I’ve played every Gears of War game, so there aren’t many Locust left that can surprise me. After all those games, I’m aware of the dangers I’m facing and which weapons work best against them or, more importantly, when I should probably get behind some cover if I want to survive. Gears of War: E-Day goes back to a time when Marcus and Dom didn’t know any of that yet and weren’t the veteran post-war Gears we all came to love over the past games. In this prequel, humanity has no idea what’s coming out of the ground and the enemies that eventually became cannon fodder in the last couple of games are dangerous again, and suddenly that darker atmosphere from the older games is back too. I didn’t expect going backwards in the timeline to have such a big effect on how Gears feels, but it did. I’ve missed this version of the franchise, so grab that Lancer, we’re going back in.
When they emerged
Gears of War: E-Day takes place fourteen years before the original game and follows Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago during the first Locust invasion. Of course, anyone who has played these games knows what Emergence Day means and what eventually happens to Sera, but Marcus and Dom don’t have that knowledge yet. They’re thrown into a situation nobody understands, fighting creatures they’ve never seen before while everything around them starts falling apart. This different era might sound like a good excuse to have Marcus and Dom reunited on screen again, but the impact goes way beyond just telling another story. Over the last couple of years, I’ve killed some of these enemies hundreds of times by now, so I’ve reached a point where seeing them appear barely gets a reaction out of me anymore because I already know exactly how to deal with them. E-Day makes them threatening again; even enemies that later became some of the easier targets can put you in trouble here, and because the game is pretty challenging, ignoring one for too long usually isn’t a great idea. I really liked that return to the franchise’s horror roots.
You never really know what Marcus and Dom are going to find next, and neither do they. Humanity isn’t fighting a war against an enemy it has studied for years; people are literally watching these creatures crawl out of the ground for the first time while everything they know starts disappearing around them. That gave the campaign a tension I haven’t really felt in Gears for quite some time. Entering another building, moving through a dark corridor or simply hearing something before actually seeing it can be enough to make you a little more careful. Of course, you’re still playing Gears of War, so sooner or later that tension ends with a lot of bullets and probably something getting cut in half, but the build-up towards those moments is just as important. There’s another side to playing a prequel like this when you’ve followed the franchise from the beginning. Marcus and Dom might not know what’s waiting for them, but I certainly do. Seeing certain characters again was a lot more emotional than I expected because I already know where their stories eventually lead. I know what some of these people are going to lose, I know which relationships are going to change and I know that some of the happier moments we’re seeing here aren’t going to last forever.
That made even some rather normal conversations hit differently for me. You’re watching younger versions of characters you’ve known for years, before all the events that eventually shaped them into the people we remember. Marcus is still Marcus and Dom is still Dom, but they’re not carrying the full weight of everything that happens later in the series yet. I’ve spent countless hours with both of them over the years, so getting this extra part of their story wasn’t something I took for granted. Bringing them back could easily have felt like nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia, but I was genuinely invested in seeing how they experienced the beginning of a war we already know so well. And E-Day really does make it feel like the beginning of something enormous. This isn’t just Marcus and Dom running around while somebody somewhere tells you that the world is in trouble. You actually see everything falling apart around them. Streets turn into warzones, places that seemed perfectly safe minutes earlier can suddenly become complete chaos and there are moments where so much is happening on screen that I almost forgot I was supposed to keep moving. The campaign can become absolutely huge when it wants to, and some of its bigger sequences are easily among my favorites in the entire franchise.
That’s also where the next-gen presentation makes a huge difference. Gears has always had cinematic ambitions, but E-Day can sometimes look ridiculously impressive. The amount of destruction going on around you, the lighting, the facial animations and simply seeing the scale of what is happening to Sera all help sell the idea that you’re experiencing a catastrophic event instead of another normal day in the life of Marcus Fenix. I regularly wanted to see what was waiting around the next corner, partly because of the story and partly because I knew the game would eventually throw another spectacular scene at me. What I liked most is how naturally those huge moments sit next to the darker ones. E-Day can put you in a relatively small location where the Locust feel like creatures from a horror game and then, not much later, have everything explode into another massive battle. For someone who has played every entry, that’s probably why the campaign hit me as hard as it did. I already knew Emergence Day happened. I knew Marcus and Dom survived it and I knew what awaited them afterwards. E-Day still managed to make me care about what was happening in the moment instead of simply waiting for the pieces I recognized and considering this is a prequel where I already know so much about the future, that’s quite an achievement.
Use that cover
Gears is a lot more than a pretty story of course, once the actual shooting starts, E-Day immediately reminded me why this series became so famous for its cover system in the first place. Of course, taking cover has always been part of Gears, but after playing so many entries you eventually get so used to it that it almost becomes second nature. Here, I was constantly reminded that hiding behind a wall isn’t just a gimmick but the way to stay alive, especially since the enemies know a couple of new tricks. The difficulty can be pretty unforgiving and the enemies are smart enough to punish you when you become too cocky. I had to pay attention to my surroundings, make sure I wasn’t exposing myself for too long and think about when it was actually safe to move forward. Where I often stayed in a certain spot that gave me the perfect cover in the earlier games, enemies adapt to that strategy by flanking you or by sending different types of enemies to your cover to force you out of it. Since they are adapting, you’ll have to do the same too by flanking them and using everything to your proposal in the more intense fights. That all might sound obvious for a Gears game, but it makes a big difference when the enemies themselves are dangerous again. You can’t simply assume that the next encounter will be another room filled with targets waiting for you to clear them out. Even enemies I barely worried about anymore in later games can cause trouble here, and once several of them are putting pressure on you at the same time, things can go wrong very quickly. I really enjoyed that because it made every fight feel a little less routine than I expected from a franchise I’ve been playing for this long.
Since you’re dealing with a lot of different enemies along the campaing, you’ll need to have guns and boy, will you have guns. The franchise is known for its over the top weapons and eventhouhg the prequel limits you a bit when it comes to your arsenal, there are a couple of tricks to keep you motivated. In the larger open missions, you can upgrade your weapons along the way, this goes from changing the size of the magazines to giving certain weapons special buffs to hit even harder. Hitting the enemies hard in the face remained as satisfying as ever as shooting never feels weak, and when combat gets messy, the combination of gunfire, explosions and enemies closing in on your position can become incredibly intense. There were plenty of encounters where I thought I had everything under control until suddenly I didn’t anymore. That’s where the difficulty really kicked in, forcing you to pick the right weapon and hope for a succesfull active reload to give you that slight edge. I never felt like the game was simply throwing more enemies at me for the sake of it; I actually had to react to everything that was happening in front of me. The boss fights also fit nicely into that. I won’t spoil any of them, but there are some very fun encounters here and a few of them definitely made me work for the victory. Some fights are exactly the kind of ridiculous Gears spectacle I was hoping for, while still forcing me to actually pay attention to what I was doing.
Just one more Horde
The campaign was always going to be the main reason I wanted to play E-Day, but I have to admit that I spent a lot more time in the multiplayer than expected, especially thanks to Horde Siege. This time, twelve players are divided into three squads of four and although everybody has their own objectives to complete, you’re still playing on the same battlefield which means you’ll eventually run into the other teams as well. That’s where things can get pretty crazy because one moment you’re just doing your own thing with your squad and a couple of minutes later everybody is fighting together because the Locust decided to make life difficult for all of you at the same time. Especially when stronger enemies start appearing, things can get out of hand rather quickly and those were the moments where I had the most fun with the mode.
Besides that, there are also extra objectives and upgrades you can go after during the match so you’re not just waiting around until another wave starts. I liked having that extra reason to move around the map because it keeps the mode from becoming too predictable and I often found myself playing longer than I planned. I went into Horde Siege thinking I would just try it for a while, but it quickly became one of those modes where I kept telling myself I would stop after the next match. The other multiplayer options are fun too, especially if you want something more competitive, but Horde Siege is easily the mode I see myself playing the most with friends. For a game where I mainly came for the campaign, that’s more than a little extra.
Conclusion
After all these years, I didn’t expect a Gears prequel to hit me this hard. E-Day takes characters and enemies I know inside out and somehow makes them feel important again, especially because I already know where all of this is heading. By the time I finished the campaign, it felt like I had finally seen a missing part of a story I’ve been following for years. I thought I’d be done after the credits, but Horde Siege quickly proved otherwise. For me, this sits right up there with the best games in the series.