Gears of War E-Day Review, Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Top Features

Gears of War: E-Day from developers The Coalition and People Can Fly hopes to look back to move the iconic series forward.

The first mainline entry in the Gears of War series since Gears 5 in 2019, E-Day is a prequel that finally gives players the chance to experience the fabled Emergence Day, marking the arrival of the Locust Horde.

Promising enhanced cover-based combat, a heartfelt tale with the tried-and-true characters and the necessary multiplayer elements, E-Day hopes for a triumphant return that gets the series back up there with the greats for a new generation.

Another visual feast from Unreal Engine 5, E-Day goes to great lengths to finally deliver the oft-requested environmental damage and outright destruction that fits the Gears series so well.

The battlefields found throughout the game crumble and deform in response to the action in ways that make sense. Beyond just being fantastic-looking and immersive, it adds a fun layer atop the action.

It should go without saying at this point, but overall, the game just looks great in terms of character and environments. The gritty world and expected superb sound effects are nearly unmatched for the chainsaw, overall gunplay and battlefield cries.

This is one of the more gnarly and grisly games out there, even for a series like Gears. Localized damage on an enemy's body will produce some winces, never mind the smattering of gore all over the place by the end of a battle.

Gameplay is oh-so Gears in that great, over-the-shoulder, third-person carnage sort of way.

To accommodate some of the big fluidity changes, E-Day marks the first big control mapping changes in a long time, too. Running is now tied to the left stick, while cover is the "a" face button, to note a few of the big changes. There's an adjustment period, for sure, but it feels better in tandem with the speed of things and options available.

The expansion of mobility just feels right. Players can now slide, take lower cover than normal and climb higher, to name a few options.

This is still very much a love letter to weaponry, too. The active-reload system triumphantly returns in a way only Gears can get right. And players have the option to interrupt a shell-by-shell reload to melee or otherwise react to enemies.

Like past games, the mixture of varied enemies and locales on top of the almost addicting gameplay loop, made all the better by that great-feeling reloading system, makes for a great time. It's still impressive even all these years later that Gears found a way to make "downtime" in a fight while reloading super compelling and important.

Set 14 years before the events of the first game, players link back up with Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago to experience the true E-Day on the planet Sera.

It's compelling to actually see the aftermath of the oft-talked-about Pendulum Wars, which features Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) soldiers like Marcus simply leading normal lives before being ripped into battle with the Locust Horde.

Along those same lines, E-Day manages to recapture the sense of brotherhood amongst its cast that newer games seemed to lose.

We're not going to say it matches the history-making "Mad World" trailer , but it's probably the closest the series has come since.

To its credit, E-Day's campaign mixes it up well. There are linear missions, but also semi-open-world sections that let players run off to explore, tackle side quests and other fun stuff.

This campaign supports four-player online co-op, so it's got that Xbox 360 vibe in terms of linking up with friends.

On the multiplayer side, E-Day hits the expected stuff really well.

There's the four-on-four competitive mode, spanning the classic team deathmatch and conquest modes.

Arena shooters like this require careful balance and it feels good here out of the gates. Players spawn onto a map with the basics like the lancer, shotgun and a smoke grenade, with pre-set spawns of weapons scattered across the map.

Gears nailed this down years ago. Map control of key areas, encouraged by not just cover, but the obtainable weapons, makes for compelling engagements.

For those who want less competition and more collaboration, E-Day also offers Horde Siege, a 12-player co-op mode, with players split into three squads of four. Players pick from one of four classes:

Those squads populate different parts of a bigger map and pursue their own objectives. But it also makes for some really interesting larger-scale events where multiple squad events can come together to survive.

There's a solid progression system of its own within Horde Siege, where difficulty scales with class level and things like energy can be spent on upgrades. There's also a squad perks system to engage with, while survival via extraction is key to keeping some of the goodies.

Overall, Horde Siege is a really fun mixture of good traits from the likes of Helldivers and other extraction greats of the last few years, but with that Gears flair nobody else can match.

E-Day runs well despite some of the really impressive stuff going on and comes with the expected gamut of options for players to tweak.

E-Day nails the most critical items in a new Gears release: Refinements to the combat system that keep it standing alone on the market in the best possible way, with some serious storytelling and character chops.

It's hard to undersell these points. The camaraderie in the face of a world-ending threat the early games achieved so well is finally back. And the seamless cover-based combat with sometimes as simple as reloading being an interesting, strategy-filled action, truly has no equal.

We'll see if Gears as a whole enjoys a resurgence capable of swinging console wars and the like. But for the long faithful and newcomer alike, E-Day easily tops some of the recent releases in the series and is one of the top games of a stacked 2026.