Gears of War: E-Day review: brilliant campaign, but where's my Horde?
Gears is one of my favourite franchises of all time, so E-Day had some big shoes to fill. As the first new mainline Gears in seven years, with a marketing push that's been running at full volume for the past year, expectations were sky high.
Worth knowing before we go any further: E-Day launched on October 6th on Xbox Series X|S and PC, day one on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. It's a prequel set 14 years before the original game, on Emergence Day itself, as the Locust erupt beneath the city of Kalona. You play as Bravo Squad: a young Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago alongside newcomers Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes. The whole campaign can be played in four-player online co-op or two-player split-screen.
First impressions are good. Graphically it's gorgeous, with Unreal Engine capturing the gritty, war torn world of Sera in all its destruction, gore and viscera. It's the classic Gears of War style, just new and fresh and it definitely shows just how destructive the Locust War was, it killed 99.9% of humanity afterall.
Collectables are back too, and as in every Gears, going the wrong way first often pays off. E-Day adds a neat twist, though. Face the direction of a collectable and you'll hear the familiar Omen chime from picking them up in previous games, a little nudge that something's worth investigating. It only chimes once, mind, and it can be a tad over-sensitive. More than once it went off while i was staring at a wall, with the collectable on the other side in a different room or zone entirely.
Then there are the mods, for guns, armour and abilities. They're a fun little addition, though i'm conflicted on how you earn them. Regular progression supplies some, but the bulk of gun mods come from side quests in each chapter's semi-open world map. Think Gears 5's eliminate-the-target and protect-the-area missions, but thankfully confined to smaller, more manageable spaces. That means they flow better, slotting in naturally as you pass through on the way to the main areas. Inevitably though, it all ends with wandering streets, alleys and tramlines hunting for loot and collectables, which breaks that very flow.
And that's my wider gripe. i can't say i'm much of a fan of traditionally straightforward, chapter based mission games being turned into open world ones. Halo did it with Infinite too. Worse, for a game that's all about a blitz war, having unlimited time to explore the open-world sections kills the flow. Given the option to return to the mission based layout of the original trilogy, i think i'd take it.
But in the pursuit of fairness, i can see why The Coalition went this way. The side missions tell the story of a guerrilla war, with Bravo Squad as first responders in a blitzkrieg invasion that caught everyone off guard. And E-Day does a brilliant job of portraying the gruelling nature of war, where things never go to plan, civilians die, good soldiers die. It's carnage, brutality and all round horror.
Which brings me to the story, and it's fantastic, the best Gears story since 3 for my money. As big a fan as i am of Laura Bailey's Kait Diaz, E-Day knocks it out of the park on characters, new and old alike. They're well written and well voiced, especially the Kiwi twins Mako and Manu, instant fan favourites whose antics provide much needed comic relief without ever stopping being badass.
The wider cast of Gears thank you for helping them, crack jokes and chat among themselves, and it humanises the once nameless COGs in a way that reminds me of Halo: Combat Evolved over 20 years ago. (Boy, did i always try my best to save those marines.) There's KR-23, a King Raven pilot who arrives in the nick of time to shred Locust, much like Echo 419, everyone's favourite Pelican pilot. Then there's Charlie Squad's Harkniss, Siv and Valen, who Bravo crosses paths with for quips and firefights. The supporting cast lands far harder than anything in Gears 4 or 5. Be warned though, it's like Game of Thrones up in here and I got attached to badass characters far too often, seriously, i’ve not felt this way about character loss in Gears since Dom, and due to the nature of E-Day, you will get hit in the feels multiple times, again, the story, is fantastic.
Where things get more divisive is how E-Day plays. Being able to jump and climb is... weird. Not bad, just different. The same goes for the sprint. i miss the roadie run, but the sprint isn't taking anything away from gameplay, and it's a tad more believable than hitting Olympic speeds at full squat. It's handy for getting around the bigger maps too, though if those maps were more railed, we'd not need it. It's a pill Gears vets will need to swallow, and while it took some getting used to, it's growing on me.
Less easy to swallow are the cuts. Most of the execution styles are gone, which takes some flavour out of the Gears name, and so are meat shields, which means i reach for my pistol far less often.
In the campaign, most of these changes suit the story, which in-all can take around 20hrs depending on your pacing and difficulty. In multiplayer, it's a different matter, and that's where E-Day loses me.
Let's start with Horde, and straight to the point: i hate The Coalition's decision here. Classic Horde is gone, replaced by Horde Siege, a 12-player mode split across three squads that plays more like an extraction shooter than Horde. Offered alongside classic Horde, it would be a nice addition. Offered instead of it, it's the loss of a Gears staple. The difficulty is wildly unbalanced too. i played multiple Recruit matches that felt as hard as Insane in the campaign, and having finished every Gears on Insane, i can say with some confidence that Horde Siege needs a patch.
Then there's Versus. It sucks. There, i said it. i've put hundreds of hours into Gears online, mainly 2, 3 and 4 with spots of 5, which is where Versus really started going downhill (but at least we still had Horde!). The movement, gunplay, climbing and sprinting changes that suit the campaign so well just don't translate to PvP, and the jumping in particular is annoying as hell. Any chance of adjusting to such a different experience gets thrashed by teams of level 90+ players who haven't touched the campaign, while my team and i sit below level 10. Every game i played was massively unbalanced. Add the removal of the modes that made Gears shine, and it just doesn't feel right. Between no Horde and the PvP changes, i can't see myself playing much beyond the campaign. If that campaign weren't so stellar, this review would be a whole lot more negative.
Is it worth it?
For story lovers, absolutely. E-Day is a fantastic return to form, with storytelling rivalling 2 and 3, and in places beating them. The characters are well written and well voiced, and the intensity of war is perfectly horrific and gritty. On Game Pass, the campaign alone is worth the download. But the lack of Horde, the balancing issues and one too many changes to a once brilliant PvP format pull the score down. Brilliant campaign. But seriously, where's my Horde?
Reviewed on Xbox Series X with a GameSir G7 Pro controller and Xbox Wireless Headset. ~27 hours played. Played via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription; Never Fight Alone charity bundle (£16.99) purchased independently.
