Gears of War E-Day Preview: Hands-on with multiplayer

We test out Horde Siege and Versus ahead of the game's launch in October.

Thanks to Microsoft, Stevivor was able to go hands-on with Gears of War E-Day‘s multiplayer modes including Horde Siege and Versus. Here’s what we thought of our time with the upcoming title.

We tested out the title on Xbox Series S — mostly because we were curious about performance on Microsoft’s lesser console… and partially because we don’t have a PC that met with Microsoft’s relatively high requirements.

The content we got to play through will apparently be mirrored in August’s larger Gears of War E-Day multiplayer beta. That event either requires you to pre-order E-Day or be a subscriber of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass.

Gears of War E-Day Horde Siege preview

E-Day‘s co-operative PvE Horde Siege mode offers three different ways to play. Horde itself is the franchise’s time-honoured, wave-based survival mode, while Blitz and Siege are objective-based affairs; Blitz provides a twenty-minute experience, while Siege is longer and more complex.

Matchmaking means you can queue up solo or with up to three friends; difficulty of your match will scale to your character class level. There are four different character classes to choose from, and I stuck with the default option for the purposes of the preview. The Assault class has an ability, deployed with a click of the L & R joysticks, that slows down waves of enemies — perfect for placing at the foot of an emergence hole.

Siege was what I played the most in an attempt to make the most out of my hands-on time, and I found the experience to be quite enjoyable. The preview took place on a single map, though it was fairly large; objectives made our player group run around from point to point, establishing defences and new perimeters in wave-based events. Most just tasked us to survive, while others had us picking up machine parts to drop off at a central location.

Horde Siege also provided a great opportunity to get used to E-Day‘s new traversal options. Rather than holding down the A button for the franchise’s iconic Roadie Run, you click down the left joystick like in most other modern titles. As you’re used to, hitting the A button will snap you into cover, and pressing it again while holding a direction will move you into a new piece of cover. Hitting Y in cover will climb to higher ground if available; outside of cover — and most importantly — hitting the button will cause your character to jump, a first in the franchise.

Despite new traversal methods literally allowing you to fly through the air, characters will had an amazing sense of weight to them, which I appreciated.

Siege’s map made good use of verticality, providing great opportunities to jump from platform to platform, or even down behind Locust enemies so you could whip out your chainsaw. Overall, I approve of the new movement mechanics, though I do admit that it will be hard for some (read: me) to get out of ol’, muscle memory-fuelled habits when running around maps.

Siege matches all conclude by an aerial escape, meaning you and your crew need to defend a final area before taking off in a King Raven. These moments are especially action-packed and offer some risk and reward; you can choose to stay on the ground for a longer period of time, dispatching enemies and collecting Energy, an in-game currency used for upgrades (though not taken into new matches, as far as I can tell), or climb in early and use the Raven’s mini-guns to provide additional cover. 

You’ll also run into other player groups within Siege, though I don’t know — or think — my teams ever did so. You will see status updates from other teams, though, in the bottom right corner of your screen as you play. Assumedly, if you run into another group, you’ll be able to help them with their objectives too.

Gears of War E-Day Versus preview

E-Day‘s decidedly different movement drastically changes how multiplayer PvP games play out, but one thing is still certain: gnashers reign. Shotguns are vital when flying through a map, bouncing from cover to cover, leaping, and sliding to quickly close the distance between you an opponent. From there, it’s a debate about whether you’ll try to line up a headshot or shoot from the hip.

I bounced between Team Deathmatch and a King of the Hill-style mode and found the latter far more enjoyable — the reason being, E-Day‘s multiplayer maps are so long, it’s sometimes difficult to find opponents in a regular ol’ deathmatch.

All up, I spent two hours with E-Day and really enjoyed what I played through; I’m quite excited to see how these modernisations impact its campaign. Bring on October!

Gears of War E-Day is coming 6 October to Windows PC via Steam, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

Gears of War E-Day was previewed in our own office thanks to preview code provided by the publisher.