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While the campaign impressed critics, the jury is still very much out
Image: The Coalition/Xbox Game Studios via PolygonAfter a few brutal months of bad news, Xbox players finally have a little something to look forward to. The reviews are in for Gears of War: E-Day, the new prequel to Xbox's iconic third-person shooter series, and critics are impressed with developer The Coalition's latest. The jury is still out on the full game, though, as critics were only able to evaluate the shooter's single-player campaign ahead of launch. Its popular horde and multiplayer modes were not available for review.
As of this writing, Gears of War: E-Day has an aggregate score of 88 on Metacritic and 87 on Opencritic. That's a bit of a feat considering that some of the year's most anticipated games, including Control Resonant and The Blood of Dawnwalker, came in with less universal praise than anticipated. (Both are currently hovering at an 83 on Metacritic.) But considering that many reviewers are waiting for E-Day's multiplayer component to go live, we'll likely have to wait a week or two to see where its final score really lands. And that's likely to be lower than where it is right now, based on some down-to-Earth unscored reviews.
Gears of War: E-Day review scores are high, but multiplayer still needs rating
What we do know for sure is that the campaign is a hit with some critics. In IGN's work in progress review, which has a non-final 9/10 score attached to it, Ryan McCaffrey praised the shooter for bringing some unexpected emotional weight to the series. McCaffrey called out the game's new backstory for long-time heroes Marcus and Dom as a highlight. "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," McCaffrey wrote.
ScreenRant's Chris Carter had similar praise in his 9/10 review. In addition to giving high marks for the shooting and story, Carter notes that Kalona, the city where the story is set, is part of what makes the prequel work. "The city of Kalona feels like a believable future location, and while things are in dire straits fighting off the powerful horde, the city itself is still standing, and it offers a ton of personality throughout the course of the campaign," Carter wrote.
While that may all sound promising, you may want to keep your long-term expectations in check. Several major outlets have yet to give E-Day a proper score. Based on some in-progress reviews, there's reason to think any Game of the Year ambitions will drop. PC Gamer's Abbie Stone called the campaign a "slog" despite the fact that the shooter plays as well as ever. Stone called out the campaign's repetitive gauntlet of shootouts that feel like a regression from Gears 5.
"Is the shooting strong enough to sustain this? Yeah, just, though it does get exhausting," Stone wrote. "It's an action movie with everything ripped out that isn't bullets going into bastards. The 20+ hour campaign is also waaaaay too long considering how one-note it is (well, aside from two crap shooting-from-a-turret-inside-a-helicopter bits, but I was planning on being nice and not bringing those up)."
Image: The Coalition/Xbox Game Studios via PolygonRichard Wakeling at GameSpot was just as mixed in his in-progress review, which has a non-final 7/10 score. Wakeling noted that the tedious shooter feels too stuck in the past, missing an opportunity to do something bold with its prequel setup. On top of that, he believes that the story tries too hard to welcome in newcomers by rehashing well-trodden narrative moments.
"Introducing or refamiliarizing players with certain aspects of the Gear’s universe isn’t a knock on the game in and of itself, but the heavy emphasis on treating these known quantities as novel is indicative of a wider issue," Wakeling wrote. "E-Day seems uninterested in surprising longtime fans or appealing to the series’ own history."
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There are more so-so reviews out there that aren't weighing on aggregate scores currently, including mixed thoughts from Kotaku's Ethan Gach. Polygon's Ford James is part of that chorus, as he notes that the campaign is "intense, and after a while, exhausting." He particularly drew issue with the game's open-world segments, which he felt threw the game's pacing off.
All this is to say, don't get too excited just yet based on misleading aggregate scores. The dust hasn't settled on Gears of War: E-Day yet, and it won't until critics can get their hands on the multiplayer. Expect the reaction to settle somewhere closer to Gears 5 rather than the original three Gears of War games. %!s(
