Gears of War: E-Day review
A prologue that goes back to the heart of this series.
To the casual observer, Gears of War has always been a heavy metal third-person shooter about a bunch of meatheads with chainsaws attached to their guns and fighting aliens. But what Gears fans know all too well is that the real secret to the series' two decades of success isn't killer graphics, clever cloaking mechanics, or flawlessly glorious conceit — though those are certainly important parts of the recipe. This is the heart. The brotherhood of Marcus and Dom. JD or Del's sacrifice (depending on what you chose to do in Gears 5). Unrelenting love for Maria. And so my biggest question about Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel to the first game set 14 years before the Locust emerged from under the planet Sera, was how to hang on to that heart when we knew our armored brethren would definitely survive to the end. I'm happy to say that E-Day carries its own satisfying emotional weight, with welcome backstories from Marcus and Dom - oh, and the action is pretty great too.
E-Day begins with our Coalition of Orderly Government (COG) heroes, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, completing a ceremonial tour in recognition of their service in the 79-year Pendulum Wars. We get a glimpse of how each of them comes to terms with the end of the only thing they've ever known: Marcus is ready to be rehired and hopes that Dom will join him, while Dom is ready to go home to his wife Maria and their two young children who will grow up without him. Of course, things quickly go to hell - or rather, hell comes to them. Gears of War: E-Day does a great job of conveying the uncertainty and horror of what's going on with these characters, even when we as players know exactly what's going on.
It's no surprise that Gears 5 is a great third-person action game. The iconic series has never really gone wrong, even when hands change from original developer Epic to The Coalition, and the hot streak remains unbroken. What was unexpected is how effectively it doubles as a consequence-focused, character-driven story that plays to one of the franchise's most overlooked strengths and backs it up with fun and enjoyable additions to both the gameplay formula and the flow. And that's just the campaign: add a powerful multiplayer suite of Versus, Versus Arcade, Horde and Escape, and Gears 5 is one of the best and most versatile action packages in recent memory. — Ryan McCaffrey, September 13, 2019
Incidentally, Marcus and Dom are informally paired with Gear Mags Carter and Gear rookie Lucas Reyes, who happen to be in the same bar when the Locust quakes begin, before the foursome officially becomes the Bravo Squad as the COG begins to organize its defenses. E-Day deserves a lot of credit here: in a prequel like this where you're already attached to the clues, it's easy for Carter and Reese to fall in with each other, characters who only exist to further the story of our two established heroes. But E-Day devotes time to your lesser-known Bravo teammates, devoting whole meaningful and enjoyable segments to establishing them in this world and making you care about them.
The sheer nightmare of E-Day is reflected in both the variety of Locust monsters you encounter as the campaign progresses and the variety of weapons you need to bring them back to Earth. Wretches and easy-to-dispatch speed drones are on the front lines as Bravo Squad wonders what the hell they're up against during the invasion's business hours. You'll take them down with Gears of War staples like the Gnasher and Lancer shotguns, both the original bayonet version and the prototype chainsaw version. Yes, you will soon get your hands on the most famous Gears firearm and even get to see its funny little story.
E-Day takes time for your lesser-known teammates and makes you care.
But as you move through the first hours of the Locust Invasion, Team Bravo is constantly confused and terrified by the increasingly deadly horror that tries to kill them. The monster is naturally a mix of enemies you haven't seen before in any other Gears of War game, and the battles get steadily darker as you progress through the five-act story. Giant frog-like behemoths that leap and throw gallons of acid at you. It weighs it down. It comes in many varieties, the most dangerous of all being those that fire a medium-range gorehook - a hook on a chain that usually takes you down in one hit.
On that note, one of my few complaints about Gears of War: E-Day has to do with the situations you'll encounter during the campaign. When, not if, you get knocked down, your allies will occasionally stand right next to you and not revive you. To be fair, it wasn't a frequent occurrence, but during my first 15-18 hours of play there were many times when I ran into a heavy grasshopper because one of my friends was either standing next to me and didn't pick me up, ran away and left me for dead, or didn't even approach me while I held the life button for a while. The immediate fix for this is to play four-player online via E-Day (two-player split screen is a limitation of a single Xbox), but I'm sure a patch will fix this inconsistent AI behavior sooner rather than later.
Like the Locust enemies, E-Day's guns are a mix of old and new, and oh my god I love them. Each weapon has a unique purpose to match a specific combat strategy. Blasting a Locust Heavy with the Gnasher Rifle, shredding a Drone with a Lancer Prototype chainsaw attachment, or blowing a Locust Sniper's head off with a long-shot kill is still pretty cool. But there's more to it than just classic Gears. First introduced in the oft-forgotten Gears of War: Judgment, the Breechshot was one of my favorites as the campaign wore on, as it offered full range and stopping power without the bulkiness of something like a longshot sniper rifle.
But there are plenty of weapons I can shout out, like the incinerator, which blasts flesh-melting Imulsion with a blast shotgun. Ripper, which is basically the Gears-universe equivalent of a SAW. and the old-time favorite Torq Bow, which winds up as hell but then fires an explosive arrow at your target. I liked the weapon complement here, as well as the options the deep firearm list gave me in some of the later battles of the campaign.
And it's not just that it's fun to use all these weapons in the right situation. All of them can also be modified and upgraded through E-Day's new Weapon Mod and Tactical Gear system. You will encounter dozens of yellow hard frames that are gently hidden throughout the world for you to find. Each contains a mod for one or another weapon, such as accuracy boosts, scopes, or grappling boosts. Completing optional secondary objectives around the large industrial city of Kalona where E-Day takes place also brings the same rewards. Each weapon has four mod slots that you'll unlock as you go, and I found myself constantly changing each weapon to find the right combination of add-ons that suited my playstyle. As such, I was highly motivated to find every Hard Case I could and complete every secondary objective possible.
Additionally, it's Tactical Gear that mods your armor, and allows you to choose from a few team-affecting special abilities that charge with a cooldown timer when used. Again, you'll unlock more as you progress, but once I got my hands on the Stim, which allowed me to briefly heal myself and teammates within its radius, I was never tempted by any of the other choices. All of these customization options evolve the classic Gears of War combat in a welcome but not radical way that I appreciate, while the free saves allow you to rotate weapons and mods as often as you like.
And you'll be happy to be able to sort out your weapon reloads often in E-Day's mini boss fights and full boss battles. Almost all of them are well remembered. With a mix of old and new 'faces', these were often the matches that barely scratched the surface of my playthroughs, and the ones I welcomed both when I entered and when I won.
Almost all of the boss fights are pretty memorable.
E-Day is full of beautiful places. the ruined city center of Kalona; Black caves and locusts below. An almost ominous looking Imulsion refinery. Quiet Peaks Outside the City Although not all of the fighting takes place there, you'll spend a decent amount of time in Kaluna, and the massive but dense battlespaces there are a nice evolution from the mostly empty open-world areas of Gears 5. Freedom feels much more organic and meaningful here, as there's plenty of interesting stuff around almost every corner.
In addition to the aforementioned secondary objectives that give the Weapon Mod meaningful upgrades, there are hidden objects with visible details that add some color to a world recovering from a 79-year-old civil war, only to be invaded and destroyed by the Locust in a matter of days. The superb visuals are only marred by rare but noticeable frame rate hits, even when playing in performance mode on the Xbox Series X. As such, I can't recommend playing in 30fps quality mode - at least not before a patch or two.
On a side note, I appreciate that E-Day doesn't do the all-too-common "make the player run the gauntlet of whatever they've already fought, but multiply it" endgame sequence. Instead, your mettle is tested many times along the way, with plenty of quiet moments to punctuate the long action. And the ending, without spoiling anything, is satisfying, which isn't easy when, as I mentioned, we know that Marcus and Dom will make it out of E-Day alive. And thank goodness, because I need more Marcus Fenix witty one-liners in my life. I can't get enough of them.
With Gears of War: E-Day officially launched and live servers hosting multiplayer matches for about a week, I've spent a lot of time with each of E-Day's online modes. I've already spent some early time with Horde Siege during the pre-launch beta weekends. Horde Siege is what I want to talk about the most because I think it's the tastiest dish on the prequel's multiplayer menu, but I'll tackle the ol' standby first: Versus mode, which is the only multiplayer mode that's been around since the beginning.
Versus, for better or for worse, is a Gnasher shotgun wall-fest. As it has always been. There is a mode you can get in that is very enjoyable. Warpath mode helps keep things moving, with each team trying to secure and maintain control of rotating zones. It's not something we haven't seen hundreds of times before, but it works. It pulls all the action into one place, and Gears of War has always thrived on closer combat (no disrespect to the long-shot snipers out there). I've never had a problem finding a match, and the crossplay kicks in right away. There's also no shortage of items to unlock the more you play, so you have incentives to stay in the race behind the hamster, day in and day out.
While you can bring your team of four friends to matchmaking and stick together round after round, E-Day unfortunately lacks private matches entirely. This is frustrating, because if you have a large group of friends who just want to get together for a fun night out, it's not going to happen unless you make a low-luck successful diceroll. E-Day makes a point to let you (and your friends, if you like) play with robots, if you prefer to remove the human element entirely. And to their credit, those bots can be set to any difficulty level, so it's a joy to play here, whether you're new to Gears or a 20-year veteran of the series looking for the ultimate challenge.
Meanwhile, Horde Siege is the star of the show. Of course, Gears of War started (or at least popularized) the PvE trend with the first Horde game in Gears of War 2. The maps are cut from the large city of Kalona in the single-player campaign, so if you've completed that, you're home.
What's really cool is that there are three other teams of four running around the same huge maps as you, each fighting their own battles. It doesn't suddenly turn Gears into a PvE version of Battle Royale or anything on that scale, but it does make the matches seem a little more alive when you see another group trying to take down a giant bromac in the distance while you try to exfiltrate in your Raven King chopper.
Horde Siege mode is the star of the multiplayer show.
In terms of turn-by-turn gameplay, I really like how random and optional secondary tasks pop up between your main Horde Siege objectives and completing them. Rewards like reduced upgrade costs between rounds. And yes, saves are just as vital in Horde Siege as they are in the campaign. More, probably. Killing grasshoppers and successfully completing objectives earns you grids that you spend on refilling ammo, defensive items (which you will 100% need!) like Mortar Sentries and Spike Traps, and more.
In addition, there is also a huge meta improvement in the Horde Siege mode. It's class-based, using tactical gear, Armor Mods, and cooldown power-ups from the campaign, breaking them down into Assault, Breacher, Marksman, and Medic classes. I chose to use Medic, which was the kit I used in the campaign, because I preferred to be able to heal and revive myself and my teammates in difficult situations.
And oh man, there are a lot of tight spots. I rarely had a quiet moment while playing Horde Siege, especially after completing the first two objectives. Everything rushes quickly. My teammates and I were repeatedly pressured from all sides by a crazy mix of bad guys, like Heavy Boomers and Rivers, Heavis with Gorehawks and Bromacs, and those damn balloon-looking bastards with the last damn boss of the game. And that's not to say that electronic holes will constantly appear and launch more enemies from the ground at you. Needless to say, working together is clutch, but surviving and thriving is a blast. I absolutely love what Horde has evolved into with Horde Siege.
Gears of War: E-Day is a powerful campaign and multiplayer package. The single-player (and co-op!) story stands up to the best in the series, with heavy doses of heart and horror, a wicked complement of switchable weapons, and a whole host of awesome combat combos. A sharp - if tasty shotgun - vs. and an evolved Horde Siege mode are also fully equipped to keep you and your friends having plenty of late-night PvE fun. All in all, the newest game in this long-running shooter series is one of my favorite games of the year, and dare I say, one of the best.