Gears of War: E-Day is better than you think, but worse than it should be. A few words on the gameplay, “Gears of Woke,” and the execution. THE GOOD The graphics, especially in the second half, can feel truly next-gen. The world never feels fully organic, since the cover system forces it onto a grid, but in scope and scale it’s the video game equivalent of Avengers. A few moments are genuinely breathtaking. The soundtrack might be the best in the franchise. Mid-fight I forgot to notice most of it, which is praise in itself. THE NEUTRAL This is old-school Gears. If that’s what you want, that’s what you get. Personally, I think the cover system has passed its expiry date: snapping to walls just doesn’t thrill anymore. Remnant proved a great TPP shooter doesn’t need a grid. And before you protest: GTA changed its CCC (character, camera, control) once, and it worked out fine. I’d love a first-person Gears. Still, if the next one keeps the good old clunky cover, I’m buying it anyway. THE BAD Unfortunately, there’s a lot. The game crashes more than it should due to gameplay and scripting bugs, the UI is god-awful, and I soft-locked myself once. But the biggest problem is the story. It’s 2026; I can demand a good story from a video game. E-Day is Bravo Squad thrown around town for bullshit reasons, and then it ends. The tragedy of Emergence Day boils down to screaming, NPCs you can never save, piles of corpses, and a few gory scenes. What should have been an emotional apocalypse reads mostly like a dry weather report. The dialogue is often bad, and so is the delivery. In a game that cost hundreds of millions, some of it sounds like the devs recorded it themselves. And the peak issue: like many others in the last decade, the game has been hijacked for propaganda. I don’t mind that a disabled black lesbian plays an important role. I mind how she, and every other woman in the game, is written. Mags Carter is walking perfection: always right, always gets the last word, best ideas, and often takes the lead because reasons. Same goes for the heroic pilot, the virtuous mayor, the tough-but-understanding captain. Unlike the men, every woman is written by a writer on his knees, and it’s not only transparent, it’s embarrassing. The women of the new Gears aren’t characters. They’re statements. So here’s my biggest Gears puzzle: how do you spend hundreds of millions, involve thousands of people, and still let the madmen run the asylum? Why inject so much estrogen into a franchise people loved for its testosterone? VERDICT Good enough if you need every bit of Gears lore or just want to live inside a blockbuster. Fingers crossed the next one returns to the franchise’s original spirit, not just in gameplay but in story too.