Gears of War: E-Day Reviews Praise the Combat, Split on the Story

The first mainline Gears game in seven years opens to an 89 on Metacritic, with critics praising the combat but split on the story.

Gears of War: E-Day landed in critics' hands this week, and it's the kind of result that should make longtime fans grin. Seven years after the last mainline entry (Gears 5, back in 2019), The Coalition's prequel opened to review scores averaging 89 on Metacritic and 87 on OpenCritic, numbers that put it among the best received Gears games since the original Xbox 360 trilogy.

The pitch is simple on paper: tell the story of Emergence Day, the moment the Locust Horde first erupted from underground and changed humanity forever, but through younger versions of Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago. Built on Unreal Engine 5, the game ships as an Xbox console exclusive (no PS5 version), with full launch set for October 6th, early access already live since the 2nd, and a spot on Game Pass from day one.

The individual scores back up the hype. IGN's Ryan McCaffrey gave it a 9 out of 10, while Video Games Chronicle landed on 4 out of 5, describing the combat as a 'brilliantly gory ballet of machine guns, exploding heads, chainsaws, and grenades.' New moves like jumping, sliding, and low cover give the series a mobility it never really had, and Polygon, Eurogamer, and Game Informer all agree the gunplay is the strongest part of the package.

Where critics are split is the story. The relationship between Marcus and Dom, supposedly the emotional backbone of the campaign, barely gets room to breathe until one brief scene near the end, after a chunk of the game leans hard on tired action movie beats. VGC also flagged recycled locations (one specific bridge shows up three separate times) across the five acts, which drags out the middle stretch of the campaign more than it should.

None of that should scare off anyone who just wants a Gears game to play with friends, since Horde mode and competitive multiplayer hadn't gotten reviews yet by the time these pieces went up, and that's historically where the series delivers its real long term value. The timing of putting it on Game Pass day one is also worth noting. Xbox has been short on heavy hitting exclusives lately, and this is exactly the kind of release the subscription needed to justify itself.

For anyone who's followed the series since the Xbox 360 days, E-Day looks like that rare prequel that nails the stuff that actually matters (the shooting, the sense of power, the horror of the invasion) without worrying too much about telling a story people will remember. It's not perfect, but after seven years of waiting, perfect probably wasn't what fans were asking for anyway.