Gears of War: E-Day Campaign Review

The infamous ‘Emergence Day’ has been the focal point of Gears of War lore for 20 years, but we’ve never seen the ground open up until now. Watching the events of E-Day unfold is like watching a massive dam break in real time. Experiencing the fall of an entire city through the eyes of Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago is devastating, especially as they realize how little control they actually have. The Coalition takes us back to the past to evolve the franchise, pairing visceral, tight gameplay with the heavy emotional cost of desperation and loss. We already know the outcome of The Locust War, but finally experiencing the brutal catalyst that started it all makes Gears of War: E-Day the most devastating, impactful, and undeniably important story the franchise has ever told.

The game opens to Bravo Squad enjoying their time off while recuperating after the end of an exhausting 79-year war that spanned multiple generations. We are first introduced to a young Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, their friendship long-standing but not forged by the trials they are yet to face. The two meet Lucas Reyes, a cadet in the Coalition of Ordered Governments, and Mags Carter, a former COG soldier. It’s nice seeing people smile, experiencing parts of Sera that haven’t been ravaged by the Locust and seeing things whole. It’s not long before we’re thrust into the mass hysteria and confusion as sinkholes begin opening up all around the city of Kalona, and creatures begin emerging and waging war against the populace. The four do what comes naturally, taking up arms without armor and with minimal weaponry to fight back against this new threat. This opening feels straight out of a horror movie, running around trying to fight back and get people to safety. The first Gears of War had moments of feeling like a horror movie, but you were * ahem * geared to face the enemy. The immersion of running through Kalona, seeing everything lived-in and a world mostly intact is refreshing. Kalona also has a design aesthetic reminiscent of the 1970s or 1980s, a world and time we never got to see, but this was one I couldn’t get enough of. This is such a pivotal moment for the series; it helps solidify how the people become so miserable a decade later when the timeline of the first game happens. While this is very much a human story, it’s also one to tell of the Locust. They are clearly the bad guys, it demonstrates their intelligence around how exact their planning was. By the time I rolled credits on the campaign, it left some questions unanswered but also made room for more games to follow.

There are five acts in total, following the structure of the prior games which I can appreciate. The campaign can be played in two-player split-screen on console, or two to four-player online co-op. I played the game entirely solo on Normal as it was the default. The difficulties are all available from the start: Casual, Normal, Hardcore, and Insane. My save file says I played 13 hours 28 minutes start to finish, and while it was the only mode available, I kept coming back to see what would happen next. While some chapters can meander and lose their pace, the game always finds ways to recover and get back on-track. The campaign is wholly satisfying, full of surprises and excellent set piece moments to remember.

Weapons in the Gears of War games are unique in their design and implementation, but they can always be distilled into just: assault rifle, shotgun, pistol, grenades with an assorted variety of special weapons. And while that still is the case, there’s a strong roster of weapons that are both familiar and not, but take on exciting new dimensions. You see, the biggest change across the entire franchise is that you can now modify all your weapons at supply stations after you’ve acquired appropriate mods to slot in. Some examples are reloading your weapon when it is stowed on your back, or making the pistol shoot two-round bursts instead of single shots, or adding a larger scope with more zoom, and even extended magazines that have a negative effect of increasing recoil. Any weapon you pick-up will be added to supply stations, allowing you to have something like a torque bow that can be a part of your loadout from the moment you find it. This previously was only something you could equip regularly in multiplayer. Each mod you find can have two positives, or a positive and a negative trait. But in almost all instances, your weapon’s effectiveness will be improved by having them inserted; there are almost no downsides, so you want to equip mods on your guns. Weapon mods can be likened to character builds you wouldn’t otherwise get without the game introducing full-on RPG mechanics and systems that make it unique to you.

The active reload mechanic is still here, and not only does your ammo become more devastating when you hit it just right, but buffs from any of the mods equipped that mention “perfect reload” will come into effect, like reducing recoil and improving accuracy. The Gnasher shotgun is good as ever, but a Gnasher with slug ammo is a devastating combo that exacts brutality at a distance and up-close. In prior games, the only hipfire weapon that had true lethality was the Gnasher. Now, the Snub pistol works well to dispatch wretches with ease. When running around with the Lancer Mk1, your melee backup is a bayonet charge that looks cool every time you use it. The Lancer Mk1 has a lot of recoil, so you have to fire in controlled bursts or tap-fire to produce the best results at range. And yes, the Lancer with a chainsaw shows up, and its introduction is silly and almost nonsensical given the circumstances, but you absolutely want this gun in the game and you’ll likely never go back to the Mk1 once you have it.

Complementary to modding your weapons are armor mods. Eventually you meet with the COG, and as part of taking up real arms, you get fitted in your armor to do battle with the Locust. There are 20 mods to find, but only three can be slotted at a time. So you do have to be picky about what goes where. Tactical gear lets you deploy different systems to help you. The first one you unlock is an adrenaline injector that refills health, reduces incoming damage, and boosts outgoing damage. Next is the sonic disruptor, able to stun enemies ahead of you in a cone pattern, interrupting their attacks for a short period. The third option is a stim vaporizer, able to disperse health in an area of effect to heal and revive all Gears within it. Lastly, the pulse drone makes enemies brighter than their surroundings in order to eliminate any stragglers or enemies taking cover. If you’re having a hard time snapping to targets or managing kickback, combining the right gun, armor, and tactical mods can reduce recoil to zero and make aiming nearly instantaneous.

Regenerating health is a core system of Gears of War that persists to E-Day. Though a bit of the co-op design for the campaign does seep into the single-player, as you can be downed four times before it’s finally a game over. Additionally, if you are down and the rest of the squad is killed, it’s an instant game over and a reload of the previous save. I did find my AI teammates really good at prioritizing me any time I did go down, and were able to get me up successfully. Maybe it’s their young age or the armor was lighter, but Marcus and the squad have high mobility. These Gears still lumber and have heavy footsteps, but they can run and now slide. While it’s a small change, I noticed that not everything is just full or waist-high cover, there’s now low-cover. You can now slide into low-profile cover, lying on your back or side while still returning fire – it just looks damn cool.

The Locust don’t have regenerating health, so you can do sustained damage with frequent breaks until they die. They can also go down-but-not-out like you, so you have to finish them off or take out their buddies, else they can be picked up. The game introduces enemies you may or may not be familiar with, but they all come with new tactics and improved combat AI that makes every encounter a fight for your life if you’re careless. Familiar Locust types are drones, wretches, brumaks, and more. New to the roster are massive frog-like enemies that spew acid balls that eat away at your health really quickly, forcing you to stay on the move when fighting them. Though not all enemies are created equal, there’s a floating sentient sac that shoots a group of sentient pustules that shoot at you. The game tells you to shoot the eyes on the sac out, but this takes way too much ammo and time to do. These enemies are the absolute worst and drag the game down, not because they’re difficult, but I just think they are a badly designed enemy that’s more annoying than interesting to fight. While I enjoyed most of the boss battles in the game, most of them are bosses that are just bullet sponges. Going back 20 years, the original Gears of War had inventive fights like luring the blind berserker into pillars and then out into the open to use the Hammer of Dawn. While I appreciate a small but helpful health bar showing the damage being done, it’s not fun when nearly every boss is just putting all your ammo into them until they are dead.

There are a few chapters throughout the campaign where you’re set upon an open-world, complete with a map. It’s nothing revolutionary, as Gears 5 experimented with this. Here it’s much more focused, deliberate, and works in-world. There will be a main mission to chase, but as you walk about the world, you can search for collectibles, mod crates, or help the people of Kalona. Sometimes side missions will just appear, other times they will pop up dynamically as you come within earshot of a stranded COG squad, helpless civilians, or civilians trying to help others. There are skirmishes all over the city, and it feels so alive, hectic, and emergent to jump in and help. One mission unfolded rather hilariously: a sniper squad was setting up an ambush as we were walking through, and we nearly ruined the surprise. So we all ran into the building with the snipers and posted up. After waiting for less than a minute, a massive Locust squad with drones and two boomers walked into the killbox, laced with explosive canisters. For some reason, one of my AI teammates started shooting while I waited patiently, ruining the ambush a few seconds too early. But my prepped frag grenade was immediately thrown and it landed with precision at their feet, blowing up all enemies in one fell swoop, finishing the side mission. This happens often, and there are unique and interesting stories worth exploring. Every side mission nets you a mod of some kind as reward for your good deeds.

There are times when the squad is forced to split up. You aren’t given a choice, but seeing how the squads diverge while still being able to help each other in combat is really interesting and smartly designed. There are many times when you’re not in combat, and this is indicated by the fact that you’ll just be walking with your gun held low, and you can jog but it lets you soak up the atmosphere as the HUD fades away. When in combat, the HUD returns and the default is a jog and you can then engage the roadie run to quickly get to safety.

There’s the typical operating a turret while in a chopper sequence, but there are several surprises, moments of beauty, and genuine excitement with it. The game will return to several locations as the game takes place across a single city, but the cleverness lies in how it shows you the stages of destruction, from whole to barely standing when you revisit an area several acts later. Cliff Bleszinski described the original Gears of War as “destroyed beauty”, Gears of War: E-Day is “created beauty amid destruction”. I love how the audio changes depending on environment; interiors echo with gunfire and exteriors carry sound across long distances.

Collectibles are everywhere in this game; there are all kinds of memorabilia, either newspapers, sentimental items, or the returning COG tags. While they aren’t particularly interesting on their own, there are a lot of them, and the game has a little chime to indicate you’re near one to make finding them faster.

I guess I wanted a challenge, but I played the entirety of the campaign on Linux, and it worked really well. Though I do want to call out that since I played this unconventionally (on Linux, without the latest NVIDIA drivers, on Steam and no Advanced Shader Delivery), it took six and a half minutes for the shaders to compile each and every time I launched the game. I won’t ding the game for this, as I suspect it will either be fixed in future updates, driver releases, or other means, but it’s something to be aware of.

I did have a few issues getting the game running, but it worked when I switched to Proton Experimental compatibility. Since I only had access to the campaign, the Easy Anti-Cheat was a non-issue and let me play with ease. This is easily the best looking Gears game yet. It feels incredibly fitting to see this game pushing Unreal Engine 5 to its limits, considering Epic Games built the original as a showcase for Unreal Engine 3. I played the game with everything set to Ultra, though the highest setting in the game is Ludicrous. There’s no option to disable ray tracing, it’s all on by default, so it’s just a matter of adjusting quality. I played with DLSS set to Quality, Frame Generation set to 2X, and Reflex On + Boost. I was able to achieve an average of 100fps, though there were occasional dips and higher framerates depending on location.

Even in a silo, Gears of War: E-Day delivers a rollercoaster of action and emotion that ranks alongside the series’ best campaigns. The Coalition grounds the global devastation of Emergence Day in a deeply human story, letting players watch Marcus and Dom’s friendship forge into an unbreakable brotherhood. It retains the franchise’s signature brutality while completely reinvigorating the moment-to-moment combat. While the narrative plays it safe compared to the tragic finality of Halo: Reach, it sticks the landing and beautifully sets the stage for a new trilogy. Gears of War: E-Day serves as the perfect entry point for newcomers, and explores the devastating, series-haunting history veterans have waited twenty years to experience.