A prequel is always a risk. They usually rely on nostalgia and winks at the camera over good storytelling, and can end up alienating something that’s already beloved.
I had plenty of worries about Gears of War: E-Day before diving into the third-person shooter’s review build last week. Do we really need to go back in time and tell the story of the day the Locust invaded the Earth-like planet of Sera? Is the franchise way past its prime with nothing left to do or say?
Well, I’m happy to say that E-Day’s campaign is the best Gears I’ve experienced in a long time, probably since Gears of War 3. And it turns out that there is still some juice left in this franchise that’s been kicking around since the early days of the Xbox 360.
Writer’s note: A full, numbered review of Gears of War: E-Day is coming soon once the game’s multiplayer and Horde modes are accessible. Review access only contained the game’s campaign.
E-Day could easily be called Horrors of War, or Fog of War, because its narrative and missions are based around a genuinely terrifying experience: a massive army of monsters coming up from underneath the planet’s surface, swarming like a plague, decimating everything in its path. And you’re there to see it all unfold in real time as no one knows what the hell is happening.
Gears mainstays Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago (dealing with the grief of the recent loss of Dom’s brother and Marcus’s best friend Carlos) are joined by newcomers Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes, forming a squad by happenstance and necessity as the world is engulfed in terror around them. Mags is a grizzled veteran, and Reyes is the comic relief new guy, and the newly-formed squad bonds around their own unique traumas and mistakes. But the kinship the foursome builds pales in comparison to future ones consisting of teammates like Baird, Anya, or Cole Train.
After decades of war between human factions, the Locust arrive out of nowhere like a buzzsaw, in their scariest and most intimidating appearance in the series. Civilians are caught up in the fury, getting mowed down with reckless abandon by an enemy that at first seems feral, but the Gears quickly find there’s a lot more to the Locust bubbling beneath the surface. And that’s the charm of E-Day: finding it all out as it happens, being completely in the dark, watching the military scramble to figure things out as death consumes everything around you…all while dealing with the unimaginable losses piling up, on top of the losses already sustained.
E-Day’s missions offer a scary look into that reality of the moment as the city of Kalona is swallowed up by the swarm, evoking memories of Raccoon City quickly descending into chaos in the early Resident Evil games. That’s a big compliment, by the way. The Locust are unsettling and unnerving, and even though we’ve seen all these different enemy types before in the original trilogy and beyond, their sadistic nature still comes off in a disturbing way as humanity is introduced to an enemy it didn’t know it had. It’s awesome.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.destructoid.com/gears-of-war-eday-campaign-impressions-review/
