The title of this article isn’t meant to be some insult towards Gears of War: E-Day. On the contrary, it can be seen as complimentary. Just like Mountain Dew, the first taste of Gears is great. It transports you back to simpler times. It’s loud, it’s dumb, and it can be a lot of fun.
Before long though, you remember why you haven’t reached for it in a long time. Your palate has evolved, but Gears has stayed the same.
Don’t get me wrong, Gears of War: E-Day is a competently made shooter that can be a fun throwback to 2006, I just wouldn’t recommend it to anyone except the most hardcore of fans. And I don’t think that’s the kind of game Xbox needs right now if they want to expand their audience.
Editor’s note: Our review only covers the campaign of E-Day, as the review build did not include access to multiplayer.
It’s Code Red
I was in high school when the first Gears of War released. I remember seeing screenshots of the game in magazines and being in complete disbelief that a game’s graphics could look that good. But then I went to my local EB Games, bought my copy, read the instruction manual on the bus ride home, inserted the disc into my Xbox 360, and… it was glorious.
The way that viscera sprayed the screen as I chainsawed a Locust in half, the way the characters slammed into cover like human-shaped wrecking balls, the way everybody spoke like they were constantly comparing the size of their Gnashers… Ahh, the good ol’ days.
But Gears of War hasn’t been relevant for a long time – at least not outside of the core Xbox community. It inspired an entire generation of games to abandon all colours except grey and brown, so why hasn’t the series been able to keep pace with its contemporaries?
To be fair, it’s a tough balancing act. Do you innovate and risk losing your core audience, or do you iterate and risk falling behind? Aside from Capcom’s Resident Evil, few long-term franchises have been able to thread that needle. And unfortunately, E-Day feels like it’s stuck in the past.
Maybe that’s not a bad thing though. If remasters have shown us anything, it’s that sometimes simple is better. So if all you’re looking for is more Gears of War, then this might just be what you’re looking for. There’s plenty of cover-based shooting to be had. If you’re looking for the next entry that’s going to push the franchise forward, this isn’t it.
Unreal Engine strikes again
If you’ve seen the E-Day gameplay that was part of Xbox’s Summer Game Showcase, you’ll know that the game has some chops when it comes to its presentation. It’s developed by Vancouver-based studio The Coalition. The game does a great job of marrying the original style of the series – dark environments with industrial-gothic architecture – with modern graphics to truly show the scale of the conflict. It’s at its best when it leans into the atmosphere of the city of Kalona before its downfall, with neon shop signs punctuating the smoke as Locust hordes emerge from the depths.
I just wish the entire game took place at night, because any time there’s daylight, the game looks muddy. Flat lighting, noisy shadows, texture pop-in, and low-quality environmental objects – especially distant buildings and mountains – keep this from feeling like a truly generation-defining title when it comes to its visuals.
And then there are the glitches. I’ll get into a few more of these in a bit, but I experienced the full gamut of glitches from enemies disappearing as I was shooting them to being unable to swap my weapon, and even having a sawed-off arm get stuck to Marcus for several minutes. Pre-release build glitches aside, though, it’s generally a good-looking game that runs well on Xbox Series X. I’ll leave the frame counting to the experts at Digital Foundry, but it felt like a fairly steady 60fps, with the occasional stutter as I entered new areas.
Playing on PC was a different story. My PC is pretty out of date at this point, but it’s still above the minimum requirements with an RTX 3070 GPU, Ryzen 7 5700X CPU, and 16GB of DDR4 RAM. For the life of me, I couldn’t get the game to maintain a stable 60fps. With everything set to low at 1080p, DLSS on ultra-performance, and all other applications closed, I was fluctuating constantly between 70-40fps. Needless to say, I quickly moved back to my Series X for the remainder of my time with the game. I hope other players have a better experience with the launch build.
Artificial sweetener
Now let’s talk gunplay, because Gears is first and foremost a third-person shooter. When I was just mowing down enemies with my Lancer, I had a pretty good time. It took some tweaking to get the controls dialled in, but once I’d turned off aim acceleration and motion blur, the shooting felt exactly as I remembered it. The guns still sound like they’re straight off the factory floor, producing a satisfying, chunky thud with every round. The rev of the chainsaw still made my eyes go wide as I sliced through the torso of a Wretch. And minor new additions like the variable height cover system offer new ways to take out enemies that pair well with the grapples strewn throughout the levels. You’ll be shredding Boomers like you’re 16 again in no time.
It’s a sweet first taste that took me back to my buddy’s basement, ripping through enemies and bemoaning the fact that we had a history assignment due the next day. But then you take that second sip and that sweetness just tastes… artificial.
Enemies are still bullet sponges, which is fine because that’s the style of game that it is, but the NPC AI is some of the most laughable I’ve experienced in a long time. Let me explain.
So there I was, facing off against one of the most menacing enemies in the campaign. It had just burst through a door, catching me completely off guard and out of cover. But even so, the poor soul never stood a chance because I knew its weakness: slightly elevated ledges.
Every single time it tried to attack, I would just climb up on a box or a ledge, and it would chase me, taking its sweet time to clamber up to meet me. As it’s doing that, I’m just whittling down its health. When it got up, I’d hop down, rinse and repeat.
That level of easy-to-cheese NPC behaviour applies to more than just that one enemy type in the game. Several times I saw Locusts “hide” behind cover by lying down directly in front of me instead of going to the far side of cover. You have three party members with you at all times, so I’m willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt that they were hiding from someone else in that case. It just happened… a lot.
And don’t even get me started on the invisible walls. So. Many. Invisible. Walls. Those should have stayed in 2006.
All fizz, no biz
Gears of War: E-Day isn’t scary or emotional. And that sucks because the game clearly wants to evoke the feelings of both the original game and the famous “Mad World” trailer. There are multiple moments that recreate the setting and lighting, but where they fail to deliver is the atmosphere.
Maybe it wouldn’t be as scary today, but the Berserker level in the OG game sits with me as one of the highlights of that generation because it came out of nowhere and all I could do was run. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. You’re Marcus goddam Fenix. You’re a badass, and even though this is a prequel, everybody already knows you’re a hero. So even when the game pretends it’s going to lean into the horror of the situation with deep reds, high-contrast lighting, and eerie music, it’s unwilling to actually commit to the horror. It’s all just mood lighting.You’ll be outmanned, outgunned, stranded, without light… and yet the tension never amounts to anything.
It’s not just the scenarios that kill the mood though, the characters in the game love to tell you how stupid you are. And not just in the way that modern games do, where they solve the puzzles for you – though this game does tell you where to go constantly. I mean, they literally tell your squad constantly how terrible you are at your job.
Show up to an objective? “Damn, Bravo Squad, did you crawl all the way here?” Walk through a base? “Way to show up, losers.” Kill all the enemies in an area? “You bitches stop to smell the daisies?”
These are paraphrases – but they’re not far off! Given how everyone constantly sucks up to Marcus as a war hero, they love to berate the squad for just doing what they were told.
It’s almost refreshing how corny the dialogue is. There’s a lot of grunting and winks at the audience with references to past games. And hearing the voice actor for Marcus growl lines like “Nothing but bits” when you curb-stomp a guy still hits.
If only the story had any sense of purpose or drive. It’s a classic case of a lot happening, but nothing actually happening.
The new characters are likeable enough. Both Carter and Reyes are easy to root for and bring some levity to the proceedings. But the core cast aren’t given nearly enough to work with. The entire city is falling apart, and aside from one attempted phone call, Dom barely mentions his family across the first ten hours. It’s fine though; they probably won’t come up again, right guys?
And the game loves to go back to the tried-and-true well of killing off characters that they’ve just introduced minutes earlier to try and evoke some emotional response. It didn’t work for me, but maybe that one guy from high school who always talked about how deep Fight Club was will love it.
Nostalgic taste
I should reiterate, E-Day isn’t a bad game. It’s competently made. Popping heads with a sniper still feels great. Tai is still cool. The sound design of the weapons is still punchy as hell. It’s still the same experience.
Any strengths of this game are the strengths of games in its past. It’s more polished perhaps, rendered with more detail for sure, but ultimately devoid of new ideas. It’s an enjoyable romp across the city of Kalona (shoutout to Kelowna, B.C.), but the campaign feels like a retread of everything we’ve seen before.
It’s worth mentioning that there are some differences here. New to me, though not new to the series as a whole, are the open zone areas. In between key moments of the campaign, you’ll be allowed to explore the city to take on side missions and find collectibles. It’s probably my least favourite part of the experience. And that largely comes down to the lack of interesting content.
Instead of keeping us to a tight ten-hour campaign centred around the best content, it has us meandering around the city, wiping out the occasional band of enemies and helping stranded soldiers and civilians. These rarely ever contain a story that I remember past their completion or rewards that were worth the time. And at worst, these open zones completely break the immersion.
One example that really highlights this happened when I turned a corner to find a hulking Locust coming out of a restaurant dragging a human behind them. Naturally, I whipped out my Lancer, blasted the Locust to bits, saved the civilian, and continued on my merry way. Except I looped around the block looking for a collectible, and wouldn’t you know it, the exact same scenario played out. The same Locust was coming out of the restaurant like nothing had happened. This time I let the human die before wiping him out to see if that would end the scenario. When I tried it a third time, the exact same moment played out.
The best games craft moments that feel unique to the player, moments that feel like they are personal to you. Open zones like this feel perfectly crafted to create encounters that you just “accidentally” stumble upon, that make you feel like you might have been the only one to have that exact experience. This had the opposite effect.
Then again, this is a video game. It is the most video game. The Mountain Dew of video games. Its first sip is nostalgic. But the more you have, the more you realize how artificial it tastes. And it leaves you feeling like you probably don’t need to drink it again for another decade.
Images credit: Xbox
Reviews 
Gaming 
Gaming 
Reviews 