Gears of War: E-Day Review: Chainsaws, Nostalgia, and a Few Growing Pains

Gears of War: E-Day takes the series back to the beginning, telling the story of Emergence Day itself with Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago thrown into the chaos before they were legends. It's been out for a little over a week now, and a decent pile of player reviews have landed alongside it. The short version: this is the Gears everyone remembers, chainsaw and all, with a handful of launch-week rough edges that the developers are already chasing down.

Pros

• Players keep describing it as a genuine return to form for the series, with the classic cover-shooting, Gnasher duels, and chainsaw executions feeling as good as ever.
• Visuals, atmosphere, and sound design get consistent praise, with several reviewers calling it one of the best-looking and best-sounding entries in the franchise.
• The story setup around Emergence Day itself is landing well with longtime fans, and there's real excitement for Horde mode now that the campaign is out.
• Core gunplay feel is solid enough that even reviewers with complaints are still clocking serious hours and recommending it.

Cons

• Several players flagged hit-registration oddities — close-range shots that seem to miss while an enemy one-shots them from similar range.
• Complaints about teammate AI pathfinding and behavior show up more than once, with one reviewer singling out the AI companion by name for getting in the way during fights.
• A couple of reviewers feel the armor system barely matters and that melee is weaker than it should be, and one described the pacing sagging noticeably after the first few chapters.
• At least one player reported the game simply refusing to launch, hanging indefinitely on "connecting to required services."
• Veterans want more of the classic trimmings back — bigger Horde wave counts, more multiplayer maps, that kind of thing.

Performance & PC

The PC spec sheet is not shy: the minimum requirements already call for a ray-tracing-capable GPU (RTX 2060 or RX 6600 class), 12GB of RAM, and 115GB of SSD-only storage, with the recommended tier pushing to an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT. This is a current-gen-first release, and it shows. Linux and Steam Deck are not officially supported on the store page.

On actual stability, the picture from reviews is mixed but not alarming for a big day-one shooter: most players aren't reporting crashes mid-session, but a few hit real friction getting in the door, including the launch hang mentioned above and general matchmaking timeouts. The good news is the developers were already shipping fixes for exactly these kinds of issues within the first couple of weeks, which lines up with what a handful of reviewers mention about early patches smoothing things out.

What changed since launch

A Season 1 update landed just before the official release and has kept rolling since, and it's a meaty one. On the gameplay side, several weapons got retuned (Lancer Mk1 and Vulcan damage down, Hammerburst up, Gnasher aim-down-sights damage and hipfire consistency improved), movement and cover handling were adjusted, and Horde Siege got a difficulty pass with harder invasions and pricier Squad Perks.

On the technical side, the patch addressed a bunch of the exact complaints showing up in reviews: graphics settings resetting between launches, extra mouse-and-keyboard input delay, matchmaking players getting stuck on "Waiting for Other Players," and Horde Siege objectives that wouldn't complete properly. PC players also got quality-of-life additions like an FOV slider, a Max FPS slider up to Unlimited, and an "Advanced Shader Delivery" feature meant to cut down on shader-compile stutter (AMD support at launch, Nvidia support to follow later in October). It's an unusually active first couple of weeks of support, which is a good sign for where the game goes from here.

How it compares

ARC Raiders scratches a similar itch for players who want tense, co-op-driven shooting, though it's built around extraction runs rather than a scripted campaign, so the moment-to-moment pressure is different. Borderlands 4 sits closer in spirit as a co-op shooter with friends, but leans much harder into loot and RPG progression than E-Day's tighter, more linear combat loop. Resident Evil Requiem is a useful contrast rather than a direct rival — it's a single-player horror game rather than a squad shooter, but it's competing for the same October release-season attention from action fans deciding what to play next.

Summary

Gears of War: E-Day is exactly the prequel longtime fans were hoping for — the cover-and-chainsaw combat loop still feels great, the presentation is a clear high point for the series, and the Emergence Day setting gives it real emotional weight. It's not landing perfectly: some real hit-registration and AI gripes, a steep PC spec requirement, and a scattering of launch-week connection problems keep it from being a flawless comeback. But the developers are visibly on it, with a genuinely substantial patch already out the door fixing a lot of what reviewers are complaining about. If you've been waiting for Gears to feel like Gears again, this is worth picking up now rather than waiting it out.