Editor’s Note: This review currently only covers Gears of War: E-Day’s story campaign, as that’s all reviewers were given access to ahead of release. It will be updated with a finalized score and multiplayer impressions once we spend some time with the Versus and Horde Siege modes.

To the casual observer, Gears of War has always been a heavy-metal third-person cover shooter about a bunch of meatheads with chainsaws attached to their guns fighting aliens. But what Gears fans know all too well is that the real secret to the series’s two decades of success isn’t the killer graphics, the smart cover mechanics, or the gloriously gratuitous gore – although those things are all certainly significant parts of the recipe. It’s the heart. Marcus and Dom’s brotherhood. JD or Del’s sacrifice (depending on what you chose to do in Gears 5). Dom’s relentless love for Maria. And so my biggest question heading into Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel to the first game set 14 years prior on the day the Locust emerged from underneath the planet Sera, was how it would hang onto that heart when we already knew our armor-clad bros would definitely be alive by the end. I’m thrilled to say that E-Day carries its own satisfying emotional weight, with additional welcomed backstory for Marcus and Dom leading the way – oh, and the action is pretty top-notch, too.

E-Day begins with our Coalition of Ordered Government (COG) heroes, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, completing a ceremonial tour to honor their service in the finally-ended 79-year Pendulum Wars. We get glimpses of how each of them is reckoning with the end of the only thing they’ve ever known: Marcus is ready to re-enlist and hoping Dom will join him, while Dom is ready to go home to his wife Maria and their two young children, who are growing up without him. Of course, things quickly go to Hell – or rather, Hell comes up to them. Gears of War: E-Day does an excellent job of conveying both the uncertainty and the horror of what’s happening to these characters, even when we as players know exactly what’s going on.

By happenstance, Marcus and Dom get unofficially paired up with ex-Gear Mags Carter and rookie Gear Lucas Reyes, who happen to be at the same bar when the Locust tremors begin, before the quartet officially becomes Bravo Squad once the COG starts organizing its defenses. E-Day deserves a lot of credit here: In a prequel like this where you’re already attached to the leads, it would be easy for Carter and Reyes to be throwaway side characters who exist only to further the stories of our two well-known heroes. But E-Day makes time for your lesser-known Bravo squadmates, dedicating entire meaningful and enjoyable sections to establishing them in this world and getting you to care about them.

The unfolding nightmare of E-Day is reflected in both the types of Locust monsters you face as the campaign progresses as well as the sorts of weapons you’ll need to put them back in the ground. Easily-dispatched Wretches and run-of-the-mill, Hammerburst-wielding Drones are on the front lines as Bravo Squad wonders what the hell it’s up against in the invasion’s opening hours. You’ll take them down with Gears of War staples like the Gnasher shotgun and Lancer, both the bayonet-clad original version and the prototype of the chainsaw-equipped revision. Yes, you’ll get your hands on Gears’s most famous firearm pretty early, and you even get to witness its fun little origin story.

But as you move through the first hours of the Locust invasion, Bravo Squad is continually confused and terrified at the increasingly deadly horrors trying to kill them. The monster menagerie is, naturally, a mix of foes you have and haven’t seen before in other Gears of War games, and the battles get steadily more white-knuckle as you make your way through the five-act story. Giant, frog-like hopping freaks that arc multi-gallon acidic loogies at you. Heavies that come in multiple varieties, most menacingly the one that fires a medium-range Gorehook – a hook on a chain that will typically down you in one hit.

On that note, one of my few complaints about Gears of War: E-Day is related to the down-but-not-out situations you’ll find yourself in throughout the campaign. When, not if, you get downed, your allies will occasionally be standing right next to you and not revive you. In fairness, it wasn’t a constant occurrence, but there were numerous times throughout my 15-18 hour first playthrough when I got stomped to death by a Locust heavy because one of my buddies either stood next to me and didn’t get me up, ran off and left me for dead, or never even got over to me as I mashed the X button to cling to life for a while. The immediate solution for this is to play through E-Day in four-player online co-op (two-player split-screen is the limit on a single Xbox), but I sure hope a patch resolves this inconsistent AI behavior sooner rather than later as well.

Guns Aplenty

As with the Locust enemies, E-Day’s weapons are a mix of old and new, and my goodness do I love them. Every weapon has a unique purpose to suit a particular combat strategy. And man, it still feels awesome to blast a Locust Heavy to bits with the Gnasher shotgun, cut a Drone into pieces with the Lancer Prototype’s chainsaw attachment, or explode a Locust sniper’s head with a scoped-Longshot kill. But there’s so much more in there beyond those Gears classics. The Breechshot, first introduced in the often-forgotten Gears of War: Judgment, ended up being one of my go-tos the longer the campaign went on, as it offered solid range and stopping power without being as cumbersome as something like the Longshot sniper rifle.

But there are a lot of weapons I’d give shoutouts to as well, like the Incinerator, which shotgun-blasts a burst of flesh-melting Imulsion; the Ripper, which is basically the Gears-universe equivalent of a SAW; and the ol’ favorite Torque Bow, which has a hell of a windup but then unleashes an explosive arrow at your target. I loved the weapon complement here, as well as the options that deep roster of firearms afforded me in some of the campaign’s later battles.

And it’s not just that all of these weapons are fun to use in the right situation. They can also all be modified and upgraded through E-Day’s new Weapon Mod and Tactical Gear system. You’ll encounter dozens of yellow Hard Cases lightly hidden throughout the world for you to find. Each contains a mod for one weapon or another, such as accuracy enhancers, scopes, or clip extenders. Completing optional secondary objectives around the major industrial city of Kalona where E-Day takes place also grants these same rewards. Each weapon has four mod slots, which you’ll unlock as you go, and I found myself constantly tweaking each weapon to find the right mix of add-ons that suited my playstyle. As such, I was plenty motivated to find every Hard Case I could and complete every secondary objective possible.

In addition to this is the Tactical Gear that modifies your armor, giving you your choice of a few squad-affecting special abilities that recharge on a cooldown timer after you use them. Again, you’ll unlock more as you progress, but once I got my hands on the Stim that allowed me to heal myself and any teammates within its radius for a short time, I was never tempted by any of the other choices. All of these customization options evolve the classic Gears of War combat in a welcome but not radical way that I appreciate, while liberally placed Supply Caches let you cycle weapons and mods rather frequently if you so choose.

And you’ll be glad for the ability to rearrange your weapon loadout often in E-Day’s mini-boss fights and full-blown boss battles. Almost all of them are memorable in a good way. With, again, a mix of old and new “faces,” these were often barely-scrape-by bouts during my playthrough and ones I welcomed both when they arrived and when I emerged victorious.

E-Day is packed with beautiful locations. The destroyed downtown of Kalona; the pitch-black, Locust-dug caves underneath it; the almost sinister-looking Imulsion refinery; the peaceful mountaintops outside the city. Although the entire campaign doesn’t take place there, you’ll spend a healthy amount of time in Kalona, and the massive but dense battle spaces there are an excellent evolution of the mostly empty open-world areas from Gears 5. The freedom feels far more organic and meaningful here, as there are so many interesting things around almost every corner.

In addition to the aforementioned secondary objectives that grant meaningful Weapon Mod upgrades, there are hidden objects with optionally-viewed details that add a bit of color to a world in the process of recovering from a 79-year civil war, only to be invaded and destroyed by the Locust in a few days. The gorgeous visuals are brought down only by infrequent but noticeable framerate hitches, even while playing in Performance Mode on the Xbox Series X. As such, I can’t recommend playing on the 30fps Quality Mode – at least not before a patch or two.

On a side note, I appreciate that E-Day doesn’t do the all-too-common “make the player run the gauntlet of everything they’ve already fought, but multiply it” endgame sequence. Instead, your mettle is tested plenty of times along the way, with ample quiet moments to punctuate the loud action. And the ending is, I’ll say without spoiling anything, satisfying, which isn’t an easy thing to pull off when, as I mentioned, we already know that Marcus and Dom make it out of E-Day alive. And thank goodness, because I need more quippy Marcus Fenix one-liners in my life; I can’t get enough of them.

Campaign Verdict:

By going back to the beginning, Gears of War: E-Day returns to the heart of this series: Marcus Fenix, Dom Santiago, and a Locust horde that’s as terrifying as it is dangerous. E-Day pulls off the tightrope act of giving us a heartfelt prequel with strong characters even when we know how it ends. On a more mechanical level, it also evolves the enemies, weapons, and combat you’d expect to deliver a Gears of War campaign that stands toe-to-toe with any of the others. It wraps up with 10 years still left to go before Marcus gets tossed in prison ahead of the events of the first Gears of War, so here’s hoping the next one stays in the past for a while longer – and that we don’t have to wait another seven years for it to arrive.