Gears Of War: E-Day Multiplayer Feels Better Than Any Past Entry In The Series

I recently got to play the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day beta ahead of its August release, and I came away impressed by what The Coalition is cooking. Initially, I was worried that adding slides, jumps, and other tweaks to the classic Gears formula could disrupt the core gameplay of the series. But after a few hours with the beta, I’m convinced this is the right direction for Gears of War. The Gears of War: E-Day beta preview I played included a few multiplayer modes and maps as well as a large-scale horde mode. It was a fairly small slice of the full game, but there was just enough content here to easily lose a few hours without realizing it. It also looked great, with some wonderful lighting and texture work. The E-Day beta ran at a locked 60FPS for me on Series X while still being one of the best-looking third-person shooters I’ve played in recent memory. I’m a big Gears of War sicko, and as such, I get nervous and cranky about change. I’ll never forget hating Gears of War: Judgment‘s decision to make the Y button swap weapons. *shudders* So I was nervous to see E-Day adding slides and jumping. But thankfully, these new options slot in perfectly to the Gears of War sandbox. Sliding, for example, doesn’t feel overly powerful as a way to evade gunfire, but instead seems great for getting into cover. Meanwhile, jumping is useful in key areas of the map, but doing so randomly anywhere else makes you feel like a big target. The biggest surprise to me after playing a few hours of the beta is how great E-Day feels to play. I thought The Coalition had previously nailed the feeling of weight and grit that the original Gears games had in their past titles, like Gears 5. But here, the studio speeds up Gears of War’s gameplay just a bit and makes the controls feel a bit more responsive. This, coupled with some visual tweaks, leads to E-Day feeling fantastic to play. Hopping over cover, sliding across an opening, and then popping into some new cover and laying down fire on enemies has never felt better. It all feels snappier. A bit more aggressive. I like it! Don’t worry, though; E-Day still feels like Gears of War. The moment I swapped to my Gnasher shotgun and started hip-firing bastards into smithereens, I felt some ancient part of my brain turn back on, and all my muscle memory kicked in, and I went wild. Chainsawing an enemy with the Lancer is still satisfying (and bloody) all these years later. So yeah, this still feels like Gears of War. It still feels very heavy and meaty. It just has some more pep in its step and some new tricks to spice things up. And it does seem like wall bouncing isn’t as viable, which I appreciate. One quick note on the new horde mode. I played one session of the new Horde Siege mode, which is a 12-player online mode that has all of you taking on waves of enemies across a massive map with different missions and side objectives to complete. It’s neat, and I was happy to be killing Locust again, but I’d be lying if I said I really understood what was going on or how my squad was helping. I really hope there is a classic horde mode beyond Siege, because while this mode feels big, I’m not yet sold on it. People feel too spread out and disconnected from each other to make the 12-player count seem exciting. Maybe if I get more time with it, I’ll come around on the new mode, but for now I’m not so sure. Overall, though, I’m very into what The Coalition has built with Gears of War: E-Day. It truly seems like the company is mixing the classic Gears gameplay with some smart, unobtrusive modern tweaks and features. If the full game, including the campaign, feels as good as E-Day’s beta and looks as good or better, this could end up being one of the best entries in the franchise’s history. We’ll find out later this year when Gears of War: E-Day arrives in October on Xbox Series X/S and PC.