Gears of War: E-Day Launches on Xbox and PC With Game Informer at 9.5 and PC Gamer Cooling at 77

By CriticalPixel · 2026-10-06

Gears of War: E-Day is out today on Xbox Series X|S and PC, and the critics are not singing the same song. Game Informer went all the way to a 9.5 and called it the studio's finest work since taking over the franchise. PC Gamer landed on a 77 and described a campaign that outstays its welcome. Those two verdicts sit nearly 20 points apart on a hundred point scale, and they are describing the same game. Xbox is asking $69.99 for the standard edition, and it is also sitting in Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass for PC, which changes how much that disagreement should worry you.

Marcus Fenix faces a giant Locust creature on Emergence Day in Gears of War: E-Day

What Xbox is selling and where you can play it

According to the official Xbox page, E-Day is a prequel set fourteen years before the original Gears of War, following Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago as the Locust Horde erupts from below on Emergence Day. The Coalition developed it for Xbox Game Studios, and it ships on Xbox Series X|S and Windows 10/11 with Xbox Play Anywhere, so one purchase covers console and PC. Steam is listed as a storefront for the PC version. The standard edition costs $69.99, the Premium Edition is $99.99 with a Bravo Squad weapon pack and five seasonal customization packs, and owners of the base game can upgrade for $30. That is a $30 gap for cosmetics, which is the kind of pricing ladder we have all learned to side-eye by now. The Game Pass route is the sensible one for anyone who just wants to see whether the campaign holds up for 20 hours.

Game Informer swings for the fences

Game Informer's review, published today by Brian Shea under the headline A Grand Reemergence, treats E-Day as a genuine horror-tinged return to form. The reviewer says it feels like a horror game from the first minutes, with monsters rising from the ground and tearing through fleeing civilians while the city of Kalona falls in real time. The pitch is that you play walking tanks and still feel helpless, because no amount of enemies mowed down saves the city. Squadmates Mags and Lucas stay with you through the whole game, solo or co-op, and the review leans on them as the emotional center. Reviewed on Xbox Series X/S with a PC version also available, it is the highest score I have found among the early reviews.

PC Gamer and GameSpot push back

PC Gamer's review gives a 77 and splits the game in two. The shooting is praised hard, with a new jump button, remapped controls and Hardcore difficulty described as the place where cover-based combat sings, plus a Goreshot that grapples your torso off your body. But the campaign gets torn up: the reviewer calls it an exhausting, endless firefight of 20 plus hours that repeats the same encounter shape with more frogs and more snipers. Complaints include HARD CASE NEARBY text blazing across the screen, checkpoints placed before unskippable dialogue, and bullet-spongy elite enemies with weak damage feedback. GameSpot lands in similar territory under the headline that the campaign is buried in the past, calling it a good game propped up by combat that has not changed much in 20 years and a prequel with nothing new to say.

Four members of Bravo Squad, including Marcus and Dom, standing together in full gear in Gears of War: E-Day

Campaign first, multiplayer later

There is a wrinkle worth knowing before you compare scores. IGN's review, posted October 1, praised the prequel for returning to the heart of the series and said the campaign stands toe-to-toe with any of the others. It also carries an editor's note that the piece only covers the story campaign, because that was all reviewers were given before release, and that a finalized score and multiplayer impressions will follow once the team plays Versus and Horde Siege. In other words, a lot of the early coverage judged half the game. PC Gamer, writing on launch day, did get time with multiplayer and says the 4 versus 4 modes like Conquest and Demolition are solid, while Horde Siege is a smart evolution with a mostly open-world city, optional objectives and other squads wandering the map.

How the community is taking it

Reaction on X so far is thin and should be treated as limited. At least one player posting today calls it the best Gears ever made and praise the lighting, music and boss fights, while others are mostly sharing reviews and early impressions rather than verdicts. That is not enough independent voices to claim a consensus, and anyone telling you the fanbase has made up its mind on launch day is guessing. The more useful signal will be what happens after the first weekend, when players hit the same long campaign that PC Gamer found exhausting and decide whether the 20 plus hours earn their keep.

The CriticalPixel take

A 9.5 and a 77 on launch day is not noise, it is a sign that this campaign lives or dies on how much you want more of the same. If you love Gears combat on Hardcore and want that Resident Evil flavored opening, Game Informer's reading is probably yours. If you are tired of map markers and wave after wave of insta-kill elites, PC Gamer's complaints will hit you around hour twelve. The part I find hardest to forgive is the story: a prequel about the single most important day in the franchise, and two outlets independently say it has nothing new to say about Marcus and Dom. At $69.99 with a $30 cosmetic upsell, that is a lazy value pitch when Game Pass sits right next to it.

A Boomer Locust holding a large weapon with flames engulfing the ruins behind it in Gears of War: E-Day

My advice is simple. If you already pay for Game Pass, play the first act and see which camp you fall in before touching your wallet. If you do not, wait for IGN's finalized score and the first wave of multiplayer impressions, because the part of the game that PC Gamer liked best is the part most outlets had not touched when they published. The Coalition has made a game that plays better than any Gears before it, and the argument now is whether that is enough.