I charged into a firefight with my Lancer, straight into Gnasher fire, and got downed. Again. My wife revived me. Again.
That’s Gears of War: E-Day co-op at our house. I’ve been playing it on local split-screen with my wife, TheRoguePoney. It has been fantastic. Each player picks their own difficulty, so one campaign works for a player who’s there for the story and a player who wants the toughest fights.
Pick your own difficulty
This is the biggest takeaway. E-Day lets each player pick their own difficulty in co-op. The Coalition’s support page says it plainly. “In coop games each player can choose their own difficulty independently.”
So one of us plays it as a story adventure, and the other plays the toughest version of the fights. We love this feature.
It makes the game fun for both of us. It also makes a player who’s there for the story feel like they’re saving the day, because they keep reviving you after you get downed for overly ambitiously charging into combat. In our house, I’m the one getting revived.
A few more settings worth knowing for couch co-op, all from that same support page:
- In co-op, only the host can pause the game.
- There are five campaign save slots, so a couch run can live next to a solo run or a run with friends.
- Aim assist goes from Off up to Lock-on Aiming, where the reticle locks on to the closest valid enemy.
- Visual and audio navigation aids, plus an audio ping, help whoever keeps getting turned around.
- Subtitles can show speaker names, so you know who’s yelling what.
One more tip from me: turn off motion blur.
What’s new in E-Day
We’ve played all the other Gears campaigns, and this one fits perfectly. Best story since Gears 2.
It’s a prequel. Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago are fresh back from the Pendulum Wars, and they’re in the city of Kalona on Emergence Day, the day the Locust Horde breaks out from underground. Bravo Squad gets two new faces. Mags Carter is a former Gear working at Kalona’s Imulsion Refinery. Lucas Reyes is a young cadet and communications officer who never saw the front lines.
The new characters are great additions, and the old faces are good to see. TheRoguePoney teared up remembering Dom and his wife Maria from the earlier games. That was traumatic, lol.
The Investigate prompts make it feel like she’s solving a mystery as the story moves along. It’s not Nancy Drew, but good vibes. And she’s a wiz at any mystery game.
Exploration and adventure feel dynamic, inside a linear campaign we can actually play through and finish. That’s great for local co-op. The Coalition says it runs over 14 hours, the longest campaign they’ve built.
Mobility got a real upgrade. You can jump now, a first for the series. You can slide out of a sprint, and you can mantle and climb without entering cover first. It all feels fluid. It’s a welcome addition to the Gears cover system.
The voice lines feel badass. You’ll be chirping along with the Gears. And I’ve never wanted to chainsaw a Locust more than when I heard one call me a “simian surface walker.”
The characters are funny and engaging enough to break the scary mood. The accents from the international Gears are funny too.
Then there are the cinematics. E-Day has the best transitions from cinematics into gameplay I’ve EVER seen. The gameplay literally looks like the cinematics they’re showing.
Spooky season
Spooky season vibes. Halloween vibes. E-Day is horror game fun for the season, and The Coalition built it that way on purpose. “We wanted to lean into the horror-adjacent elements Gears always had,” Studio Art Director Aryan Hanbeck told Xbox Wire.
How scary it gets depends on who you’re playing with. Me, I’ve played so many horror games my scare receptors are burned out. She’s having fun getting jump-scared, then yelling at the Locust as they die, in Dom’s voice.
The Locust burst up out of the ground through E-holes, and you spend three days fighting them through one city. It gets bloody.
Xbox pitches it as “a darker, grittier tone” with “reimagined enemies” that “restore fear and dread to the series.” The main villains are the Scorched Legion, a Locust force led by Vraahk.
Split-screen and friends
Friends can join! Split-screen is two players on one Xbox Series X|S. Online, the squad goes up to four. Split-screen is console only, so PC players team up online. On Xbox, online co-op needs a Game Pass Essential, Premium, or Ultimate membership.
Tree, a Guild member, jumped in with us midway. That didn’t work. But we could join his game from the local split-screen on our side. That seems more like something they’re solving than a fixed issue that won’t be solved.
What I’d love to see is us on split-screen here, and two of our friends also playing local co-op on their end, all four in one squad.
New to Gears?
Start here. You don’t need the other games. E-Day is set 14 years before the first Gears of War, so you can start fresh and meet Marcus and Dom at the beginning. In co-op, any of the four Bravo Squad members can be played from the start. Solo, you’re Marcus.
Gears is a cover shooter. You snap to walls and barricades, pop out to shoot, and move from cover to cover. Each sprint starts with a nod to the classic Roadie Run, hunched down low. Cover is life. Stand in the open and you’re done.
Active reload is the other big one. Hit reload, then hit it again when the marker crosses the sweet spot on the bar. Nail it and you reload faster with a damage bonus. Blow it and your gun jams.
The Lancer is the COG’s assault rifle. In E-Day you see the Chainsaw Lancer get its start, bolted together from a standard Lancer and an old chainsaw. Yes, you can chainsaw a Locust. The Gnasher is the shotgun.
When your health runs out in co-op, you don’t die right away. You go DBNO, Down But Not Out, and your squadmate runs over and revives you. That’s how she keeps saving the day.
Keep an eye out for COG Tags too. The classic Gears collectible is back.
E-Day is an Xbox console exclusive (also on PC). It’s on Xbox Series X|S, and on PC through Steam and the Xbox app. It was on Game Pass from day one.
Our verdict
All in, it’s an absolutely fantastic game on Xbox. Co-op, local, it’s smooth. It’s buttery. We’re having an absolute blast, and I’m not sure why anybody wouldn’t give this outstanding scores.
Can’t wait to finish this campaign with my wife and continue the Gears of War experience we’ve had through the earlier games.
Who’s the one in your crew who keeps reviving you when you charge in?
Gears of War: E-Day © Microsoft Corporation. “Gears of War: E-Day Split-Screen Co-op Is Buttery Smooth” was created under Microsoft’s “Game Content Usage Rules“ using assets from Gears of War: E-Day, and it is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft.
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