It feels strange to think that Gears of War is now twenty years old. I still remember the original game arriving on Xbox 360 and being absolutely blown away by it – the cover-based combat, the ridiculous amounts of gore, the chainsaw attached to an assault rifle because apparently a bayonet simply wasn’t violent enough. Gears was one of those games that helped define that generation of Xbox. Two decades later, Gears of War: E-Day takes us right back to where everything started.
Not quite back to the start, mind you – you can check out Gears of War: Reloaded for that. E-Day takes place fourteen years before it, throwing us directly into Emergence Day and the moment the Locust Horde first erupts from beneath Sera. After Gears 4 and Gears 5 spent so much time pushing the series on from the story and protagonists of the original trilogy, there’s something wonderfully refreshing about going backwards.
Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago are back at the centre of things, but these aren’t quite the hardened soldiers we remember. Humanity hasn’t spent years fighting the Locust. Nobody really knows what these things are or what they’re capable of and that gives E-Day an opportunity to make the Locust genuinely frightening again.
The original Gears of War always had a slight horror edge to it that gradually disappeared as the series grew bigger and more bombastic, and E-Day clearly understands how effective that atmosphere was. There’s a brutality and desperation to seeing Emergence Day unfold while humanity is completely unprepared for what’s coming.
It also helps that E-Day looks absolutely phenomenal. The city of Kalona is ridiculously detailed, and watching it descend into chaos gives The Coalition plenty of opportunity to flex its technical muscles. Buildings crumble, glass shatters, environments become increasingly battered and bloody, and the lighting in particular can be stunning. Character models are also impressive, but it’s the sheer amount of environmental detail that really sells the devastation happening around you.
Thankfully, all of that graphical wizardry hasn’t come at the expense of what actually matters… Shooting things. And bloody hell, Gears still knows how to make shooting things feel good.
The fundamentals haven’t dramatically changed. You’re still bouncing between cover, popping Locust heads and desperately trying to nail that Perfect Active Reload while everything around you is trying to murder you. But movement is noticeably more fluid. Marcus can manoeuvre around environments with considerably more freedom than his older incarnation, with improved vaulting and traversal making combat arenas feel less restrictive, all without losing the weight that has always defined Gears. The result is arguably the best combat the series has ever had.
Weapons feel suitably vicious and satisfying. The Lancer remains one of gaming’s greatest examples of somebody asking, “What if we put a chainsaw on it?” and nobody in the room having the good sense to say no. Twenty years later, sawing a Locust in half still hasn’t got old.
E-Day does add some additional wrinkles, though, particularly through weapon modifications. Hard Cases scattered throughout Kalona contain upgrades that can substantially change how weapons behave, covering everything from handling and magazine improvements to more significant modifications. Combined with armour and tactical upgrades, there’s considerably more freedom to tailor your loadout around how you actually want to play.
Importantly, this doesn’t suddenly turn Gears into an RPG. This is still a game about taking enormous men with enormous guns and firing enormous amounts of ammunition at subterranean monsters.
Where E-Day becomes slightly less convincing is when it attempts to open things up. Kalona contains larger areas to explore alongside more traditional linear sections, with optional objectives, collectibles and additional encounters encouraging you to wander away from the main path.
There’s certainly something appealing about being given more freedom to explore a city undergoing an apocalypse, and additional combat encounters are rarely something I’m going to complain about when the combat is this enjoyable. The downside is the impact this has on pacing.
Gears has traditionally excelled when it knows exactly where it wants you to go and throws increasingly ridiculous situations at you along the way. When E-Day loosens the reins, some of that momentum inevitably disappears. It’s particularly noticeable because some of the more focused sections are fantastic. When E-Day concentrates on tightly designed combat encounters, horror and big cinematic set pieces, it feels like classic Gears firing on all cylinders.
The campaign can also feel a little stretched in places. There are only so many times you can dramatically introduce another group of Locust before familiarity begins taking some of the edge off that initial terror. Thankfully, the story gives everything a little more weight.
Anyone familiar with Gears already knows where Marcus and Dom ultimately end up, and there’s an inherent problem any prequel story has in setting the stakes for characters with known futures. E-Day instead focuses on their relationship amidst the wider human cost of Emergence Day. These aren’t the Marcus and Dom from later games. They’re younger, but are already carrying the scars of previous conflict and suddenly confronted with something neither of them understands.
Seeing familiar characters from this perspective works surprisingly well, particularly when E-Day slows things down enough to let its cast actually process what’s happening around them. And then, naturally, somebody gets turned into red mist and we’re back to business. That’s Gears.
Of course, Gears isn’t just about the campaign, with both multiplayer and co-op to dive into.
Horde has become such an important part of Gears since it was introduced in Gears of War 2, such that its inclusion almost feels mandatory at this point. E-Day understands the simple appeal that has kept the mode going for so long: give you some mates, increasingly horrible waves of Locust and enough weaponry to turn the battlefield into complete carnage.
What immediately carries across from the campaign is just how satisfying the combat feels. Horde has always been at its best when you’re barely holding a position together, scrambling for ammunition and desperately trying to deal with whatever the game throws at you next, and E-Day’s heavier gunplay fits that formula beautifully. It’s familiar, absolutely, but I’m not convinced Horde needs reinventing every time it appears.
However, E-Day does push things to the next level with Horde Siege. While you still head in as a 4-player squad, there’s now the possibility for three squads to be running around at the same time, all completing objectives, crossing paths and potentially teaming up for the biggest enemy encounters. Underneath it all, the basic loop still works because Gears’ combat works, and with E-Day arguably offering some of the best-feeling shooting in the series, mowing through wave after wave of Locust remains ridiculously entertaining.
Gears of War multiplayer also feels the benefits of some of the expanded movement, with jumping and sliding adding new mobility options. ‘Wall bouncing’ has also been toned way down, though it’s still possible for the most dedicated players, and with the Gnasher still so powerful, Gears of War: E-Day multiplayer still has that barrier to newcomers. I’m not about to make any grand declarations about its longevity, balance or progression – things that will only become clear over the next month and as long term support plans become clear – but there’s potential for this to cater to and support that core Gear of War community.
For all the improvements to movement, visuals, weapon customisation and scale, The Coalition hasn’t tried to reimagine what Gears of War is. Instead, they’ve looked backwards and asked what made people fall in love with these games in the first place. Big guns, ridiculous violence, great characters, spectacular set pieces, and a world where attaching a chainsaw to an assault rifle somehow became standard military engineering.
There are areas where E-Day could have benefited from showing a little more restraint or focus. The larger environments don’t always improve the experience, and the campaign loses some momentum when it moves away from the tightly controlled action that Gears does so well. But when everything comes together just right, it’s brilliant.
