 through Early Access.
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