Review access provided by Xbox.

I still remember watching the Mad World trailer and wondering how I was going to get my hands on an Xbox 360. I was 16 when the original Gears of War launched back in 2006, and everything I’d seen had me fascinated with its world. Seeing Marcus navigate this destroyed monolithic architectural ruins because of these lizard monsters inside graphics that surreal-looking was unlike anything I was playing at the time. My brother helped make getting the console possible, and we ended up playing on this enormous bulky cabinet 16:9 60-inch rear-projection television from Rent-A-Center, and I loved every minute of that experience. I went to the midnight releases all through Gears 3, cut class to play online, and tried to stretch whatever two-week Xbox Live Gold trials I could find considering that a yearly membership wasn’t something we could casually afford.

I’ve completed every Gears since, and its world has always fascinated me. The combination of ’90s retro futurist technology, Greco-Roman influences, and an oppressive military culture gave Sera a personality I loved exploring. I still loved what we got with Gears 4 and 5, but something about them gave me a sense of yearning fot Gears of War to innovate once again—and I wondered if Gears of War: E-Day would give that to me. After 25hrs of immersing myself into its campaign, I am glad to say that I came away astonished by the care The Coalition put into this campaign; there is no sugar coating this, Gears of War: E-Day is by large and wide the BEST game I’ve played this year so far, and the absolute best in the franchise without question.

Fenix’s Dark Past

What I appreciated immediately about E-Day was getting to spend time with Marcus and Dom before the Locust changed their lives. We’re fourteen years before the original game, and these two are already carrying plenty of pain. During the opening military ceremony, Marcus is visibly struggling with the loss of Carlos Santiago, while Dom finds pride in his brother having died a hero. That difference caught my attention. They’re grieving the same person, but you can feel how differently they’re processing it. Then Emergence Day happens, and suddenly we’re running through Kalona while civilians are being slaughtered by creatures nobody understands. Knowing what eventually happens to Sera did very little to prepare me for how this game presents those opening moments. You play as a squad of 4, with Lucas Reyes and Mags Carter as new members to the franchise—thankfully they were equally important to the campaign’s emotional weight, with Lucas being a delightful addition in my opinion. There are moments in the game where we get a glimpse of their past which doesn’t take away from the tension of the overarching plot; learning about their regrets became one of its highlights for me though because it was thoughtfully written and exceptionally acted. Those scenes arrive at the right time which actually benefitted the immaculate pacing this game delivered. The entire cast’s performances are phenomenal, supported by expressive facial animation and cinematography that knows when to let a moment breathe.

I’m especially staying vague with the plot because although we know the outcome of this war, the story has a slew of surprising moments that I guarantee leave you on the edge. E-Day repeatedly dismantled whatever security and hope I thought the squad had found; these moments and set pieces left me audibly wowed by the sheer level of spectacle and scenarios that genuinely left me wondering how they’re going to survive. For the most part it worked out for the plot even if some moments were like, “of course that was there.” The quality of the character work reminded me of what I admire in The Last of Us Part II, particularly how much an expression can communicate. It’s just so viscerally rich unlike any other performance I’ve seen in gaming this year—this is truly the best Gears has ever been.

Next Level Gameplay

I know I’m going to upset some veteran fans with this, but I never liked the Roadie Run. I always thought that hunched sprint looked goofy, so seeing E-Day move toward a more upright, natural animation was something I appreciated immediately. There’s still a brief crouched start that acknowledges the original, but once Marcus gets moving, the difference looks and feels fantastic. Add jumping and sliding, and suddenly I’m moving through a Gears firefight with a freedom I’ve wanted for years. The new control scheme sits melee on B, sliding on A, jumping on Y, and sprinting moved to the left stick—that took some getting used to after so many games, but I enjoyed having something new to learn. Once those controls clicked, I became much more confident moving around the larger encounters and taking advantage of their verticality. I still had to respect cover and be deliberate about pushing enemies. I just had more options when I decided to make that push, and the shooting felt as good as ever. Every Lancer round connects with that meaty impact I expect from Gears.

I ended up loving the new weapons so much that I spent a considerable portion of the campaign using them. The MK1 Lancer, chainsaw-equipped Prototype, and Gnasher were there when I wanted something familiar, but the Ripper had my attention. It’s Locust-made double-barrel light machine gun that builds its fire rate, and once I started experimenting with the game’s mod system, I had a hard time putting it down. Gears of War isn’t entirely new to mods of course, but it was never really in the mainline games; E-Day comes full force with the number of mods thrown at us, over 100+ available across 10+ weapons makes a tremendous difference. You have three attachments per weapon, three armor mods, and tactical equipment such as the Disruptor to work into your setup. I built around close-range kills granting healing and a Perfect Active Reload benefit, then added another mod that healed me when I performed a Perfect Active Reload. My Ripper burned enemies through sustained hits and fired both barrels for increased damage after a perfect reload. You can probably see where this is going. Wretches, Tickers, and charging Drones were practically feeding the build, allowing me to keep fighting aggressively on Insanity with far fewer interruptions. Finding another mod became exciting because I wanted to see what else I could get these systems to do together. Between that, the devastating Incinerator, and the charged Striga revolver, I had plenty of reasons to keep experimenting.

Gears of War: E-Day is a very wide linear experience—what I mean by that is, this game is practically open-world. The game has several open sections to explore and backtrack in this campaign which, thanks to its tight controls and immaculate presentation, gave me reason to wander away from the main objective. I’d find myself taking in an apartment building or a parking structure because I couldn’t get over how much detail was packed into these spaces—and thankfully there are things to do in them. Hospitals, police station, a town square, and train stations all in its dilapidated state, gives a sense of immersive environmental storytelling rarely found in games today. That’s exactly what I wanted from a game about Emergence Day. Let me see the civilization we’re fighting for while it’s being torn apart around us—granted there are very few sections of repeated assets, but you would have to really dig into the scenes to find them as I did. The semi-open sections reward that curiosity with collectibles that are physically rendered, side missions, encounters, new weapons, and Hard Cases containing mods, so exploring feeds right back into the combat. Four-player online campaign co-op also returns, something we previously had in Gears 3. The fights themselves can become wonderfully chaotic, especially when a Drone tackles you and a teammate pulls you out of its grip with a brutal rescue animation. Familiar Locust share those spaces with strange new creatures that kept me paying attention to what was coming next. I’ve spent a couple decades learning how Gears plays, and E-Day had me excited to learn again. The Coalition accomplished a lot here without losing the weight and violence that made me fall in love with the series.

Unmatched at the Highest Degree

There were too many moments in E-Day when I had to stop moving because I couldn’t believe I was actually playing something that looked this good. I’ve spent time with Cyberpunk 2077 pushed hard with path tracing, and I still found E-Day more impressive as a complete visual experience. That’s my preference, of course, but the sheer density of Kalona is astounding—now, I did play this game on PC so I can’t speak on the console version, but suffice to say on Ultra settings, the game is a sight to behold. I’m looking at these enormous environments, then getting close enough to appreciate details that could easily have been overlooked, and I’m constantly flabbergast. The character models and facial animation hold up just as well, which makes the transition into a cinematic feel remarkably natural. Unreal Engine 5’s MegaLights gives artists room to work with far more dynamic, shadow-casting lights, while RTX Mega Geometry helps detailed Nanite geometry appear more accurately in ray-traced shadows and reflections. You see the value of that technology in how convincing the environments become. Some scenes have that CGI-like quality I used to associate with trailers showing what a future game might look like. Being able to move through them, explore, and then fight at this scale is incredible.

I played on my RTX 4090 desktop with an Intel Core i9-12900K (I know, a bit dated) and 64GB of RAM at 4K, along with my ROG Strix SCAR 18 at 2560 × 1440. The laptop has an Intel Core Ultra 9, an RTX 5080 Laptop GPU, and 32GB of RAM. Both were running Ultra settings with all available ray-tracing options enabled—it is buttery smooth. Unfortunately though, when frame-gen is set to off, those larger open sections did have frame-pacing issues, and they persisted through my playthrough. The laptop handled them significantly better, but even above 60fps, I could feel that the motion wasn’t consistently smooth. I noticed it on the desktop while targeting 4K60 with dynamic DLSS as well. Of course, this is before any day one patches so I suspect some proper driver updates to rectify these issues rather quickly. Outside those sections, the game ran beautifully, which made the inconsistency more apparent whenever I entered a larger area.

I eventually enabled Frame Generation alongside NVIDIA Reflex, and I was surprised by just how good the experience became. The improvement in smoothness was substantial, and the controls still felt highly responsive for me to enjoy the combat comfortably. That combination made a real difference in how I experienced the rest of the campaign. I still want the underlying frame pacing addressed, particularly given the hardware I was using because I don’t want to rely on artificial input latency for competitive gaming. In addition to that, I mostly found myself wishing I could clear more of the interface away. Give me more control over objective markers and let me shrink the HUD and reticle. The environments are so rich that I wanted as much of my screen devoted to them as possible.

REVIEW SCORE: 10/10

I finished E-Day feeling excited about Gears in a way I hadn’t felt in years. I cared about what Marcus and Dom were going through, and Lucas and Mags became characters I wanted to spend more time with. The ending delivered, the combat kept giving me reasons to experiment, and I genuinely enjoyed adjusting habits I’d carried through almost two decades of these games. Across 25 hours, I never felt like the campaign had run out of things worth showing me. I was invested in the people, fascinated by Kalona, and constantly impressed by what The Coalition had built.

The frame-pacing issues still deserve attention, even with how much Frame Generation and Reflex improved my experience. They were a frustration in a campaign that otherwise gave me so much of what I wanted from this franchise. When I think about finishing E-Day, though, I think about how eager I was to see what came next and how satisfying it felt to play. I remember being 16, staring at Gears on that enormous rented television, wondering what games could eventually become. E-Day gave me a moment to appreciate how far we’ve come. I absolutely loved this campaign. You can pick up Gears of War: E-Day on Amazon.

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