Gears of War: E-Day Preview – A Thrilling Return to Form

It’s a crazy year for Xbox, with not only a new Halo and Forza game, but also a new Gears of War. This is a franchise introduced at the perfect time for Xbox, coming only a year after the Xbox 360 was released and really showing how Microsoft had more than just Halo. It was a third-person shooter like no other. Bloody, fast-paced and intense, it defined the early stages of the Xbox 360 era.

While the series has been absent for the past seven years, that doesn’t mean The Coalition hasn’t been sitting idly by. The next game under their belt will be a prequel, bringing back fan favorites Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago back into the fold.

We were recently invited to check out a couple of matches of Gears of War: E-Day’s Horde and Versus modes, showcasing the various upgrades and enhancements the series has seen. What we found was a Gears of War that has evolved substantially, hopefully for the better.

The Iconic Horde Mode is Back

Horde mode has been a staple of the Gears of War franchise since the second game, being a mode that defined a generation. While they didn’t invent wave-based combat, they certainly helped popularize it.

Ever since, Horde mode has been in almost every single game in the franchise since, and along with versus, helped define the Gears of War experience. The campaign and story were still very memorable, having some of the most iconic moments in gaming, but it’s banding together with friends to take on waves upon waves of enemies until the middle of the night that made Gears of War special.

With E-Day, The Coalition is looking to try something a little new. While it’s still about going to a spot and defending it with your life, putting up barriers and various traps around the environment, the areas feel a little more interconnected. It makes Gears of War: E-Day's Horde mode feel more lively, a living and breathing world that's more than four players.

This is because it’s not just one group of four, but various other teams that have been connected. We played in a small, desolated city on Sera, one that had not only our main objective to get to, but various smaller objectives we could participate in. This included finding specific items, usually highlighted through objective markers, or taking down enemy devices.

If players don’t want to engage with this, they don’t have to, making it a nice option for collecting extra energy, which can be used at base for additional ammunition or base barricades and traps, along with obtaining Weapon Parts which can be used to modify a loadout after the fighting has stopped.

In terms of the wave-based combat, it’s not as dissimilar to before, although after completing one objective, players may need to move to another location and defend that spot. It all depends on the difficulty. On top of that, there are newer monsters introduced. There are the standard Locust grunts and drones, but there are now things such as balloon-like enemies at more advanced stages.

After everything is done, players across the entire map will be told to extract at a specific location, and that’s when all the teams on the field will converge. They will then need to defend the extraction spot until the Raven comes and picks them up, which the game will throw more and bigger enemies at them.

It makes Gears of War: E-Day's Horde mode feel more lively, a living and breathing world that's more than four players.

Suffice to say, we only had a few hours with the Horde mode of Gears of War: E-Day but we’re happy with how it turned out so far. It’s a fascinating new take on a classic formula, bringing more players to the fold and having a more open environment to explore.

A Familiar but Different Versus Mode

Versus feels both familiar but a little different than it did in the past. There’s still the grittiness of running up to Locusts or COGs and shotguning them in the face, or the satisfying pop of a head with a long-ranged sniper rifle, but there are a lot more options at the player’s disposal now.

Before, it was all about moving from cover to cover on a mostly horizontal plane. Now, the developers have implemented a lot more verticality and moveability. For example, players will not only be able to hop over ledges, but they’ll be able to climb up structures that are around 8 feet tall.

The Coalition has implemented the ability to essentially jump and grab onto anything at any time, although very specific structures are climbable. On top of going up, players can go down to a certain degree. The Locusts and COG can now crawl through smaller holds to get to the other side, giving them more opportunities to be stealthy and flank their opponents.

All of this is in Horde and other modes, but it feels a lot more vital in a competitive setting. We played a bit of versus in the Outpost map in Team Deathmatch, being a 4v4 environment where each team had fifteen revives per team. The combat feels good, although it takes some getting used to having the sprint button no longer being assigned to A.

As typical, the Shotgun is without doubt the deadliest weapon in any arsenal. While players are able to find different weapons throughout the map, it’s getting up and close to enemies and putting out the shotgun for the quick one-tap that’s the most effective.

Outside of Team Deathmatch, we checked out Conquest on the Market map. This is a more modern environment, with a lot less desolation, featuring vibrant neon lights set at night and a lot of natural cover. Conquest itself is a first-to-four game mode where players must take control of a designated area until their bar fills and they claim a point. When enemies enter the area, they contest it, forcing players on the defensive. It’s one of the more entertaining competitive modes that we found.

We were only able to play a few hours of Gears of War E-Day, but we were left wanting more. It still has a lot to prove, but this small snippet certainly helped increase our faith in what The Coalition is doing with the franchise. Gears of War: E-Day will be available October 6 for Xbox Series X/S and PC.