Gears of War: E-Day Review

Gears of War: E-Day goes back to the day the series is named for. Set fourteen years before the first game, just after the Pendulum Wars, it puts Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago, with Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes as Bravo Squad, in the city of Kalona on the planet Sera as the Locust burst out of the ground. The Coalition made it with People Can Fly, Virtuos and Behaviour Interactive in Unreal Engine 5, directed by Matt Searcy, and Xbox Game Studios released it on Xbox Series X|S and PC on October 6, 2026, day one on Game Pass, with a co-op campaign for up to four, 4v4 multiplayer and a 12 player Horde Siege mode.

It reviewed as the best Gears in years: 88 on Metacritic on Xbox and 83 on PC, with 92 percent of critics recommending it on OpenCritic. Game Informer, at 9.5, named the campaign one of its favorites of the year, IGN gave it a 9, and even its most mixed reviewers agreed with PC Gamer that it has the best-feeling combat in the series, from the cover system and the guns to traversal and a tougher difficulty.

GamesRadar compared its single city to Halo 3: ODST and liked watching Kalona decay as the campaign returns to it. The complaints are about length and space: PC Gamer found a campaign of more than 20 hours repetitive and asked how much a prequel adds to events the series already told, and the Guardian, at three stars, found the level design reusing the same places and the side missions thin.

It is one of the best looking games on Xbox, which earns visuals an S, and the fighting, the destructible city and the Marcus and Dom double act keep everything else at A. The campaign's last stretch overstays, but it is an A.