Boy, does it feel good to say it: we got some time with Gears of War: E-Day, and played a lovely little chunk of its campaign. Of course, you’re getting no spoilers from us on the story front, as it’s the gameplay that has us feeling like this one fits right in with what’s always been great about Gears. However, it’s also modernizing it in ways that are going to allow the franchise to continue standing as tall as Marcus Fenix amidst the fallen remains of the hordes that get in his way.
It helps that the visceral combat and violent gunplay are now so very beautiful thanks to the UE5-powered visuals, while the city of Kalona is a very aesthetically pleasing corner of Sera even when it’s under siege by Locusts and its defences are left scrambling to keep up with the threat they present. The Locusts’ primal ferocity clashes against the dogged determination of Bravo Squad and the COG in an experience that makes one thing as loud and clear as its explosions.
Gears of War is back with a very stylish and substantial return to the spotlight. It’s a true pleasure to talk about why.
Back To The Basics
Let’s begin with what feels immediately familiar, with a tutorial section that even franchise veterans are going to want to engage with. That’s because everything’s really familiar, including the way your character moves. But the cover system, and new ways to move such as vaulting over low obstacles or sliding to cover when on the run, are fresh additions that will need some getting used to if you’re coming to E-Day after playing the franchise’s past titles.
Things quickly pick up from there in a gameplay loop that’s classic Gears. You’re given an objective, and you’re going to have to make your way to it by navigating war-torn streets where the enemy can spring you at any second.
The first mission offers a focused, linear introduction to the chaos, tasking Bravo Squad with the reclamation of a bridge from hostile occupation. The objective is critical: secure a path to transition the command hub to a forward operating base carved out within a local stadium. Upon reaching the structure, the team reinforces Charlie Squad’s defensive position on the near side, pivotally working to reactivate the central span. When the control mechanisms are sabotaged, the operatives are forced to divide, pushing through fierce opposition to seize both control rooms. With the crossing finally under COG authority, the squad is immediately redirected toward the heart of the city for their next high-stakes engagement.
The second half of our campaign preview shifted gears to showcase the broader scope of Sera, emphasizing larger environmental layouts and the optional side activities that flesh out the world. After a momentary breather, Bravo Squad receives orders to scavenge vital resources from scattered supply caches. Captain Gray subsequently outlines the escalating urban decay in downtown, tasking the team with securing a station to bolster Charlie Squad’s struggling efforts. Besides the main objective, the open level throws some intriguing side missions. In a notable survivor rescue sequence, our heroes divert to a nearby location following an urgent plea to save trapped non-combatants. The ensuing skirmish to liberate the civilians is a tense highlight, ending with the family safely en route to the stadium’s relative sanctuary. Of course, this was just a small taste of what these larger levels offer, and we can’t wait to see more of what the developers do with it in the final version.
When a fight breaks out, the eerie silence of Kalona’s streets, often interrupted by chatter from your comms or from the desperate cries of people needing your help, the sound stage quickly transforms into an all-out battlefield, and we were reminded of why we’ve loved this franchise over all these years.
It’s a good idea to dive into how the experience is presented before we take a look at the gameplay systems that support it. You already know that the story focuses on the early days of the Locust invasion, and there’s an underlying desperation to the COG’s military response that constantly bleeds through in dialogues and in the devastated ruins of Kalona.
The new visuals serve this vibe very well, with the members of Brave Squad looking suitably haggard and fatigued after missions that offer little to no respite between objectives. The ominous glow of your enemy’s eyes, seen even from large distances, serves as a reminder that you’re a handful of operatives against a vicious, bloodthirsty enemy that’s frightfully good at adapting to your tactics. That undercurrent holds it all together, and is serviced very well by visuals that not just look good across the game’s three graphical modes, but make things so darn immersive you’re going to have to tear your eyes away from the world around you to focus on the action.
Well, that’s the aim of what E-Day’s campaign is looking to achieve. But it’s in how it gets there that the real magic reveals itself.
A Fight For A Future
The cover system is probably where we were very impressed with how E-Day manages to stay familiar while making things feel fresh. You get to snap to cover just like in the older games, moving between different spots in response to where your enemies are. That much remains the same.
But where the previous games were limited by the hardware they were released on to locations of the same height, and with the same animations, E-Day does things differently. Your characters are able to adapt to low cover, lying almost prone on the ground when the situation demands to ensure they take full advantage of the field.
That might not sound like a big change on paper, but it immediately opens up so much more of the battlefield to you, making for fights that are now a lot more fluid and dynamic, with an enemy AI that’s quite challenging even on the standard difficulty. It can get quite challenging as the Locusts are constantly on the move, trying to outflank you and take advantage of their superior numbers.
An over-ambitious attempt to be a hero who charges into the fray was met with serious, almost overwhelming resistance in a way that the previous games haven’t managed to punish as badly. Most of our time downed was due to tongue-in-cheek attempts to run a lone charge against the Locusts we were facing, and it’s great that the game places an emphasis on working alongside your squad in the heat of battle.
Of course, the level designs are as incredible as they’ve always been, and it’s great to see how the new visuals, engine, and cover system work together to make a familiar experience feel altogether new. We’re not going to forget diving behind the remains of a bombed-out wall to take cover, only to find a Locust’s SMG slowly chipping away at the wall as it aimed for our head. That forced a reposition attempt that was summarily put down by a particularly nasty locust lying in wait just outside of our safety net.
E-Day forces you to take every advantage you can get when a battle breaks out, and it all fits very well with the narrative undercurrent of an army that’s desperately out of its depth, and scrambling to take back a battlefield that feels like it’s already lost. Such is the life of a Gear, after all.
However, it’s equally good that the campaign’s quiet moments are also packed with meaningful things to do.
Gears That Don’t Grind
Making your way to your next objective, or perhaps stopping for a cutscene that lays out the next few missions for you, means that you’re constantly being fed news about Sera’s larger war effort, with the undercurrent that the COG is losing subtly playing out in dialogues and on the faces of the characters delivering them.
A fellow soldier’s concern for his family in another city is met with measured empathy from his commanding officer, the two soldiers sharing a moment of humanity that becomes all the more relevant when it’s considered against the monstrosities that threaten its very survival.
The game’s visual upgrades are more than a coat of paint, and are used very well to bring the horror of the war to life, while leaving the scope for moments of light that shine through the grim reality that Bravo Squad is staring down, at least in the game’s early hours. Of course, enquiries about civilians aside, your downtime is also equally important to preparing for what lies ahead.
You get access to a fairly elaborate customization and modding system for your weapons, and while we only got to scratch the surface of what it has to offer, we think what we’ve seen is an indicator of a level of depth to making your guns your own that a lot of you are sure to appreciate. This is an area of E-Day that we’re quite intrigued by, and can’t wait to see how it plays out in the final release build.
Of course, we’re going to have to talk about performance on our Series X. You’ve got a cinematic quality mode that locks performance to 30 fps with all the visual bells and whistles that the console is capable of. There’s a Balanced Mode that we found was a great middle ground between excellent visuals and performance at 40 fps, but it’s the 60 fps Performance mode that we ended up sticking with thanks to how much of a difference it made to firefights.
That’s not to say the other modes are bad or perhaps incapable of consistently presenting the action, but we’d take more frames over visuals in a game like this any day. It’s great then, that even the Performance mode’s visuals boast of an excellent level of detail while sustaining smooth frame rates even in situations where we’d have been forgiving of an occasional dip. This one’s well-polished even now, and is certainly a great addition to the Series X’s lineup of titles.
We could keep praising the chunk of the game we’ve seen, but we think we’ve made our point. E-Day is Gears of War at its best; it captures the dark and drab look of the original, and the campaign fires on all cylinders in its early hours. It’s enough to make us want to play more of it as soon as we can, and we’re sure that things only ramp up from the beginning that we got to witness.
And that is definitely good news for the Gears of War fans in us as we wait to take on the story that started it all.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
