Seven years: that’s how long it has taken for a new Gears game to hit the scene after 2019’s Gears 5. Developers The Coalition have put that time to good use though, coming up with a brand new Gears of War game that simultaneously channels the series’ heyday, which turned it into such a popular IP to begin with, while also feeling extremely fresh and new in a way that no Gears game has in a very long time, not even Gears 5 with its flirtations with the open world format.
This owes itself largely to the revamped movement mechanics that the developers have come up with for this game, with players now able to run, charge, vault, jump, slide, and leverage cover with movement mechanics and controls that are far more responsive than anything the series has done prior. Make no mistake, the trademark heft and weightiness of Gears of War is still present there – The Coalition has avoided the critical mistake that fellow Xbox development house Halo Studios (née 343 Industries) often made, wherein an attempt to revitalize Halo, they lost sight of what was special or unique about that IP to begin with. Gears of War: E-Day feels like a younger, faster, more agile, more energetic version of itself – and that makes a huge difference.
"A large part of E-Day’s multiplayer does feel fairly similarly structured and paced to past titles in the series."
If you want more details and an in-depth analysis of the moment to moment controls, movement, and traversal mechanics in E-Day, and the downstream ripple effects they can have on encounter design and combat, I encourage you to check out GamingBolt’s Gears of War: E-Day review for the single-player portion of the game, where I discuss how it revitalizes the franchise while still letting it feel like itself a lot more comprehensively. Suffice it to say, however, that that speed and responsiveness in controls gives both, the players, as well as the developers, the tools that are necessary to make multiplayer feel a lot more fun and engaging than it has in a while. It makes sense right away, if you think about it – characters on the map have a lot more mobility available to them, meaning placement and cover are a lot more dynamic than they ever have been in the past. This means that, even when there is no real major change to how multiplayer matches are structured or paced, you end up with something that feels fundamentally different due to how inherently unique the moment-to-moment gameplay feels.
And make no mistake, a large part of E-Day’s multiplayer does feel fairly similarly structured and paced to past titles in the series. This, to be clear, is meant as a clear compliment, and as a good thing. The pitch behind Gears of War: E-Day is that it is going back to how Gears used to be when it first started – a simpler era without complicated meta progression, excessive live service FOMO elements, season passes, any of that. This, instead, is a straightforward, plain and simple Gears of War multiplayer experience, in particular if you are focusing on the PvP side of things. You get classic Deathmatch and King of the Hill style modes, and in terms of the broad structure, there’s not much new here, other than the new Crucible mode – you’re simply getting spiffed up takes on these modes (or their variants) that have shown up in past games in the series too.
On the other hand, however, I did find myself far more engaged by each map – the new movement system allows for a lot more mayhem and chaos, and the sort of rigid predictability that I was used to in Gears PvP was gone, instead forcing me to contend with players bounding and darting about a lot more spastically than they had been able to in the past. It remains to be seen how much this is simply the status quo going forward – remember, the new movement mechanics and tech are, well, new. For everyone, not just for me. This means the entire community right now is, essentially, re-learning the mechanics, and everyone is trying to figure out how best to optimize their play styles to maximize their chances at victory. In other words, perhaps right now matches feel so new and intense because right now the community has not had a chance to fully get a handle on the new mechanics, and how they impact the flow of a multiplayer game – it is, of course, entirely possible that years, or maybe even months, down the line, things have settled down, and PvP multiplayer in E-Day feels a lot closer to how multiplayer matches in older Gears games have felt, in spite of the new movement tech. But I can at least say that in my considerable time spent playing this game, PvP remained consistently chaotic (in a good way) and intense, and often unpredictable, in a way that the series has not managed to feel in a very long time.
"Gears of War multiplayer has been fairly unique within the context of the broader industry."
While these changes, and the impact they have on the flow and pace of a multiplayer match, are all agreeable to me, I can understand the perspective of someone who feels disappointed at the change to how past games have felt. As I have mentioned multiple times, in spite of all the changes, E-Day still manages to feel like Gears – but that is more in spirit than exactly. As I have also spent time describing in this review so far, there is a marked difference in how PvP matches play out now. Gears of War multiplayer has been fairly unique within the context of the broader industry. For good or for bad, it has remained stuck playing as itself all this time later, all while the rest of industry’s multiplayer games started converging on similar mechanics, control setups, meta progression, and game flow. This means that if you liked how Gears played before, you were singularly served by it, and it alone – there was very little else like it that could scratch the same itch. I think E-Day also scratches that very same itch, but if you are someone to whom the specific rigidity of a charge run or the control mapping of past Gears games was critical to the identity of the series, I can easily see the new multiplayer mode feeling not quite the same. What I can say, however, is that if you are among the number that feels this way, you should try to give this game a chance and engage with it on its own merits – it is different, yes, but it is ultimately very much still Gears of War, and I think most long time fans will find themselves coming around to the changes, if they give themselves the opportunity to keep an open mind.
Depending on whom you ask – and certainly according to me – Gears multiplayer has never really been about the PvP modes. Instead, Gears multiplayer always shone because of the excellent, truly excellent, PvE multiplayer offerings, going all the way back to the iconic Horde mode starting Gears of War 2 in 2008. And, fellow fans of Gears of War, it is truly my greatest joy to confirm to you that E-Day returns with what may be the single best multiplayer offering of that vein in the series’ entire history, and something that truly feels like a next generation evolution of what it has offered so far: the same fundamental concept, but bigger, better, more dynamic, more frenetic, more fun.
This all comes down to Horde Siege, the brand new multiplayer mode in E-Day, which, well, isn’t brand new as much as it is the aforementioned evolution of Horde. Horde Siege essentially sees your squad of four placed into a gigantic city map with two other squads of four. All your squads are working together to defend the city from waves of invading bugs, but you are all assigned to different parts of the city for each wave. As you are fighting back the waves of enemies, you are also moving across the city, allowing you to slowly coordinate your defence not just among the different members of your own squad, but also among all the other squads that are also on the map.
"The original Horde Mode is arguably the favorite aspect of the entire Gears of War franchise for me."
Much like with the PvP modes, there is an element of chaos and mayhem to the Horde Siege mode that almost seems to recall Sony and Arrowhead’s 2024 hit Helldivers 2. There’s a level of emergent narrative and improvisation to the flow of the game that allows each match to feel like an entirely differentiated story, even when the actual mission objectives and structure remain the same. This is further helped by all the various secondary and sub-objectives that you can find around the city as you explore and defend – which can then cause you and/or your squad to peel off as you handle an entirely different, but still contained within the larger map, objective, all while trying to make sure you, your squad, and the squad of all the squads on the map, stay alive and get to the end of the map.
The original Horde Mode is arguably the favorite aspect of the entire Gears of War franchise for me. I have quite literally hundreds of hours put into that mode across multiple installments, and it remains a gold standard for a PvE mode of that style to me and to many others, nearly two decades since its original debut Horde Siege mode truly feels like a next generation upgrade of that mode. It feels as thrilling and chaotic and fun as the original Horde Mode did, but on a bigger and better scale than, presumably, the technology has allowed for up to now. Even if the entire rest of the package had been disappointing, Horde Siege would still have been a triumph enough that I would have said it is worth recommending E-Day to fans of the series over. As it stands, however, E-Day across the board is a pretty damn great game, which means Horde Siege is allowed to stand up and shine on its own merits, rather than having to make up for deficiencies elsewhere.
So: as should be clear by now, we are talking about a pretty damn great all-around multiplayer suite. There are, of course, still objective shortcomings and problems: the PvP modes lack a lot of maps, for example, and as much as I like Horde Siege, I do miss classic Horde – and that’s simply not available in the game, nor is it clear if it is planned to be added via post-launch updates either. Like I said previously, too, there are enough changes made to the flow of a game, and classic Gears was unique enough, that I can imagine at least some fans of the older games feeling disappointed or underwhelmed at all the changes. But, equally, as I said, most long time fans will find themselves coming around to the changes, if they give themselves the opportunity to keep an open mind. Whether it’s the PvP side of multiplayer that you enjoy, or the horde mode side, Gears E-Day’s multiplayer mode is going to provide countless hours of entertainment to fans new and old alike.
