Gears of War: E-Day Review: 11 Things That Decide The Coalition’s Prequel

Filmoria Review

Cover art © Xbox Game Studios / The Coalition, via Steam.

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Gears of War: E-Day, The Coalition’s prequel set on the day the Locust Horde first emerged, launched on 6 October 2026 on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC and Steam, and UK players can get it on day one with Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass. Filmoria gives it 4 out of 5 stars: the cover-shooting is the best the series has ever had, the Unreal Engine 5 visuals are spectacular, but the bigger open areas drag the middle of the campaign. It sits at 86 to 88 on Metacritic, the highest score for a new Gears game since Gears of War 3 in 2011.

TL;DR: E-Day is the Gears game long-time fans have wanted since Gears 3. It plays heavier, faster and smarter than anything The Coalition has made, and Marcus and Dom finally feel like people again. The new wider spaces in Kalona are the price you pay for that ambition, and they cost the campaign some momentum in its second half.

Buy Gears of War: E-Day (Xbox Series X) on Amazon UK

This is a ranked list of the 11 things that decide our verdict on Gears of War: E-Day, covering its combat, movement, story, level design, enemies, length, technical performance, multiplayer, place in the series and value.

We ordered the items by how much each one shapes the experience of actually playing the game, starting with the shooting that carries everything and ending with who should buy it and our final score. Review scores quoted come from the outlets named, and our own ratings reflect where we agree or disagree with them.

1. The Combat (The Coalition, Xbox Series X|S / PC)

What makes it stand out: This is the weightiest, most precise version of Gears’ cover-shooting there has ever been.

Key data: The Lancer, Retro Lancer, Gnasher and Longshot return alongside new weapons including the Gutpuncher grenade launcher and the Incinerator, with each classic gun rebuilt around its core range.

Why it matters: If the shooting didn’t land, nothing else about a Gears game would matter.

Start with the thing nobody disagrees about. Even the harshest reviews of E-Day love how it plays. The Guardian, which gave it the lowest score we’ve seen at 3/5, still said its bloody, tactical, cover-based combat isn’t done better anywhere else. GameSpot’s 7/10 called it “distinctly Gears”. PC Gamer’s in-progress review headline was literally “Good shooting, but the campaign’s a slog”. When your critics lead with praise for the core loop, you’ve done the hard part.

What’s changed is the feel of each weapon. The Coalition went back to first principles: the Gnasher is meant for brutal close-range work, the Longshot rewards patience at distance, and the Lancer sits in the middle, chainsaw and all. That sounds obvious, but in Gears 5 the guns had drifted into a kind of all-purpose sameness. Here, every pickup changes how you approach a room.

The new tools are the fun part. The Gutpuncher gives you a chunky way to flush Drones from behind cover, and the Incinerator turns tight corridors into something nasty. Neither breaks the sandbox, which matters in a series where one overpowered gun can ruin a whole campaign’s balance.

Is it reinvention? No, and GameSpot is right that the combat “hasn’t changed all that much over the past 20 years”. We just don’t think that’s a criticism. Gears’ cover-shooting has been copied endlessly since 2006 and never bettered. E-Day refines it rather than replacing it, and that’s the right call.

2. Jumping, Sliding and Climbing (a first for the series)

Header art © Xbox Game Studios / The Coalition, via Steam.

What makes it stand out: Twenty years in, a Gears character can finally jump on command.

Key data: Players can jump, slide out of a sprint, climb onto raised ledges and go prone into low cover, which opens up rooftops and elevated flanking routes.

Why it matters: Verticality changes how every fight is built, in a series that was always about flat ground and waist-high walls.

The jump button has been a running joke for Gears fans for two decades. It turns out the punchline is that it works. Being able to get above a Locust position, or slide from one piece of cover to the next while a Boomer lines up a shot, makes encounters feel less like shooting galleries and more like actual battles.

Crucially, it doesn’t turn Gears into a platformer. Marcus still moves like a man wearing a fridge’s worth of armour, and the roadie run is still the main way to cross open ground. The new moves sit on top of the old foundations rather than ripping them out. Going prone into low cover is a small addition that ends up being one of the best, because it gives you a last-ditch way to break line of sight when a fight goes wrong.

Our one caveat is that the extra freedom feeds into the level design problem we’ll get to in item 4. Bigger arenas need more movement options, and more movement options invite bigger arenas. In the tight, linear missions, the jump and slide feel brilliant. In the wide hub spaces, they sometimes feel like they exist to get you from one checkpoint to the next.

3. The Story: Marcus, Dom and Bravo Squad on Emergence Day

Official cover art © Xbox Game Studios / The Coalition, via Steam.

What makes it stand out: It finally dramatises the day the whole series has only talked about.

Key data: Set 14 years before the original Gears of War, across three days of Emergence Day in the city of Kalona, with Marcus Fenix, Dom Santiago, Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes as the four playable members of Bravo Squad.

Why it matters: Prequels live or die on whether they add anything to an ending everyone already knows.

This is where the reviews split hardest, and it’s the most interesting argument around the game. IGN’s 9/10 review says E-Day “pulls off the tightrope act of giving us a heartfelt prequel with strong characters even when we know how it ends”. GameSpot calls the story “disappointing”. The Guardian thought the campaign and story weren’t as gripping as the action sequences around them.

We land closer to IGN, with reservations. The best thing E-Day does is make Marcus and Dom young again. These are two war heroes just home from the Pendulum Wars, not yet hardened by everything the trilogy throws at them, and the writing gives them room to be friends before they’re soldiers. If you’ve played the original trilogy, you know what’s coming for Dom. That knowledge hangs over every quiet scene, and it’s the game’s most effective trick.

Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes are a harder sell. They’re likeable enough, and the fact that you can play as any of the four makes them matter mechanically. But the plot doesn’t have many surprises, and it’s hard to invest in characters when you know they never turn up again in the games set later. The Scorched Legion and its leader Vraahk give the Locust a face, which helps, though the antagonist never quite becomes the presence the story needs.

Our call: a warm, well-acted origin story that works because of the characters you already love, not the plot.

4. Kalona’s Bigger Spaces and the Pacing Problem

What makes it stand out: It’s the most open Gears campaign ever made, and the most uneven.

Key data: The campaign stays linear but opens up into wider areas of Kalona with optional objectives and more collectibles than any previous Gears game, including COG Tags.

Why it matters: Almost every negative point in the reviews traces back to this one design choice.

Here’s the part we can’t wave away. The Coalition experimented with open areas in Gears 5, with its skiff and its big Act 2 and 3 maps, and that was the most divisive thing about that game too. E-Day pushes further. The city sections are larger, prettier and full of things to find, and a lot of the time they’re simply less interesting than the corridors either side of them.

The critics are unusually consistent on this. GameSpot said the open areas are “fairly dull”. Eurogamer’s review argued that exploring the expanded locations badly hurts the pace. TechRadar enjoyed the huge zones and collectibles but flagged lulls in the middle of the campaign. Windows Central said the overall structure does the game “a pretty sizeable disservice”. Even Pure Xbox, which gave it a perfect 10, is praising the combat and spectacle rather than the hubs.

Gears has always been at its best when it moves like a train: one huge set piece, a breather, then the next. The wider spaces break that rhythm. You finish an incredible siege, then spend fifteen minutes picking up tags and clearing a side objective that doesn’t change anything.

We’d rather The Coalition had cut a couple of hours and kept the momentum. That said, the open areas are optional in parts, and if you head straight for the next objective the campaign tightens up considerably. It’s a real flaw, not a fatal one, and it’s the main reason this is a four-star game rather than a five.

5. The Locust, Rebuilt (Drones, Boomers, Reavers and the Bile Frog)

What makes it stand out: Old enemies behave in new ways, and the new ones fill gaps the roster always had.

Key data: Drones, Boomers, Wretches, Corpsers and Reavers return, with much larger Boomers carrying a Heavy Boomshot, Reavers that can climb walls and drop more Locust into fights, and a new artillery-style Bile Frog that sprays acid over a wide arc.

Why it matters: In a cover shooter, the enemy design is the level design.

Going back to the Locust after the Swarm of Gears 4 and 5 is a smart move. The Locust were always the series’ best enemies: readable, aggressive, and nasty enough that you never got complacent. E-Day brings them back at the moment they’re most frightening, before humanity has worked out how to fight them.

The changes are clever. Making Boomers bigger turns every one into a mini-boss you plan around. Reavers climbing walls and dropping reinforcements mean your cover is never as safe as it looks. And the Bile Frog finally gives the Locust a proper artillery piece, so you can’t just hunker down behind one wall and wait things out. It forces you to move, which loops neatly back to the new jump and slide.

Then there’s the destruction. Emergence Holes can be blown up with explosives, and the environment breaks apart around you during fights. That’s the series’ big spectacle, and E-Day handles it brilliantly. Watching the ground split open in a city that was peaceful a minute earlier is exactly the image the whole series was built on, and The Coalition stages it with real menace.

If we have a quibble, it’s that the best set pieces are front-loaded. The opening hours are a run of greatest hits. The middle stretch, where the hubs slow things down, has fewer standout moments.

6. Campaign Length and Co-op (14+ hours, split-screen intact)

What makes it stand out: It’s The Coalition’s longest campaign, and it still lets two people share a sofa.

Key data: Creative director Matt Searcy said the campaign runs over 14 hours; one review published on 1 October estimated around 12 hours on a direct run and nearly 17 with heavy exploration, and the game supports online co-op plus two-player split-screen on console.

Why it matters: Length is only a selling point if it’s well used, and couch co-op is part of Gears’ identity.

Fourteen-plus hours sounds like great value next to the eight to ten hours of the original trilogy. In practice, a big chunk of that extra length comes from the open areas, which is why so many reviewers felt the campaign was baggy. You’ll see some guides quoting 20 to 25 hours. That’s well above what reviewers actually reported, so treat it as a completionist ceiling.

Split-screen survives, which deserves real credit. Plenty of big shooters have quietly dropped local co-op, and Gears has kept it since 2006. Playing E-Day as Marcus and Dom on one TV is the purest version of what this series is about.

Being able to play as any member of Bravo Squad also helps. Swap to Mags or Reyes on a second run and you see the story from a different angle. It’s a small thing, but it gives the campaign more replay value than the length alone suggests.

7. Visuals and Performance (Unreal Engine 5 on Series X, Series S and PC)

Official key art © Xbox Game Studios / The Coalition, via Steam.

What makes it stand out: It looks like a generational leap, but it pays for it in resolution and frame-rate stability.

Key data: Digital Foundry measured Series X modes at native 1152p/30fps, 1000p/40fps and 936p/60fps, and Series S at 729p/30fps, 648p/40fps and 576p/60fps, all upscaled; the PC version requires DirectX 12 Ultimate and hardware ray tracing.

Why it matters: Gears has always been Xbox’s technical showcase, and this one sets the bar for Unreal Engine 5 on console.

E-Day is gorgeous. Windows Central called its visuals some of the most stunning it has seen, and Digital Foundry described it as a landmark showcase for Unreal Engine 5. The lighting, the destruction and the sheer density of Kalona are all a big step beyond Gears 5.

The numbers underneath are more mixed. The 60fps mode on Series X renders internally at 936p before temporal upscaling, and according to Digital Foundry, performance holds up well in linear sections but dips in the bigger open areas. On Series S, the 60fps mode drops to 576p and cuts back shadows, foliage and ray-traced reflections. Digital Foundry still called the Series S version remarkably good for the most part, though with frequent drops that a VRR display helps smooth over. Its overall summary was that performance gets “rocky” in the open segments.

Notice the pattern? The same open areas that hurt the pacing also hurt the frame rate. That’s two reasons to wish they were smaller.

On PC, the requirements are steep but honest. The minimum spec targets 60fps at 1080p on medium settings rather than the 30fps minimums many big releases hide behind, but you’ll need a graphics card with hardware ray tracing. Our advice: Series X players should pick the 60fps mode, Series S owners should expect compromises, and PC players should check their GPU before buying.

8. Multiplayer: Horde Siege and Versus (12-player PvE, 4v4 PvP)

Official promotional art © Xbox Game Studios / The Coalition, via Steam.

What makes it stand out: Horde, the mode that inspired a whole genre, now runs three squads at once.

Key data: Horde Siege supports 12 players across three squads on larger city maps, classic 4v4 Versus returns, and the August betas peaked at 14,331 and 22,084 concurrent players on Steam.

Why it matters: Multiplayer is what keeps a Gears game alive for years after the campaign is finished.

We’re not giving multiplayer a score yet, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Most review code covered the campaign only, with servers populated by press rather than the full Game Pass audience that arrived on 6 October.

What we can say is that the foundations look strong. Horde Siege is a big idea: instead of five players holding one position, three squads defend different parts of Kalona at once, which should make Horde feel more like a war than a siege of a single room. The August betas suggested real appetite, with the open beta beating any previous Gears game’s Steam peak.

Early access was also busy. E-Day hit 20,374 concurrent Steam players on 2 October, during a window open only to Premium Edition owners, which is about double Gears 5’s previous series record of 10,196. That’s encouraging for anyone worried about finding a match on PC.

The real test is time. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 arrives on 23 October and Grand Theft Auto VI on 19 November. If Horde Siege still has full lobbies at Christmas, The Coalition will have something special. We’ll revisit it then.

9. How It Compares to Gears of War 1 to 5 and Reloaded

Gears 5 official key art © Xbox Game Studios / The Coalition, via Steam. Gears 5 was the previous mainline entry, released in 2019.

What makes it stand out: It’s the best-reviewed new Gears game in fifteen years.

Key data: E-Day’s 86 to 88 Metacritic range beats Gears 5 (85) and 2025’s Gears of War: Reloaded remaster (79), and is the highest for a new entry since Gears of War 3 in 2011.

Why it matters: It answers whether The Coalition could ever match what Epic Games built with the original trilogy.

For a long time, the honest answer was no. Gears of War 4 in 2016 was a safe, handsome reboot with a new cast that never quite caught on. Gears 5 in 2019 was braver, with Kait’s story and those big open maps, but it felt like a series trying to become something else. Gears Tactics was a lovely side project. Reloaded was a remaster.

E-Day feels like the first time The Coalition has truly understood the original trilogy’s appeal rather than simply copying its look. Bringing back the Locust, bringing back young Marcus and Dom, and bringing in People Can Fly, which worked on the original trilogy and led Gears of War: Judgment, all point the same way: back to the roots, with modern tech.

Where does it rank? For pure combat, we’d put it at the top of the series. For story, it sits below Gears 2 and Gears 3, which had the advantage of not being prequels. For level design, it’s behind the tightly paced original, and it repeats Gears 5’s mistake of opening things up without enough to fill the space. Overall, it’s comfortably the best game The Coalition has made, and the best Gears since 2011.

10. Who It’s For: Value, Game Pass and the No-PS5 Question

What makes it stand out: It’s one of the easiest big releases of the year to try, if you’re on the right platform.

Key data: Included with Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from launch, priced at $69.99 Standard and $99.99 Premium in the US, and confirmed by Xbox as a permanent console exclusive with no PS5 version.

Why it matters: How you get it changes whether it’s worth it.

On Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass, this is a no-brainer. Even if the open areas wear on you, the opening hours alone are worth the subscription. If you’re buying outright, the Standard Edition is the one to get. Premium’s early access window has passed, and its extras are cosmetic packs and premium currency.

PS5 owners are out of luck. Gears of War: Reloaded did come to PlayStation in 2025, and for a while it looked like E-Day would too, but Xbox has said E-Day and Clockwork Revolution are console exclusives and “not timed exclusives”. If you only have a PS5, your options are a gaming PC or an Xbox.

Play it if you’ve loved any Gears game, you want the best third-person cover-shooting on any platform right now, or you’ve got a friend and a sofa for split-screen co-op.

Skip it if you need a campaign with genuine plot twists, you’ve never clicked with cover shooters, you’re on Series S and sensitive to frame-rate drops, or you want a story that stands completely on its own without the trilogy behind it.

11. Final Verdict: 4 Stars (Xbox Series X|S, PC)

What makes it stand out: It brings Gears back to its brutal best while still making room for new ideas.

Key data: Filmoria rating 4/5, against Metacritic 86 to 88, IGN 9/10, Pure Xbox 10/10, VGC 4/5, GAMINGbible 8/10, GameSpot 7/10 and The Guardian 3/5.

Why it matters: Xbox needs exclusives that make people buy an Xbox, and this is the first one in a while that might.

Filmoria’s verdict: Gears of War: E-Day is the best-playing Gears game ever made and a moving origin story for Marcus and Dom, let down only by open areas that sap its pace.

Look at the spread of scores and a clear picture emerges. The 10/10 reviews are reacting to combat and spectacle, and we understand why. The 3/5 and 7/10 reviews are reacting to pacing and story, and they’re right too. We think the truth sits just above the middle. The fighting is so good, and the Locust so fearsome, that the flat stretches never become a reason to stop playing. They just stop E-Day from being an all-timer.

Four stars, then, and a confident recommendation to anyone with an Xbox or a capable PC. We’d disagree with GameSpot that it’s merely “propped up” by its combat. In Gears, combat is the whole house. But we’d also push back on the perfect scores. A tighter, ten-hour E-Day without the hubs might well have been the best game of the year.

The Bottom Line on Gears of War: E-Day

Gears of War: E-Day does the most important thing a prequel can do: it makes a story you know feel urgent again. The Coalition has finally matched the original trilogy for feel, and in places beaten it. If its open areas had been half the size, this would be a five-star game. As it is, it’s the best Gears in fifteen years, it’s on Game Pass, and it’s out now. For more on the launch itself, see our 11 things to know about the E-Day launch and our guide to the biggest upcoming games.

Sources: Xbox Wire, Steam store page, OpenCritic, Windows Central review roundup, Pure Xbox (Digital Foundry analysis), GamingBolt.

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