Gears of War: E-Day Campaign Preview: The Best Gears in Years
Gears of War: E-Day's campaign is the strongest Gears single-player experience since Gears of War 3. The prequel, which covers the day the Locust invaded Sera, turns the series toward horror, mixes classic linear missions with open-world stretches, and introduces a modernized movement system. Boss fights, framerate drops and random mod drops hold it back a little. A full numbered review will follow once the multiplayer and Horde modes are accessible, since review access covered only the campaign.
A prequel is always a risk. They tend to lean on nostalgia and winks at the camera instead of good storytelling, and they can sour something people already love. I had those worries going in: does the franchise need to go back in time to the Locust emergence, and is it past its prime? After the campaign, my answer is that there is still some juice left in a series that has been around since the early Xbox 360 days.
Horrors of War
E-Day could easily be called Horrors of War. Its missions center on a genuinely frightening idea: a massive army of monsters surging up from beneath the planet's surface like a plague, while nobody knows what is happening. You watch it unfold in real time.
Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, still grieving the recent loss of Dom's brother and Marcus's best friend Carlos, team up with newcomers Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes. Mags is a grizzled veteran, Reyes is the comic-relief rookie, and the squad bonds over their own traumas and mistakes. That kinship doesn't match the later teams with Baird, Anya or Cole Train, but it works for a group thrown together by necessity.
The Locust arrive after decades of war between human factions, and this is their most intimidating showing in the series. Civilians get mowed down by an enemy that seems feral at first, though the squad soon learns there is more to them. The city of Kalona falls to the swarm in a way that recalls Raccoon City sliding into chaos in the early Resident Evil games, which is high praise. People who were taught to shelter underground from air raids flee there, only to find the enemy coming from below. The campaign shows this in harrowing ways, including some visceral deaths.
The Gears lose, and lose badly, throughout. The overarching plot amounts to "just survive and try to fight back," so it isn't especially engaging, but the character moments and franchise nods landed for me. It's also the longest campaign in the series.
How it plays
The structure mixes classic linear Gears with a few wrinkles:
- Several open-world segments let you explore a good chunk of Kalona while the main mission lightly guides you.
- Horde-like scenarios ask you to set up defenses against waves of Locust.
- Side objectives include escorting civilians to safety or rescuing a surrounded squad of Gears.
- A couple of on-rails vehicle sections break things up, and later missions leave the city limits.
The open-world parts can feel repetitive, but jumping between them and the corridors kept the pacing fresh for me. Collectibles are easy to track down, since your map marks them and a sound plays when you're near one. They unlock story beats and mods for your armor and weapons, such as passive healing on a Perfect Reload or a Perfect Reload damage buff for close-quarters kills. Those mods drop randomly from Hard Cases and side quests, so building a play style is a shot in the dark on a first run. The game is built around four-player co-op, and higher difficulty is available for replays. Even the normal difficulty can feel overwhelming at times.
The new movement system annoyed me at first, mostly because I missed the old sprint with the camera pushed forward while holding A. By the end I liked using A to move between cover and clicking the left stick to sprint, with more freedom of motion, and I don't think I could go back. Multiple control schemes are available for longtime fans who prefer the old feel.
Where it stumbles
Most boss fights are just larger bullet sponges. Many sections demand a plain "kill all Locust" objective, which gets irritating when a straggler hides out of sight. That's why I came to love a radar ping ability that outlines enemies in red, one of several "ultimate" options with a hefty cooldown.
I also hit rough framerate drops, even in Performance Mode on Xbox Series X. Otherwise the game looks gorgeous in a bloody, gory, grungy, apocalyptic way.
The trademark cheese survives (I had to pause when the squad called a new enemy "a ballsack"), and Marcus shouting "NICE!" after a Perfect Reload still doesn't get old. As a prequel, it can't avoid telegraphing who lives or dies based on later games, and some nostalgia beats, like the origin of the Lancer's chainsaw, are both cool and a little cringy. They are far less ham-fisted than I expected.
I can't say how hardcore Gears purists will feel, but this is one of the better single-player campaigns I've played on Xbox in a while, and it's best experienced with friends.
A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review. Played on Xbox Series X|S.
