Editor's Note: This review currently only covers Gears of War: E-Day's story campaign, as that’s all reviewers were given access to ahead of release. It will be updated with a finalized score and multiplayer impressions once we spend some time with the Versus and Horde Siege modes.
To the casual observer, Gears of War has always been a heavy-metal third-person cover shooter about a bunch of meatheads with chainsaws attached to their guns fighting aliens. But what Gears fans know all too well is that the real secret to the series’s two decades of success isn’t the killer graphics, the smart cover mechanics, or the gloriously gratuitous gore – although those things are all certainly significant parts of the recipe. It’s the heart. Marcus and Dom’s brotherhood. JD or Del’s sacrifice (depending on what you chose to do in Gears 5). Dom’s relentless love for Maria. And so my biggest question heading into Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel to the first game set 14 years prior on the day the Locust emerged from underneath the planet Sera, was how it would hang onto that heart when we already knew our armor-clad bros would definitely be alive by the end. I’m thrilled to say that E-Day carries its own satisfying emotional weight, with additional welcomed backstory for Marcus and Dom leading the way – oh, and the action is pretty top-notch, too.
E-Day begins with our Coalition of Ordered Government (COG) heroes, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, completing a ceremonial tour to honor their service in the finally-ended 79-year Pendulum Wars. We get glimpses of how each of them is reckoning with the end of the only thing they’ve ever known: Marcus is ready to re-enlist and hoping Dom will join him, while Dom is ready to go home to his wife Maria and their two young children, who are growing up without him. Of course, things quickly go to Hell – or rather, Hell comes up to them. Gears of War: E-Day does an excellent job of conveying both the uncertainty and the horror of what’s happening to these characters, even when we as players know exactly what’s going on.
By happenstance, Marcus and Dom get unofficially paired up with ex-Gear Mags Carter and rookie Gear Lucas Reyes, who happen to be at the same bar when the Locust tremors begin, before the quartet officially becomes Bravo Squad once the COG starts organizing its defenses. E-Day deserves a lot of credit here: In a prequel like this where you’re already attached to the leads, it would be easy for Carter and Reyes to be throwaway side characters who exist only to further the stories of our two well-known heroes. But E-Day makes time for your lesser-known Bravo squadmates, dedicating entire meaningful and enjoyable sections to establishing them in this world and getting you to care about them.
The unfolding nightmare of E-Day is reflected in both the types of Locust monsters you face as the campaign progresses as well as the sorts of weapons you’ll need to put them back in the ground. Easily-dispatched Wretches and run-of-the-mill, Hammerburst-wielding Drones are on the front lines as Bravo Squad wonders what the hell it’s up against in the invasion’s opening hours. You’ll take them down with Gears of War staples like the Gnasher shotgun and Lancer, both the bayonet-clad original version and the prototype of the chainsaw-equipped revision. Yes, you’ll get your hands on Gears’s most famous firearm pretty early, and you even get to witness its fun little origin story.
But as you move through the first hours of the Locust invasion, Bravo Squad is continually confused and terrified at the increasingly deadly horrors trying to kill them. The monster menagerie is, naturally, a mix of foes you have and haven’t seen before in other Gears of War games, and the battles get steadily more white-knuckle as you make your way through the five-act story. Giant, frog-like hopping freaks that arc multi-gallon acidic loogies at you. Heavies that come in multiple varieties, most menacingly the one that fires a medium-range Gorehook – a hook on a chain that will typically down you in one hit.
On that note, one of my few complaints about Gears of War: E-Day is related to the down-but-not-out situations you’ll find yourself in throughout the campaign. When, not if, you get downed, your allies will occasionally be standing right next to you and not revive you. In fairness, it wasn’t a constant occurrence, but there were numerous times throughout my 15-18 hour first playthrough when I got stomped to death by a Locust heavy because one of my buddies either stood next to me and didn’t get me up, ran off and left me for dead, or never even got over to me as I mashed the X button to cling to life for a while. The immediate solution for this is to play through E-Day in four-player online co-op (two-player split-screen is the limit on a single Xbox), but I sure hope a patch resolves this inconsistent AI behavior sooner rather than later as well.
As with the Locust enemies, E-Day’s weapons are a mix of old and new, and my goodness do I love them. Every weapon has a unique purpose to suit a particular combat strategy. And man, it still feels awesome to blast a Locust Heavy to bits with the Gnasher shotgun, cut a Drone into pieces with the Lancer Prototype’s chainsaw attachment, or explode a Locust sniper’s head with a scoped-Longshot kill. But there’s so much more in there beyond those Gears classics. The Breechshot, first introduced in the often-forgotten Gears of War: Judgment, ended up being one of my go-tos the longer the campaign went on, as it offered solid range and stopping power without being as cumbersome as something like the Longshot sniper rifle.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/gears-of-war-e-day-review
