It’s been over seven years since Vancouver-based studio The Coalition released its last game, Gears 5. According to a 2023 rumor by Jeff Grubb, that’s because the developers canceled two unannounced side projects before focusing on Gears of War: E-Day.

That’s a long time for any studio, and especially so for one owned and funded by Xbox, which chose it to shepherd the Gears franchise after the split with Epic Games and is now also positioning it as a rare Xbox console exclusive. So far, The Coalition has done fairly well, or at least better than 343 Industries with Halo. Still, the original trilogy made by Epic remains the series’ high point in both critical reception and commercial performance.

Over time, the installments started to feel samey, and that’s why Gears 5 introduced a new protagonist (Kait Diaz) and open world-ish exploration in some of the maps via the Skiff vehicle and several side quests scattered through the environments. E-Day keeps a fairly similar gameplay formula, albeit with mixed results. I’ll get into that later; by the way, I’ll note that Xbox did not provide access to online multiplayer modes ahead of the game’s Early Access launch scheduled for later today, so this review is focused solely on the campaign.

Being a prequel, E-Day puts players once again in the shoes of the series’ most iconic protagonist, Marcus Fenix, who’s joined by his long-time friend Dominic Santiago and two brand new characters, Lucas Reyes and Mag Carter. This isn’t an established squad, mind you: the game starts shortly after the end of the Pendulum Wars, a 79-year conflict between the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) and the Union of Independent Republics (UIR), fought largely over control of Imulsion, Sera’s main fuel source. The COG has just won, and they are celebrating in Kalona, where Marcus and Dom are honoring the memory of Dom’s older brother, Carlos (who died in the Battle of Aspho Fields, which proved to be the key to the COG’s victory).

The two friends are drinking in a pub, and Dom has just told Marcus he wants to retire from the military to live a civilian life with his wife, Maria, and the kids, Benedicto and Livia, when a noisy commotion draws them and a few other patrons outside the pub. That’s when they first come in contact with the Locust, who are digging holes all across the cities and swarming hordes of monsters out of them. Their first reaction is one of shock, and understandably so, with civilians being mauled left and right by these hideous creatures.

Still, ever the soldiers, they quickly recover and use makeshift weapons to fight back against the smaller Wretches. Thankfully, two of those patrons are soldiers themselves and join to help. Reyes is a recently enlisted COG soldier with a specialization in communications and tech, while Carter has been retired for a few years due to Rustlung, a respiratory disease she contracted while working Imulsion in a Kalona refinery.

The four resolve to make their way toward the nearest rally center, and from henceforth, it’s pretty much a standard Gears story. Sure, the characters often share surprised comments whenever they first encounter a new type of Locust, and they despair here and there upon realizing the full scale of the invasion, but they’re soldiers: by and large, they focus on the task at hand. This inherently diminishes the horror of a sudden invasion by a species of monstrous-looking creatures, which I feel Gears of War: E-Day should have exposed a little more.

As for the narrative itself, it is a step back from the character-led story told in Gears 5, which was one of the highlights of that installment. Of course, fans of the lore will be thrilled to witness the Locust’s first recorded appearance above ground, but that aside, it’s not a memorable plot in any way. That said, at least the squad members are rather well portrayed, though Marcus Fenix himself largely remains the impenetrable supersoldier we’ve known in previous Gears games.

The gameplay of Gears of War: E-Day mixes linear segments with a few open areas where the player is free to explore (on foot, as there are no drivable vehicles in the game). Bravo Squad is asked to help both other COG teams and civilians as they encounter them on the streets of Kalona, which sells the feeling of an urban invasion very well. There are plenty of side missions to embark on as the squad tries to save as many humans as possible from the bloodthirsty Locust. Having thoroughly roamed the maps in search of them, I ended up spending over 20 hours in the campaign, the longest of any Gears title to date.

Unfortunately, most of the side content has minimal narrative payoff; in some cases, you don’t even learn the names of the civilians you’re saving. It also makes absolutely zero difference, both from a story and gameplay standpoint, whether you save all of them or leave them to rot and go straight toward the main missions. The Coalition never promised it would, but it’s a clear avenue of improvement that would have made the player’s actions feel like they actually matter.

At least the side missions are often some of the toughest combat challenges in the game, making them worth going through for that alone. Completing them can also reward you with interesting weapon or armor mods, which are additionally unlocked by finding Hard Cases, yellow crates scattered across the maps. Overall, combat is the game’s greatest triumph, further cementing the franchise’s status as the best third-person cover-based shooter on the market. The movement is more fluid than ever, and new traversal skills like sliding from a sprint, jumping across gaps, climbing structures and vehicles, and low-ground cover enhance the already great foundation of Gears 5.

Enemy AI is ruthless, too, especially on Hardcore (and above) difficulty. I can’t quite say the same of the Bravo Squad members, though. Sure, sometimes they revive you when you’re down, but they often fail to do so when you’re tackled to the ground by a Rager. They also seem to deal very little damage on their own, likely because the developers want the player character to feel like the star of the show. Weirdly enough, while the squadmates can be downed, they do not get killed off until the very final boss fight, in which suddenly it’s game over not only if Marcus dies, but also if the boss finishes off any of his other companions.

The Coalition is considered to be one of the foremost experts in Unreal Engine technology. They often help other Xbox studios that use Epic’s engine, and they have regularly delivered technical excellence in their own games. The studio itself boasted about the usage of MegaLights to achieve hundreds of shadowcasting lights, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as the game also supports RTX Mega Geometry and is the first non-Remedy game to do so. Gears of War: E-Day also supports ray traced shadows, reflections, and Lumen-powered global illumination.

Indeed, the game looks great, though even with all these features, the visuals still fall well short of full-fledged path traced titles. E-Day also performs worse, at least when compared with RED Engine’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered and Cyberpunk 2077. The game comes with a built-in benchmark, which I’ve run on both DLSS Dynamic MFG and 6X MFG. 6X produces many more generated frames but fewer base frames due to increased overhead; however, it also exhibits less frame-time variance.

I played the campaign with Dynamic MFG enabled and experienced frequent stuttering, especially in the open-ended refinery map featured in the first few chapters of Act 4. It is yet another instance of the well-known UE5 traversal stutter phenomenon that plagues many open world games developed with Epic’s technology, and it’s one of the reasons I am skeptical of CDPR’s decision to switch engines for The Witcher 4. Hopefully, they can find a way to at least minimize the problem in that game; as for Gears of War: E-Day, I don’t have much hope for a fix.

The Game Ready optimized driver is already available. Granted, the developer could issue a patch, but history shows that cases of games improving after exhibiting such problems at launch are few and far between.

Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).

You can find additional information about our standard review process and ethics policy here.

7.4

WCCFTECH RATING

Gears of War: E-Day

About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief.

In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech’s gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews.

Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications.

His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.