Key Preview Takeaways:
- Playing the beginning of Act 2 of Gears of War: E-Day’s campaign immediately gave me a healthy dose of everything I love about Gears of War.
- Weapon and combat mechanics have been nicely evolved through the weapon mod system.
- Gears 5’s open-world aspects have been reined in with something smarter: a multi-path downtown area with optional secondary objectives and plenty of hidden collectibles.
[Editor’s Note: Mild spoilers ahead for E-Day’s campaign, so turn back now if you don’t want to know any more…]
I’m a massive fan of Gears of War, as I have been since the very beginning. But I have to be honest: something about Gears of War: E-Day’s campaign reveal at the Xbox Showcase a couple months ago just didn’t quite land right with me. It wasn’t bad, by any stretch of the imagination. But I just wasn’t as fired up as I thought I’d be after seeing the first new Gears of War campaign footage in seven years (OK, six if we’re counting Hivebusters).
When I finally sat down to play E-Day’s campaign, though, it took all of about 30 seconds to turn my tepid feelings into joyful smiles. My one-hour preview, which covered the early parts of Act 2, featured plenty of everything I want from and love about Gears of War: Marcus Fenix, Dominic Santiago, lots of story cutscenes, a sweet mix of old weapons and new ones (including the origin story for a signature Gears firearm known for its sharp teeth), some evolved gameplay mechanics, killer setpieces, new Marcus Fenix one-liners, subtle references to characters we know and love, and did I mention Marcus Fenix saying and doing cool sh*t?
I was so fired up by what I played that when I got hit with the “demo complete” screen it actually hurt. I suppose The Coalition got the reaction it wanted from me, because all I wanted to do was keep going. And I’m now not only more fired up to finish Gears of War: E-Day’s prequel story than ever, but I’m also more confident than ever that, at least based on the small slice I’ve played so far, E-Day has struck the exact right balance of tried-and-true old stuff and compelling new stuff.
Playing Bridge
Act 2 picks up with Marcus and Dom still in their civvies, scavenged Mark-1 Lancers in hand. They’ve arrived with fellow civilian-dressed COG soldiers Carter and Reyes at a makeshift command center with the mayor of Kolona, whom they’ve no doubt rescued in Act 1. COG officer Colonel Trench and the mayor face off about whatever the heck is happening out there – you and I both know darn well what it is, of course – and how best to handle it, leading the angry Colonel to yell at our heroes to get some armor on. And then Awesome Moment #1 happens: Marcus and Dom suit up in their familiar COG garb, flanked by Carter and Reyes in the newly christened Bravo Squad. “Guess we’re back to it,” Marcus says, and he might as well be speaking for players as well. My grin could not have been any wider.
Venturing out into the city of Kolona, we see ash raining from a cloudy sky and remnants of once-proud buildings around us. This moment definitely hearkens back to the “destroyed beauty” aesthetic of Gears 1. We soon find our way to the heart of this chapter of gameplay: a massive suspension bridge that raises and lowers in multiple sections in order to let large ships pass underneath it. All of that was in the Before Times, of course, before actual Hell started erupting from the ground beneath the people of this city. We’re making our way towards Oria Stadium, home of the Kolona Eagles thrashball team, where civilians are being routed to in the event of the citywide disaster. But we’re going to have to fight our way there.
Combat Evolved
This straight-ahead bridge section certainly isn’t the combat bowls we’re used to with Gears, but it’s a great way to warm up – not to mention climb up, meaning: to get a feel for using E-Day’s new verticality, i.e. you can now mantle up and over cover, including the cars that the Locust are using to shield themselves. The Mark-1 Lancer, Gnasher shotgun, Snub pistol, and frag grenades all work exactly as you remember them. Gears of War’s core combat has aged remarkably well over the past 20 years. However, E-Day introduces a welcome new evolution in the form of unlockable weapon mods. Each firearm has four total mod slots, and mods vary by weapon, of course. Every reloadable weapon, by default, gets the classic damage bonus if you nail a perfect reload; it’s called Full Metal Jacket now. But there’s a heck of a lot more than just that. For instance, on the aforementioned Gnasher – which, yes, is still your best point-blank bet for turning low-level Locust Drones into chunky-style soup – has an Auto Pouch mod that automatically reloads the shotgun when you stow it (i.e. switch weapons).
This also seems like a good time to mention the new Tactical Gear, which I unlocked at the very end of my demo build. (You got to experience these in the Versus beta weekend, if you participated.) These are short-duration (45-second) buffs with a cooldown, and they also have unlockable mod slots, none of which were available in the preview. But even without mods, the Adrenaline Injector immediately refills your health when triggered and also increases your damage dealt while decreasing damage taken. Choosing the Sonic Disruptor Tactical Gear, meanwhile, nets you a more defensive bonus: stunning low-level enemies in a cone in front of you, interrupting their attacks. With tons more of all of these left to unlock over the course of the campaign, they should add a welcome bit of personalization and gameplay customization to your playthroughs – emphasis on plural there, because I’ll be shocked if there isn’t a New Game+ available that lets you run the campaign again with all of your Tactical Gear and weapon mods available from the jump on higher difficulties.
Revved Up
After battling our way up and across the massive Allfather’s Legacy Bridge, including fending off a couple of Boomers along the way and getting some reps in with the Breechshot (last seen in Gears of War: Judgment), we arrived at Oria Stadium, where the COG was coordinating a stressful civilian rescue operation, with lines of the city’s residents waiting to be processed and allowed into the massive facility. We entered and caught up with the quartermaster, Russ, who took a liking to Marcus because he knew his father, Adam. He asked what Bravo Squad needed, and after Marcus complained about the bayonets easily breaking off of the Mark-1 Lancers, that’s when one of the COG in our party set the chainsaw used to save Marcus’ life in Act 1, as seen in the Xbox Showcase demo, on the table. The quartermaster looks at the chainsaw with a twinkle in his eye, and, yeah…you can probably see where this is going. Awesome Moment #2: Marcus and Bravo Squad get handed the first prototype Mark-2 Lancers with chainsaw built right in. Again, the smile on my face was almost Joker-like.
We headed out from the stadium with the goal of getting across the downtown section of the city to the train station. It’s here that Awesome Moment #3 began to unfold: environmental freedom. The linear path of the bridge we’d fought across had finally given way to a larger combat space. This seems to deliberately rein in Gears 5’s huge open-world areas by instead giving you room to clear Kalona’s streets block-by-block in whatever order and fashion you choose. It’s a smaller-scale version of what we got in the last game, but based on my initial impression, it’s a more effective one. In fact, I ran through the preview build again to take a different route through Kolona, and I’m glad I did. This approach also allows for higher hidden-collectible potential (because yes, of course there are collectibles in a Gears campaign). I also enjoyed the optional secondary objectives in this section that you can opt into. In one, a family was trapped inside a convenience store, and I had to fight off a wave of Wretches before finding a way inside to free them and radio in to get them an escort to the stadium.
This was also when E-Day introduced Supply Caches, which will be scattered throughout the city and allow you to change out your weapons and mods. It’s an organic and straightforward way of letting you change up weapons on the fly without having to kill an enemy to get what you’re after.
Don’t Need No Credit Card to Ride This Train
The all-too-soon end of my demo came in the Octus Way train station. This was a pretty sizable combat bowl, with three levels of verticality to contend with plus a left, right, and center area of the room to be keeping an eye on, lest the Locust manage to flank you from the side or from behind. It was a frantic but not overwhelming fight; we didn’t face off against the Corpser that was teased while we were clearing Kolona city blocks on our way to the train station, meaning that encounter is no doubt waiting for us later. But Octus Way Station was a good chance to try out all of the weapons (thanks to the Supply Cache in the corner of the upstairs entrance) and rev up the Lancer’s chainsaw for a few good ol’ fashioned Locust executions. Once I loaded up and stepped out of the cleared-out train station, that’s when I got the aforementioned “demo complete” message and reluctantly put down my controller.
One final note: as I mentioned, I ran through the preview twice – once on Performance graphics mode, and once on the 30fps Quality graphics mode. The latter was not running well on Xbox Series X in the preview build. It wasn’t unplayably bad by any means, but it was noticeably sub-30 in a lot of spots. I expect most people will opt for Performance mode anyway, but it’s worth noting and hoping that The Coalition is able to squeeze a few extra fps out of it in the remaining few weeks of development.
That minor complaint aside, I can’t say enough about how much I loved what I’ve played of Gears of War: E-Day’s campaign so far. Does it completely rewrite the rules of Gears? No, but I don’t think anyone – myself included – is looking for that. Besides, this prequel was never about that. It’s about getting Marcus and Dom back together and getting Gears back to its roots. And in the incredibly short slice I’ve seen so far, it absolutely accomplishes that with the highest of marks. I am now chock-full of the hype that the Xbox Showcase demo failed to give me. In the words of Marcus Fenix, sweet.
While you’re here, check out these previews of other big upcoming games we’ve played recently!
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, and a co-host of Next-Gen Console Watch. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
