Gears of War: E-Day Is Out Today, and Xbox Needs It to Land
Gears of War: E-Day, the Xbox- and PC-exclusive prequel, launched October 6 to largely positive reviews, opening at 87 on Metacritic.
Fourteen years before the first Gears game, the world ended. Xbox's biggest exclusive of the year finally lets players live through it.
Gears of War: E-Day launched Tuesday, October 6, on Xbox Series X|S and PC through Steam and the Microsoft Store. It is also available at launch to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers. Players who bought the Premium Edition have had early access since October 1.
The game is a prequel set on Emergence Day, when the Locust Horde first erupts from underground. Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago are back, shown here as war heroes who have just come home, and the story follows the start of the war that defined the series. Developer The Coalition, based in Vancouver, built it on Unreal Engine. The campaign targets 4K at 60 frames per second with ray-traced visuals, and multiplayer goes up to 120 fps.
For months the bigger story was which consoles would get the game. A PlayStation 5 version had even turned up in a ratings-board listing. In June, Xbox chief Asha Sharma announced it would be an Xbox console exclusive instead, reversing the multiplatform approach Microsoft had used on other recent releases. That makes E-Day a test of how much a single exclusive can still move a platform.
Early reviews have been mostly warm. When critic scores first appeared on Metacritic, the game sat at 87 from 20 reviews. That put it fourth in the series, behind the first three games (94, 93 and 91) and ahead of Gears 4 and Gears 5, which both hold 84. Voxel gave it 90 out of 100. Windows Central's round-up described a return to the series' roots, though it flagged some odd open-world elements that sit awkwardly with the rest. One reviewer in Pure Xbox's round-up went further, calling it the best Xbox exclusive since the Xbox 360 days.
Reviewers also noted that most critics only played the campaign, because the Versus and Horde Siege modes were locked during the review period. Horde, the co-op mode, has been reworked to support up to 12 players. How those modes hold up with real crowds after launch will matter to whether people are still playing weeks from now.
It all lands in the series' 20th anniversary year, a good moment for a sequel that needs to carry an exclusive.
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