Seven years after the last mainline entry, the first “Gears of War: E-Day” reviews agree on one thing: the shooting is superb. Where critics split from the hype is everything around it, from the story to the pacing to a campaign that one reviewer says runs far too long.
Kotaku and PC Gamer both published early, in-progress takes on Thursday, Oct. 1, as the prequel’s early access opened on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC and Steam. Neither outlet has assigned a score yet, and both played only the campaign, the one mode available before launch.
The prequel is set on Emergence Day, 14 years before the 2006 original, when the Locust Horde first bursts out of the ground. Players follow Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago through the besieged city of Kalona, which Kotaku likened to a Rust Belt industrial hub in its prime. Optional objectives and collectibles feed an equipment mod system.
Gears of War: E-Day reviews praise the combat
Kotaku’s Ethan Gach called it possibly “the best the series has ever looked or felt.” He singled out the cover-to-cover firefights in huge arenas, from cantilever bridges to ornate hotel lobbies, and said a new option to go prone behind cover adds tension to fights. Some set pieces, he wrote, rank among the franchise’s most memorable.
PC Gamer’s Abbie Stone was just as blunt: “Gears has never felt better to play.” She credited tighter controls and new weapons, including the acid-spraying Goreshot, in her review in progress.
A thin story and a long middle act
The complaints in both Gears of War: E-Day reviews start once the shooting stops. Gach wrote that weak storytelling, uneven pacing and bland open-area exploration drain the tension between big moments. Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago, joined by Mags Carter and rookie Lucas Reyes, rarely get material that shows how the series’ icons react to the start of the Locust war, his Kotaku piece argues.
Stone’s harshest notes target Act 2, which she said settles into repetitive, linear encounters. She contrasted that with the more varied missions of “Gears 5” and summed up the game as “great shooting trapped in a horribly overstretched campaign, telling a story that clearly didn’t long to be told.”
14 hours or 20-plus?
The two Gears of War: E-Day reviews did not even agree on length. Gach estimated the campaign at about 14 hours, while Stone said hers ran past 20 and felt far too long for its design.
Platform matters, too. Gach played on the Xbox Series S and reported frequent stutter in quality mode at 30 frames per second, especially around checkpoints and cutscenes.
Launch timing and what is still missing
Early access began at 8 a.m. PDT on Oct. 1 for Premium Edition owners and Game Pass members with the Premium Upgrade, according to Xbox Wire. The full launch is Tuesday, Oct. 6, at the same time, with cloud play through Game Pass Ultimate and GeForce Now.
Several features will not be there on day one. Kotaku noted that private lobbies and ranked play arrive later in October, and developer The Coalition has said legacy moves such as meat shields did not make the launch build because it rebuilt the game’s sandbox from scratch. Multiplayer, including the new Horde Siege mode, was not part of the review period, so the final Gears of War: E-Day reviews could still shift.
Xbox is pushing the launch beyond the console, too, including a Prince Street Pizza tie-in, and the release lands days after Asha Sharma said Xbox is not for sale. Follow more launches in our gaming news section.
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