Gears of War: E-Day review
In a box somewhere, I have a polaroid of Cliff Bleszinski pretending to chainsaw off my head. It's a memento from a trip to Epic Games which I'd won in a fan-art competition by drawing a giant frog-monster. This trip, and the early hands-on I had with the very first Gears of War, formed the basis of a preview that turned into a 20-year-long incarceration within the games industry. I wouldn't say this makes me a superfan, but I can't help but look at E-Day—a prequel to or perhaps a tentative reboot of a series that so neatly maps onto what I unconvincingly call my career—with a mixture of rare nostalgia and crushing mortal dread. If only I could be rebooted too.
At least I can now get answers to the many questions that have tormented my every moment since 2006: How did hardbitten jarhead protagonist Marcus Fenix get that scar on his ultra-wide chin? Which Archimedean genius invented the chainsaw-gun? And, primarily, what were the events of "Emergence Day", when the Locust—a league of hideous subterranean creatures—first popped out of their burrows to wreak planetwide horror upon humanity? If these were questions that you had never really been tempted to ask, then no matter: this game serves as both a fresh introduction and the most potent distillation of its cover-shooter core to date. So pure indeed, that E-Day does not believe it needs any other sort of distraction across the course of its 20 hour-long campaign. To the combat designers' credit, it's almost true.
E-Day is a handsome game, but it's quite difficult to take a good representative picture of its combat: most of the time you are hunkered down behind a low wall.
Amid the ubiquity of cover-shooters that followed Gears' release, and because of the game's own wilfully obnoxious, frattish tone, it's easy to forget or overlook what made—and now makes again—Gears' tactical combat so clever, taut and tactile. Beneath the gleeful head-stomping, chainsaw-revving bloodshed is a game about quick thinking, positioning and coordination, with players forced to adapt their defensive formation to counter the increasing pressure and changing threat of their foe; or to break an intractable deadlock with suppression, distraction and flanking.
This post is for subscribers only (it's free!)
