Review Roundup: Gears of War: E-Day — What Critics Are Saying

First, the important disclaimer: HotGameNews staff have not played Gears of War: E-Day. This is a roundup of published reviews and aggregate scores, not our own hands-on review. Reviews so far cover the campaign only, since multiplayer was not available for critics ahead of launch.

The scores. The Coalition’s prequel, which tells the story of the original Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago on the day the Locust first surfaced, holds a Metacritic score of 88 from 49 critic reviews, with 95 percent positive and none negative, per Insider Gaming’s tally. OpenCritic places it in the 98th percentile of all games it has scored. That makes E-Day the best-reviewed mainline Gears game in more than fifteen years, trailing only the original trilogy itself and well ahead of Gears 5 (85) and Gears of War: Reloaded (79).

What critics love. Pure Xbox gave a perfect 10/10, writing that “The Coalition isn’t just delivering a world-class campaign, it’s raising the bar for Gears’ combat.” Day One also scored it 10/10, calling it “the best Gears has ever felt to play, and the best it’s ever looked and sounded.” IGN landed at 9/10, saying the game “gives us a heartfelt prequel with strong characters” that “stands toe-to-toe with any of the others.” VGC, at 8/10, singled out the gunplay: “Offers balls-to-the-wall action…very little beats it this year.”

The dissent. Not every outlet was won over. The Guardian gave the lowest score in the roundup, 6/10, arguing the game is “let down by everything around that fighting, resulting in a safe and repetitive experience” — a complaint about pacing and structure around the combat rather than the combat itself, which is consistent with most of the praise elsewhere.

How to read it. The spread is tight and lopsided toward the positive end, from 10 down to 6, with most outlets clustered at 8 or above. That is a strong consensus for a long-running franchise’s fifth mainline entry, especially one built as a prequel with no returning protagonists to lean on for goodwill.

The bottom line. Critics broadly agree The Coalition nailed the tone and combat feel of the original trilogy while modernizing the movement and enemy AI. The campaign released into Game Pass on October 6, with Premium and Collector’s Edition buyers already playing via early access since October 1.

Scores reflect Metacritic and OpenCritic at time of writing and are likely to shift as more reviews, and multiplayer impressions, come in.