Gears of War: E-Day Hands-On Impressions: The Chainsaw is Sharper Than Ever

Gears of War: E-Day is launching in early access today on Xbox and PC, and it’s the first new mainline Gears game since the release of Gears 5 back in 2019. It was preceded by Gears of War: Reloaded last year, which was a multiplatform remaster of the original Gears of War game from 2006.

Under the leadership of new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, Microsoft is going back to making some of its games exclusives to the Xbox ecosystem, starting with Gears of War: E-Day and the upcoming Clockwork Revolution from InXile Entertainment. While we do know that a PS5 version of Gears of War: E-Day was in development, it’s possible that the soft sales of Gears of War: Reloaded on PS5 led the new Xbox leadership to change its strategy regarding exclusives.

Gears of War: E-Day has the difficult task of rejuvenating a 20-year old game franchise that, just like Halo, gradually faded out of the spotlight. It’s no secret that Xbox has struggled to release critically acclaimed games since the beginning of the Xbox One era. The original Gears of War trilogy got a 90+ score on Metacritic back in the day, but Gears of War 4 and 5 never reached these heights, despite some undeniable qualities.

Except for the spin-off game Gears Tactics, I’ve played all Gears of War games multiple times, and they’re among my favorite co-op games of all time. While I didn’t have enough time to finish the Gears of War: E-Day campaign during the review period, the Xbox PR team gently offered me additional review codes so I could play the campaign in co-op with my brother and a friend who are both very familiar with the franchise.

While this isn’t going to be a full in-depth review of the game, I can already share my honest impressions about the campaign after playing through the middle of the third act. So far, this is the best Xbox-exclusive game I’ve played this year, and I’m having a blast playing the campaign in co-op after doing the same with Halo: Campaign Evolved earlier this summer.

A new engine for an original story

Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel episode telling the story of Emergence Day, which is the day when the Locust horde erupted from the ground of the fictional planet Sera to attack humanity. I’m not too familiar with the Gears of War lore, but Emergence Day takes place after protagonists Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago are about to return to civilian life after the end of the long Pendulum Wars between the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) and the Union of Independent Republics (UIR).

The story of Gears of War: E-Day is set 14 years before the events of the original Gears of War game. However, Gears of War: Judgment, a spin-off episode released on the Xbox 360 back in 2013, already had a campaign set during the early months of the Locust War. However, Marcus and Dom, the series’ main protagonists, were absent from that episode.

Gears of War: Judgment didn’t get a lot of love from Gears fans back in the day, but it was the second game in the series after Gears of War 3 to support four-player co-op. Gears of War 4, which was released in 2016, only supported 2-player co-op for its campaign, while Gears 5 bumped that to 3 players but forced one of them to play as Jack, the flying support robot.

I’m happy to see 4-player co-op making a comeback in Gears of War: E-Day, which is the first game in the series to be developed with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5. While I’m no graphical expert, I’d say it’s one of the best-looking Xbox exclusive games I’ve seen on this console generation. Gears 5, the previous episode released late in the life of the Xbox One, already pushed Epic’s previous Unreal Engine 4 to its limit with a superb 4K 60FPS experience on Microsoft’s Xbox One X console.

I played Gears of War: E-Day on my Xbox Series X connected to my LG C2 4K TV, which supports all modern gaming features such as VRR and Dolby Vision for games. On the Series X, Gears of War: E-Day offers a 60 FPS Performance mode, a 40 FPS Balanced mode that requires a 120Hz display with VRR, and 30 FPS Quality Mode. Playing the campaign in split-screen drops the framerate to 30FPS, however.

Unfortunately, the Performance mode on the Series X has a weird limitation when you’re hosting a 3-4 player campaign co-op session, as I did during the review period: In that case, the game is locked at 30 FPS, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I asked the Xbox PR team why this FPS cap was in place, but I couldn’t get an answer in time for publication.

To mitigate this issue, I asked my friend who was playing on PC to host the co-op session, which would have allowed me and my brother to play the campaign at 60 FPS on our consoles. However, we had a lot of networking issues when my friend on PC was hosting the co-op campaign session, but it worked fine when I was hosting it on my Series X. So we ultimately did the latter, and 95% of my playtime so far has been at 30FPS, which I find quite penalizing for a shooter. But it is what it is.

The Versus and Horde Siege multiplayer modes were disabled during the review period, but they will go live later today at 8 AM PT when the game launches in early access. Horde Siege is an evolution of Gears’ PvE mode with 12 players across three squads having to complete their own objectives. It’s also worth mentioning that the traditional Versus mode offers a 120FPS ‘Performance Plus’ mode on the Series X that requires a 120Hz display with VRR.

One important note for PC gamers: Gears of War: E-Day supports Advanced Shared Delivery to speed up shader compile times upon launch. This is already enabled for PC gamers with AMD GPUs, but support for Nvidia GPUs will come soon via new ASD-compatible drivers. During the review period, my friend on a PC with an RTX 3000 Series GPU sometimes had to wait for almost an hour to launch the game, but I’m glad the Xbox version doesn’t have this problem at all.

My campaign experience

Just like I prefer to play Halo games on “Heroic” difficulty, I’m used to playing Gears of War games on “Hardcore” difficulty. I thought that my two experienced teammates and I would easily rush through the campaign, but so far, I find that Gears of War: E-Day has some very challenging sections.

It doesn’t help that when you play at the Heroic difficulty, as we did, you can only get “downed” two times before being killed for good. One sniper shot will immediately put you down, while grenades will also instantly kill you. But I do like the additional challenge, even though my teammates and I kept dying and dying again during sections with snipers and “Boomer” locusts with grenade launchers.

Gears of War: E-Day reuses the light RPG elements introduced in Gears 5: Most weapons in the game are upgradeable with mods you’ll need to find across levels. There are also Armor mods with regeneration perks, and a unique tactical gear you can choose that gives you a unique ability with a cooldown.

My personal play style is a mix of using the sniper for long-distance headshot kills and rushing towards enemies with the shotgun. When I do the latter, I can activate the Adrenaline Injector tactical gear, which immediately refills my health, reduces damage taken, and increases my own damage. I combine that with two armor mods that improve my defense at low health and heal me after close-range shotgun kills. I find that a very effective combo, and it’s quite exhilarating to tear through multiple enemies with the Gnasher shotgun, which is probably the most effective weapon in the Gears of War series.

I don’t want to spoil the story of Gears of War: E-Day too much, but this is mostly about the dramatic destruction of Kilona, a city with 1930s New York vibes, by a ruthless Locust Horde emerging from the ground. The story starts with lead protagonists Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago having a beer before the monsters start erupting across the city and attacking civilians. Throughout the story, the young Marcus Fenix is also experiencing survivor’s guilt after Carlos, Dom’s brother, sacrificed his life to save him and his platoon.

The first missions of Gears of War: E-Day have a “horror” tone I hadn’t seen before in previous games. There’s a section in a police station that reminded me a lot of the iconic Raccoon City police station in Resident Evil 2. Later on, there’s also an execution scene that reminded me of the cruel “Crown for a King” scene in the first season of Game of Thrones.

Gears of War: E-Day begins with a very linear first act, where you start in civilian clothes before regrouping with military command. The game then transitions to a semi-open world section during the second act, which is something The Coalition had already tried in Gears 5. This time, however, you’re on foot in the ruins of Kilona, and there’s no traveling across a mostly empty world using a vehicle.

I found that second act very long due to an abundance of secondary missions and hard cases to find to unlock weapon mods. You randomly encounter Locusts around the city, and you also need to be careful about not falling into holes that can instantly kill you.

During battles, Gears of War: E-Day still has Emergence holes that spawn Locust forces to make the action more dynamic. You can quickly destroy these holes with explosives, which is always satisfying. So is the series’ trademark Active Reload mechanism, which gives you a damage boost if you manage to hit the reload button again at a certain time when your weapon is reloading.

One of the biggest gameplay upgrades in Gears of War: E-Day, however, is the new movement system: You can finally jump, climb on structures, and slide from a sprint. You now press the left thumbstick instead of the A button to run, and you use Y for jumping or climbing. Overall, the cover-based combat feels much more modern, and the mod system really lets you experiment with different combat styles. If you play on Hardcore difficulty like me, you’ll quickly find out that the basic Lancer rifles aren’t really effective against the game’s bullet-sponge enemies.

It’s worth mentioning that Gears of War: E-Day introduces a new gore system with dismemberment effects, and you’ll also see blood stick on the game’s protagonists. There are also various new weapons to try, including a new Incinerator shotgun and a Gutpuncher grenade launcher. But there are probably more I haven’t seen yet.

Final thoughts

I don’t have definite thoughts about Gears of War: E-Day as I haven’t finished the campaign yet, and I also couldn’t try the game’s multiplayer modes. However, I’ve been playing the campaign in co-op every day for almost a week, and I’m still having a lot of fun.

Just like Halo, the Gears of War series is a good incarnation of the legacy of Xbox, which, for me, is great shooter games you can play in co-op. It’s pretty rare to see co-op games designed with so much care these days, and I think this campaign will be really memorable. I can also sense that it’s the longest Gears campaign ever, and the first two acts offer some truly epic moments.

Overall, Gears of War: E-Day has a lot of cutscenes and dialogue, and the storytelling is more than fine. However, I can’t help but think that the series takes itself a bit too seriously. You’re basically playing overly muscular soldiers shredding enemies using rifles with chainsaws on them. In the end, I really wish Gears games had a more sarcastic tone, with a bit of Starship Troopers-like satire. I think the original Gears of War game almost had that, but this has probably been lost along the way.

So far, I still think that Gears of War: E-Day is doing a lot of things right to please both longtime Gears fans and newcomers. However, it’s a bit unfortunate that the game is being released right after Minecraft Dungeons II, a game that was barely marketed by Xbox. Still, I think that Gears of War: E-Day will continue Xbox’s streak of solid game releases that started with Forza Horizon 6 and Halo: Campaign Evolved.

I’m more ambivalent about the Xbox team choosing to make Gears of War: E-Day exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem, especially after Gears of War: Reloaded and Halo: Campaign Evolved were both released on PS5. There’s no such thing as Xbox-exclusive games anymore now that all of Microsoft’s first-party games are shipping day-and-date on PC.

As a multiplayer game with live service elements, I do think that Gears of War: E-Day may have found its audience on PS5. And unfortunately for The Coalition, I’m afraid that if Gears of War: E-Day doesn’t sell enough, the studio may be hit by layoffs. After Halo Studios was downsized to a support studio and had to cede ownership of the Halo franchise to Activision, I guess that anything is now possible at Xbox Game Studios.

Gears of War: E-Day will launch in early access on Xbox and PC today at 8 AM PT for owners of the Collector’s Edition and Premium Edition. The global launch will happen next week on October 6 at 8 AM PT, but Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass can join the early access today by purchasing the game’s $30 Premium Edition upgrade. In addition to early access, this premium DLC also includes the Bravo Squad Signature Weapon Pack and five seasonal customization packs.