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"Oh yea, that's the good stuff," I said as a hipfired a gnasher and atomized a locust drone, raining monster bits all over Marcus Fenix's stoic mug. We're in the midst of a singleplayer shooter drought and I'm happy that Gears of War: E-Day is here to replenish the well.
I recently got access to a two-mission Campaign demo set near the beginning of the game. The vertical slice seemed tactically considered: the first chunk showed off the linear spectacles that Gears of War has always been great at. The second chunk showed off The Coalition's aspirations to do more with its meatheads—letting Bravo Squad loose in an open chunk of Kolona City, complete with a map and optional objectives. Both were fun, but I'm now approaching E-Day with the impression that its traditional bits will be its best.
The demo picked up right as Bravo Squad armors up, so presumably after that intro we've seen in marketing where Marcus and Dom are attacked by Locust in a bar. The crew is tasked with aiding in the evacuation of Kolona by lowering a bridge leading out of the city.
You can probably guess how it goes down in your head: Bravo squad rolls up to the controls and tries to lower the bridge, but it only half works, so they have to cross a hive of locust to access controls on the other side.
A gigantic bridge is the perfect canvas for a Gears level: waves of drones and those guys with big boomshots advance down a sea of abandoned cars, blowing up potential cover spots. It's a claustrophobic sequence that you can tackle from a raised platform, where The Coalition has placed a pile of long-range Breechshots, or immediately jump down to get in the shit with lancers and shotguns.
The Breechshot, by the way, is a work of art. The gun first appeared in Gears of War Judgement, but I never played it, so E-Day is where our love affair begins: a bolt-action, hard hitting rifle that's versatile enough to consider over a Lancer, but is checked by lacking the scope and headshot potential of a Longshot sniper rifle. It's also got an axe head attached to the stock—hat tip to Locust R&D.
A later section has Marcus and Dom crossing a raised section that overlooks the other lanes of the bridge. The pair shimmy along the inside of train subway cars, flanking locusts advancing on their squadmates from above. The Coalition stuffs a lot of cool, intentional encounter design into a compact space—I dug it.
Then came something less impressive: Gears of War, but open world.
City planning
After reaching the other side of the bridge, Marcus and buds are given a waypoint, a map, and a somewhat large open chunk of Kolona to explore. It was initially neat to stretch my legs and appreciate the density of culture that The Coalition packed into the city streets, but similar to when Gears 5 spent half of its campaign making me drive a dull sled from waypoint to waypoint, I don't think Gears excels at quiet stretches.
It's like a regular, linear mission has been spaced out for no clear reason—encounters on the streets are "optional" in the sense that you can technically walk past them, but there's no reason to ignore them, because it's not like there's anything else to do besides beeline toward the end of the level.
These beats were their own fun, contained setpieces—defending a gas station, saving trapped civilians—but they're separated by a lot of jogging down streets, picking up collectibles with text I'm unlikely to read, and chatter between squadmates I wasn't particularly invested in. It was a little like playing E-Day's new Horde Siege mode with a story.
So my big question as I wait to play the full campaign in October: How much of E-Day is this open-world stuff? We know the entire campaign takes place in Kalona, so perhaps the city serves as a persistent hub between more linear missions (Halo Infinite-style). I hope it's a rarer occurrence, because Gears is at its best when it's on a track.
