Gears of War E-Day review: Metacritic 87, OpenCritic 88 and where critics split

Gears of War E-Day review roundup: the scores at launch

The Gears of War E-Day review scores are in, and they are strong. Metacritic shows a Metascore of 87 from 41 critic reviews, with 38 positive, 3 mixed and none negative. OpenCritic puts the Top Critic Average at 88, with 92% of critics recommending it across 74 reviews. We checked both pages on 6 October 2026, and aggregate numbers drift as more outlets file, so treat them as a snapshot.

The timing matters. Reviews began landing on 1 October, when Premium Edition owners got early access, and the worldwide launch follows on 6 October at 8:00 a.m. PT / 15:00 UTC, according to the Xbox Wire post from The Coalition's studio head Mike Crump. So most of these verdicts come from critics who had the game days before the general audience.

If you only want the answer to whether Gears of War: E-Day is worth it: critics say yes, particularly for combat and presentation, with a consistent caveat about story and open areas that we unpack below.

One note on method. We read the aggregator pages directly on 6 October and took scores and quotes from those pages, then used Pure Xbox's roundup only for outlets we could not open ourselves, and we label those as secondhand. Aggregators also count reviews differently: Metacritic's 41 and OpenCritic's 74 reflect different outlet lists and weighting, which is why the headline numbers differ by a point.

Where the praise comes from

The top end of the scores is unusually high. On Metacritic, DayOne, Generacion Xbox, Pure Xbox, IGN Spain, Eurogamer Germany and TheXboxHub all scored the game 100. DayOne called it "the best Gears has ever felt to play", and Pure Xbox wrote that it is "the best the combat has felt in twenty years". Those are enthusiast and regional outlets, so read the 100s as signal about the combat rather than a sign the game is flawless.

The bigger names are warm without going that far. Pure Xbox's roundup lists IGN at 9/10, VGC at 8/10 and GAMINGbible at 8/10. On OpenCritic, TheSixthAxis gave 8/10, GameRant 9/10, TrueAchievements 9/10 and The Games Machine 9/10. The Games Machine credited The Coalition with modernizing "movement and cover mechanics without sacrificing the series' hallmarks", and praised a technical presentation it called top-tier.

Where critics push back: story and open areas

The dissent is narrow and repeats. GameSpot's Richard Wakeling scored the game 7/10, saying he had a good time but found the story disappointing and the open areas fairly dull. Wccftech's Alessio Palumbo gave 7.4/10 and wrote that it "feels like a step back from Gears 5 in several ways", with a narrative that is "a lot less memorable" and forgettable side content.

Pure Xbox's roundup also lists The Guardian at 6/10, which it summarizes as a safe and repetitive experience. We could not open that review ourselves, so we are reporting it as a secondhand figure. Even so, the pattern is clear: when critics mark the game down, it is for what surrounds the shooting, not the shooting itself. Palumbo's own summary is that third-person shooter gameplay is "better than ever" even as the game is not "the kind of masterpiece that sells a console like the original did".

How E-Day compares with earlier Gears games

Context makes 87 more meaningful. On Metacritic's pages, the original Gears of War scored 94, Gears of War 2 scored 93 and Gears of War 3 scored 91. The Coalition's first two mainline games, Gears of War 4 and Gears 5, both landed on 84, and the Epic-era spin-off Gears of War: Judgment on 79.

That puts E-Day above everything since Gears of War 3 in 2011 and below the first three games. The Coalition has also been loud about how it got there. Studio technical director Kate Rayner told 80.lv the team "literally rebuilt everything from scratch", a claim that fits a ground-up rebuild. The score suggests the rebuild paid off for critics, though it does not make E-Day a new high for the series.

What you pay, and what your PC needs

Steam lists Gears of War: E-Day at $69.99 for the Standard Edition and $99.99 for the Premium Edition. Xbox Wire says Early Access ran from 1 October for Premium Edition players and for Game Pass subscribers who bought the Premium Upgrade, and that cloud gaming is available through Game Pass Ultimate. Xbox Wire also runs a headline reading "Coming to Xbox Game Pass: Gears of War: E-Day, Minecraft Dungeons II, Dune: Awakening, and More", so check the Game Pass tier you hold before paying.

On PC, Steam says a hardware ray-tracing capable GPU is required. Minimum specs are a Ryzen 5 2600X, Core i7-6850K or i5-10400, 12 GB of RAM and a GPU of RTX 2060, RX 6600 or better. Recommended specs are a Ryzen 5 5600 or i5-11600K, 16 GB of RAM and an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT. Both tiers need Windows 10 or 11, DirectX 12, an SSD and 115 GB of free space.

Should you buy it now or wait?

Reviews support buying if you want a campaign-led, brutal third-person shooter and care about co-op and Horde Siege. They support waiting if story is your priority, because the two clearest dissenting reviews both hit it, or if you only want to try it through a subscription.

Two cautions. First, the Metacritic user score was based on only four ratings when we checked, so player sentiment is not yet a useful signal. Second, review code and launch-day servers are different tests: online modes, matchmaking and PC performance across the wide range of hardware will not be judged until the public is playing. We will not update the score here quietly; if the aggregates move materially we will note the date of any change.

A last point on how to read the 100s. A perfect score from a fan-focused outlet tells you the game delivers what Gears fans want, which is useful if you are one. The 7s and 8s from general outlets tell you how the game looks to someone without that attachment, and those are the numbers a newcomer should weigh most. GAMINGbible's 8/10 is described in Pure Xbox's roundup as an excellent starting point for newcomers, which is the best argument that you do not need to have played the earlier games.