Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Gears of War E-Day Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Proton VPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two year plan when you go to https://protonvpn.com/kindafunny 00:00:00 - Start00:05:15 - Topic of the Show: Gears of War E Day Review00:10:30 - Controls improvements00:44:00 - some missing things Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hards you! Moblad, new season is now streaming on Paramount Plus. Get 70% off a two-year plan when you go to protonvPN.com slash kind of funny. If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash kind of funny. What's up, everybody, and welcome in to your Kind of Funny Games cast for Thursday, October 1st, 2006.

It's Emergence Day. And of course, I'm one of your show host, Snowbike, Mike. And today I'm joined by one of our incredible guests, friend of the show and freelancer extraordinaire. It's Kirk McKin. How are you, Kirk? Good, thanks. Better than you, by the sounds of it.

Oh, damn, Kirk. You were supposed to, you were gassing me up that just five minutes ago. Say, Mike, you kick this cold. You're going to be great. I'm trying, Kirk. I'm trying my best. You're doing good, man. You're doing good.

Thanks, homie. Hey, it's great to see you. Thank you for joining me today. Of course, it is Emergence Day. Big Dog, it's E-Day, which means me and Kirk are going to be talking all things. Years of War, E-Day, for the big review. it's finally time to jump back into that Xbox screen or Kirk, take a look, take a look, see my sign, see my sign.

I'm disappointed. That was a lot of money. Let's wait too much. Let's not talk about it. The comments and notice that I'm great. I'm sorry, the lighting's terribly here. I'm being flashed by my PC monitor. It's like really late at night.

Do we break? Kirk, of course, if people don't know who you are, your friend of the show, you're a freelancer. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what you do, where you write, where you've been so people can follow you. Yeah, sure. I'm on Twitter at McCirk. That's MCK-K-I-R-K.

I forgot to spell my own name. I would write for various places. I'm doing a new stint at IGN at the minute. I do reviews for The Guardian and a bunch of my stuff. Heck yeah, homie. Okay, well, here we are. We're jumping into Gears of War. Been 20 years of the Gears of War franchise.

Really quick, before we jump into the review and talk anything E-Day. Can you just give me a rundown of your gears of war, history, your hype level for gears? What do you think of the franchise? Yeah, I mean, I really like the franchise as a whole. The first years, I thought was incredible. Ever since I saw that Mad World advert, I was really into it. I thought like the dark atmosphere was cool.

And then I feel like the series has kind of dropped off with each entry, really. Two was pretty good. And then after that, you know, diminishing returns. I thought five was fun enough. but that went a little weird in some place and the cliffhanger ending as well was a bit what's going on. But I was kind of excited for this reboot

to see if it goes back to its roots or not. But I don't quite think it did. Well, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about if they can get back to the 20 years ago, right? It's hard to do that, especially with a lot of these IPs from all of the big teams of trying to put the nostalgia glasses on,

Kirk, and bring people back into it and make it love it all over again. And yeah, for me, I will never forget, what, 2006, when Gears One came out, of course, the big commercial that everybody talks about. But just seeing it on screen, I'll never forget walking into A.J. Teserero's big brother's room, Phil. And we were all still on Halo,

and all of a sudden there was this new dog in town, right? It was like nothing but blood everywhere, explosions, just the Nash or shotgun sound. And he was like, no, my brother plays gears. now. He doesn't play Halo anymore. And I'll never forget that day going, what do you mean? And sure enough, it was on the screen and it was like

one of the coolest, most different looking games at the time than I'd ever seen because we played so much Halo. It was like, damn, like, this is cool. And sure enough, fell in love with the franchise. I've always been a big fan of gears. Similar to you, kind of fell off a little bit, come four and five.

I think they made some decisions. And, of course, hard to replicate the original trilogy in that story in a way. way that captures fans. But I'm excited to talk about E-Day with you because, yeah, the question is, can they relight that match and get us all excited? We'll find out in just a moment. Of course, this is the kind of funny games cast each and every weekday.

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Let's jump in the topic of the show. Tots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dots, dot, sots, dot, sots, Sots, Sots. Kirk, it's a whole thing. Don't worry about it. I'll do it. You know what I mean? I'll handle it. So let's jump.

I'll imagine it's not happening. It's fun. Let's jump into it. Let's talk all things. Gears of War E-Day. This is going to be our kind of funny review alongside Kirk, who's coming in to join me. Of course, early access kicks off now on October 1st. The full release.

jumps in on October 6th. It's on Xbox PC and on Xbox Game Pass. You can play solo or up to four players in co-op. The setting for you, if you don't know, it's 14 years before years of war. Set on Emergence Day lasting across three nights in the city of Kelowna. Fight the Locust Horde as franchise vets, Marcus and Dom. And of course, two new cast members and Beta Squad, Reyes and Mags Carter. Of course, I think that gives you.

what it is, Kirk, I'm excited to talk it with you. We're not going to be reviewing multiplayer or Horde. We'll talk about that at the end of the show, but this is going to be the campaign review from me and Kirk, and then we'll talk about multiplayer and Horde at the end as we did not have access to that during the review period. But Kirk, let's talk about it really quick. Oh, you know what?

Before we do that, let me just set the stage. From Shinobi 602. Here's some Gears of War, E-Day Review roundups. Day 1 gave it a 10 out of 10. Tech Raptor gave it a 9.5, but why, though, gave it a 9.5. Mundo Xbox gave it a 9.5. IGN gave it a 9. Vauxhall gave it a 9.

XGN gave it an 8.5. You have Steam Deck HQ gave it an 8th, and Guardian gave it a 6. This coming on Metacritic at an 89 in an open critic of 803. Seven, Kirk, you and I are going to jump right in. We're going to talk about our thoughts on the game. We're going to deep dive into it. Let's start off with your short, quick thoughts. And if you'd like to give me a review score on the kind of funny scale,

one through 10, let's do it, Big Dog, and then I'll follow you up. Yeah, sure. I mean, my review on the Guardian went for a three out of five because they do a five-point scale. If they had a 10 or half points, I probably would have gone 6.5 on the kind of funny scale. You know, it's a decent game. It's not amazing, but it's not terrible. But people are acting like I've said, it's the worst fucking thing in the world,

and I've killed the dog. But, you know, that's just how people are. Everything's got to have to be the best thing ever or complete shit. Yes, that is the way of the world these days is right. So 6.5 from you right there, Kirk, on the kind of funny scale. I'm going to follow that up. I'm going to give it an 8.5. I'm going to give it a great.

I'm going to give it a capital G great. I really fell in love with this game. I really, really enjoyed gears war Ida. I liked the setting of Kelowna. I really enjoyed the city and how that was detailed and created it. When they said after that summer game fest announcement that that city is full on real and you're going to be running around in it, I was like, I don't understand that. I see it now and I really, really enjoyed what they tried to do, blending the linear structure of the original gears mixed now with the gears four, gears five,

kind of open structure that they had with the areas. And I found Colonna and what they did with the open slash linear structure of the missions and kind of just open-ended moments to be really, really fun and engaging. I like Beta Squad, I think they had a lot of good story moments, some good beats. I am surprised that they made me feel for Marcus and Dom again after their original trilogy. I think it's hard to do that with two characters I've known for 20 years. but somehow they set it up on emergency day, and I think they knocked it out of the park.

I do, however, think that exploration is very cool, but also kind of handholdy and also in your face a lot, Kirk, and I think we're going to talk about it in a moment. There is a collectible sound that just won't shut up in this game. There is over 140 collectibles across the five acts, and I'm telling you, every time you go somewhere, that collectible sound will ring and it will ring at moments

that you don't want it to ring and it will ring to make you either want to kind of stop the momentum of the game play to go search for these collectibles or you'll just stop looking for the collectibles all in all just so you can keep moving on the game but that's my thought right there with the 8.5

I really actually liked this game a lot I did fall victim two I wanted to collect them all I searched for everything and I'm excited to talk more about it with you, Kirk. Let's talk about some of the positives. What did you like out of the game? Yeah, I mean, the combat movement is the best, it's been in the series.

They've like sped things up. It's a lot snappier. Like, you can jump, like, just on it, whenever you want. So you can jump between, like, a bus roof and another bit of cover and stuff like that. There's, like, low cover that you can crouch up against and shoot over, like, really low. Like, you lay up against it, don't you? And all that stuff's really good. And it feels much faster.

the old gears games, which felt a little bit clunky sometimes. It doesn't it? Doesn't it right? Like, I'm really surprised. I brought it up when we did the multiplayer beta and the Horde mode beta, but just a simple sprint button moving from A to the stick. There was something about that where

like it didn't feel like gears, but of course, everything on screen was gears, but just that slight just change made the game either feel snappier and faster or just a little different in my brain. I don't know what it is, but it felt better. Kirk, I think, in my opinion.

Yeah, I think it helps that with, you know, with the sprint being on the stick, A's then slide, right? And you can slide and then jump straight into cover or hoof straight to cover or whatever. And just anything that, like, reduces the gap between moving from and into cover in a game built around cover and outflanking people is great. Yeah, and I think a lot of people will get worried about hearing jump inside of gears, right? Because we've never had a true jump button in gears. of war. And sometimes I think your mind quickly goes to a payload jump situation or a call

of duty multiplayer with action. It's not that. And people go, oh, no, I don't want bunny hop in all in my game. It's definitely not that. I think you'd be surprised when you hear jump inside of gears. You actually don't jump that often. You can jump whenever you want, but I never felt the need to jump really all that often. I probably jumped maybe 30 times maximum in this game. It's handy for like, like I said, getting off the top of a bus or something like that. right? Because if you're under fire or your cover gets destroyed because it gets destroyed quite a lot in this game or you're like your cover becomes

lower cover because the top layer's been knocked off or a grenade comes in. You can literally just jump and then you totally are out of there. Whereas in the old games that would have been really clumsy. Yeah, the destructible environments are really well done. There's a lot of destructible pieces of cover that either

you or an enemy will get behind and it will force you to move, which I like about that. Let's talk about Koloa the city. What did you think of the city and how did you think of this kind of open structure meets linear structure? Yeah, I mean, to me, that was kind of the worst part of the game. I love the idea of it, like the idea of a city being torn apart as you progress through the story and it changing and it does do that.

But it also means you're stomping through the same levels all the time. You cross the same bridge like four times in this game. I'm not just, I'm not, you don't just walk across it either. This is a level like a linear, you got, you got a fight across the beach. bridge and then you've got to fight back across the bridge and you've got to fight back across the bridge again and it's like guys come on give me a break I hate this bridge

that's interesting Kirk yeah it is funny of like the city is fully realized and detailed and you are running around it in this open structure open zone kind of similar to gears five not as big because as you brought up you have the what is that what is that vehicle

called the skiff the skiff yes which is like the fun parachute snowboard as I like to call it back then. But yeah, you don't have that, but you have this large structure where, yeah, most of the time you will get a new mission, which will be across town. And now you and your crew will run across this open zone, which is quite large. If you played the open beta with the hoard mode, close to that size, maybe a little bit larger than the hoard map itself, just a little bit larger. But you're going to run across an entire

city that will have things going on, right? Citizens will be screaming. running for their lives. There will be small packets of locust waiting for you to run into. There will be collectibles and hard cases, we'll talk about in a little bit, for you to explore and find. And then there will also be side missions, which will be like, hey, you'll roll up on a pizzeria, and there will be a bunch of civilians stuck inside who have been fighting for their lives, and you'll call the squad and be like, hey, can we get these people to safety?

And, of course, the mission will be simple as can be stand there for 92, three minutes. and kill a bunch of locust until it's clear, and then you'll complete a side mission. But that is kind of the flow of this game of open area, run all the way across the map of Colonna, go to the next linear mission, which will have the big set piece, and then on the flip side, run back,

and you can stop for collectibles or side missions, which I liked, Kirk, I liked it a lot, actually. Yeah, I felt like it was a bit of a course correction. It was either too much of a course correction, or not enough, I don't know which. Because in the last years, obviously, people complained about the skiff. But I felt like that was, you know, it was kind of like this isn't gears. But you just, it gets you between the gameplay bits real quick, you know?

And that's all it serves to do. Whereas in this, you've got a hoof it. And so if they wanted to make a game that wasn't like Gears 5, they should have made a more linear game. I don't understand why these sandbox bits even exist all, because they don't really add anything to the game, in my opinion. It's so interesting you bring that up, Kurt, because yeah, it does, there's this moment of you leave Gears 5 and the question is, well, what do you do, right? What is the audience reception of this kind of like open zone, open area gears as opposed to the original trilogy, which is just linear missions, right?

And I think for me personally, I really liked this blend. I told Roger during the review period of like, I liked the blend of what they kind of married with, Gears 5 meets the original trilogy. hey, let's shrink down that open zone. You're not on the skiff snowboarding for multiple minutes in a barren frozen wasteland with nothing much to do. You are in Kelowna, this smaller town. And it gives you the option of, hey, if you don't like this exploration, if you don't want to do the side content, you don't want to run in the open zones, just run straight

to the next mission. You can go right back into the linear area and you're done. Or what I personally found is like, I really liked spending my time in Colone. And I liked seeing the city evolve as you brought up from moment one of E-Day to day three of E-Day, where the city is a little more destroyed. There are fewer people running in the streets. I did enjoy like hearing gunshot fire from across the town running over to it and it being a emergent side mission where it's like, hey, go help these guys fortify their base. Let's hang out with it. I enjoyed that a lot more than Gears 5 where it felt like, hey, use the skiff go all the way across this giant frozen.

and Tundra, go set up a relay tower, and then continue on. I did like this structure. I think it married both of them well for me, where I was like, you know what, I dig this. I like this a lot. I think that's fair. And I think the opening of the game is really cool as well. When you see emergency day actually happen and you've got like a bit of pipe or a baseball battle, whatever, and you're just going ham on their grunts and stuff.

And it's like, that's pretty cool. But then I think the illusion kind of falls apart after a bit because at first you feel like this is an actual city. You're seeing civilians running about and stuff. But then you start to see these little spawn doors everywhere that they're just running in and out of constantly to keep the MPC numbers down. And they're just running into this little dark room

and then coming out of this little dark room. And it kind of breaks the illusion for me a little bit. There was a couple moments where I did giggle of like, okay, that guy's just screaming and running real quick out of nowhere. That's pretty great. But yeah, it does, it tells a story on the city side of things of day one, there's a lot of stuff by day three. It is completely barren.

It's beat down. There's very few survivors running around. One on there. One of the chat asks, when you do the side quests, are there progression? Is there anything rewarding for that? And yeah, let's talk about that discoverability. And let's talk about this, like, kind of collectibles, Kirk, because it's a big thing in this game. You're going to hear the collectibles sound a lot.

And the collectibles, very interesting, Kirk. They're all their own unique items. So it could be a newspaper. It could be a tourist map. It could be a magazine. It might be a baseball hat, a hard hat. It's like unique items every single time, and they all have their own little paragraph backstory to it, right?

But on top of that, you also have these hard cases. And so every time you do a side mission or you explore, you'll usually unlock a hard case from doing the mission. And what that hard case is is it's going to unlock a weapon mod or an armor kit mod that will help your weapons get stronger, your armor do different things, your ability. Each kind of armor mod has its own special unique ability. One is a heel. One is a drone.

What is a heel to squad type of heel? I guess one is a stim pack, I should say. And then the other one is heal and revive your squad. And so you'll unlock weapon mods for that, which I found those to be really rewarding. And I liked a lot of them. The collectibles got me kind of frustrated, Kirk, because the sound is kind of. constantly going off. And then on top of that,

I didn't know what the collectibles looked like. So sometimes you're just constantly in a room looking around for just anything and everything and you don't quite know. Is it a cog tag or is it this magazine? Is it this poster on the wall? I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for. Did you not use the Assassin Vision?

I hated using the Assassin Vision, Kirk. I can't tell you how beautiful this game is. And then going into the gray static assassin's, vision to look for the smallest golden outline of an item pissed me off every time I did it, Big Dog. I hated it so much. Yeah. I mean, the collectible chime thing you mentioned as well.

At one point, there was a cutscene. It was meant to be quite upsetting, right? And then just as it transitions out smoothly into gameplay, it's like, bling. Like, there's a collectible there, yeah? The collectible sound will ring so much. There's 140 collectibles in there, as I said. And it's going to ring all the time. And the problem is, is the catch is, it rings when you're in its area.

And there must be some sort of like bubble radius around your character because it will ring when there's the collectible on a floor below you in the next two rooms around from you. So you're like, you'll hear it and you'll go, okay, well, I should be in the same room as it. No, it might be in the next two rooms past you. So just be prepared to keep looking for that. So I did get a little frustrated at the collectibles. I thought they added fun little moments, right? you'll find little nods to other characters and like the world if you read them how many people

really read the paragraph clerk i don't know but i did stop and read them after a while and i appreciated the little story it was telling of emergence day how did you find the uh like transitioning from side missions into main missions and stuff because there's a couple of moments i found where you're trying to do a side mission and you slightly step off the beating track and it's like mission failed or if you get pulled into a main mission by accident because everything happened in the open world, right? So it's all like, the lines between triggers are so small sometimes. Yeah, that happened to me once, Kirk, where I was, I walked out of bounds on the,

on the map, on the mission, right? And that did frustrate me because, yeah, it's a very interesting blend here of everything is still open while you're doing it, except for some very linear missions. But a lot of the time, you are still in the open area, open world. And there is a boundary similar to other games you played where you can step out and the countdown will begin of like, hey, you're stepping out of this area. We're going to stop the mission, right? And so for me, that happened once.

I did find that frustrating of like, I'm clearly just walking around to get a different piece of cover or like going to a different area to look for ammo. Like, I'm not leaving this mission. So it did frustrate me a little bit of like, why would you turn off the mission when you know we're in this open zone? Just let it ride. What about the walking talks as well? A couple of walking talks, a couple of walking talks.

You know what? surprisingly, I wasn't mad at any of the walk-in talks because I really did enjoy the characters, Kirk. I know we'll kind of, we'll move into the story. Yeah, moving to the story, but like, we're talking about two characters that we know their story. I've experienced Dom and Marcus for 20 years now, right? Like, there's not much more story you can tell,

or it's going to be hard to kind of fit in a new story ahead of all the history you already had. But I think that Max Carter and Lucas Reyes, the other two pieces of Beta Squad really shine in this. Their stories are like really good where I was like, hey, I do want to have this walk and talk. I do want to have these moments where I want to hear your backstory because they're surprisingly really good

and they stand up tall next to Marcus and Dom, who are, you know, household names at this point. I thought they were highlights to new characters, honestly, because Dom and Marcus, like you say, they've been done. We already know what their motivations are, really. And did we really have to know why Marcus has got a lip scar? or why they started putting chainsaws on lances. Like, that's that not story.

That's just remember that thing that you like. There it is. Great. I mean, true, right? Like, we learned that. I think we learn a little bit more about Marcus and Dom as well. And I am surprised, I think you'll, if you jump into this game, I think you'll be surprised of how they tell this story.

Every character has a beat. Everyone has their moment. But these other two characters, they really do shine up against the big pillars of Gears of War, which is Marcus and Dom. And those two still have moments as well that I was impressed with, right? I think there's a lot of questions. How do you tell Dom's origin story or kind of story beforehand? And same for Marcus.

But I think they nailed the story overall for me. I really, really enjoyed. I did like the prequel of Colona, how it fell in three days, where the team has to go and the decisions that they had to make. I was pleased with the story overall for sure. I think within the constraints of a prequel that did a pretty good. good job. Yeah, I mean, how tough is that probably to write to write all

that? Like, I mean, to not know what the locust are, to then have to learn about them, then have to, they're making up the names of them as you go and you're kind of like, oh yeah, that's what you called them in the next one. Like, I appreciate that for sure. People are so stuck on the fact that I called them

aliens in my headline, man. I was writing for the Guardian, man. There were newspaper audience. It was a shorthand. Aliens, okay? Kirk, I want to talk more things, Gears of War, E-Day with you. I want to circle back to the hardcasts and the weapon mods to hear your thoughts on that. I do want to continue to talk about the gameplay and the story. And then we're going to get into multiplayer and hoard mode.

But let's do that after a quick word from our sponsors. This episode's brought to you by ProtonVPN. Recently, more and more content I've been trying to watch has given me this content isn't available in your region message. And I hate it. But with ProtonVPN, it's easy to change. change your virtual location, so you can access the sites and content you need no matter where you are. ProtonVPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their

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First one, I have OPA tried in and says, did Mike say how long it took? Kirk, how long did it take you to beat this game? And what were you playing on? It was about 12 hours. I played on PC and yeah, Mac's settings, well, no, actually, not Max settings,

the one down, because the Mac settings is ludicrous and that sounded terrifying. Okay, hell, yeah. I left that off. But that PC get ludicrous. Yeah, exactly. There's even a ludicrous setting for the go.

And I was like, mine took 10 and a half hours and I would have spent a lot more time in that I did not do enough side objectives during my run I really wish I did stop and smell the roses and do all the side objectives so I was at 10 and a half I could have gone a lot more on that one it was 12 for me yeah normal difficulty as well for me this is a game though for me Kirk I don't know how you feel I want to know what you think I want to replay this I had some so much fun with this game that I want to replay this co-op with some friends on a harder difficulty right away. I played it on hard, not the hardest setting, but hard with a friend in co-op. So I've done that. And, you know, that didn't improve it, I think. But yeah, I am probably going to go back to it.

I haven't uninstalled it. I'm going to go back to it for the hoard mode and for multiplayer to test them out because they're probably going to be really good because the core combat feels great. My issues are mostly with the structure of the campaign. I like that. Yeah, we're going to talk about Horde mode and multiplayer at the end of the show. Of course, that was not part of the review period. But we've experienced it during the betas. And we'll talk about kind of the news around that. I do want to jump into a super chat from Austin, Rossboro, who writes in and says, thanks for the review, y'all. Would you recommend this for a first-time Gears player? I'm interested in jumping into the franchise here.

Much love. Kirk, what do you think about first-timers jumping into this? Of course, it's a prequel to Gears 1 through 3. It doesn't have a bunch of baggage as being a gear's, what, six or six as well. So what do you think about first timers jumping in? I think it's absolutely a fine starting off point. And I think that's why Microsoft and the coalition made this game, to be honest, because, you know, the law's got so convoluted and stuff that newcomers would find it hard to follow probably. But if they play this, they can then jump into five and catch up. But yeah, it's a good starting off point.

You know, they'll find out that the locusts are actually aliens. and then they'll be up here. Yeah, I think this is a great jumping on point right here. I think this is a lot of fun, especially with the modern feel. I've gone back to Gears 1 through 3. Of course, co-worker Andy Cortez has recently played them. And, Kirk, for me, those games do feel a little old.

I think they still hold up well, but they are a little bit slower-paced. They do feel a little bit dated. And I remember playing that with Andy thinking, man, I would like to do anything but play through this right now. So for me, I really did enjoy the structure of this. It felt like I had a little more breathing room, Kirk. I think it's what it is for me of like,

I know gears for the linear storytelling and those missions. I really did enjoy running around Colonna and like being able to be like, you know what, let's mess around. Let's fuck off for a little bit, Kirk, and let's go jump over and let's go, let's go do a side mission. Let's go shoot at some guys, find some collectibles, and then get back to the linear mission. Because I just had, I had flashbacks of playing gears three. with Andy a couple months ago and going,

man, this is a little slow for me right now. I'm not happy. It's been a long time since I played the original trilogy, so you're probably right, and like I say, the movement of everything is much faster in this, but every time it kind of shrunk down, I went linear, you know, and it turned the lights off, it felt like playing aliens

or something, and it was really cool. And then when it went back outside and it opened up, I was like, oh, damn, I kind of want that feeling back again, you know? There was some great feelings. There was some great moments. I think they blended it well, but yeah, There's some really good moments here, especially on emergency day of like, hey, it is really down right now. It's dark.

It's not a good situation for these guys to be in. And like, they did play that very well of jumping from different story beat to story beat, making you feel like, hey, are these guys going to get out of it? What is their next move? How are they going to kind of overcome this obstacle? And I liked some of the setting spots that we went to. Yeah, I think, like I say, the city gets kind of repetitive. but they do do quite a bit within the bounds of what the, like, shackles that've made for themselves in that setting.

And when you go back through the city at the end and, you know, it's more war-torn and stuff, I think that's pretty cool. And the visuals are incredible. Like, it's one of the best-looking games on Xbox for sure. Yeah, visuals are looking incredible. Just don't stare at the character model's eyes. They're dead inside. Like, there's moments here where you go into a cutscene and you're like, wow, they look so freaking good. then you get kicked out of it and the character models look great and then you see their face and you're like man

there is no detail in their facial structure here besides a bunch of dead eyes right there but we're going through hell kirk and those eyes are telling a story that no one else can tell there it always it always made me laugh to look at their eyes i didn't even notice that but i noticed the mpc's they have like these really flat featureless faces they look like they've been put for about 20 filters they probably look like me with this fucking light and i'm saying to be honest Let's talk about some of the set pieces. What did you think, of course, gears known for the linear structure, but we do talk about these action games,

having these big wow popcorn moments. What did you like? Did you like all of them? Did you vibe with everything through Act 1 through 5? Yeah, like I say, the linear sections were the standouts for me. But this kind of only has one idea to switch you up, right? Or two, I guess.

There's the bits where you've got to defend a place, right? which is classic gears. You put down turrets and traps and stuff. And, you know, they're great. I wish there was more about. There's still quite a lot of it in there. And the other thing is it puts you on helicopter in the gunner see, which again,

gears have done that before. And I think it does it twice in this. Am I right? I remember one really long one, yes. There might be a second one, but I know for sure there's a one long helicopter piece here. Yeah, towards it. And there's a bit, like, I don't I won't spoil it,

but there's like a visual moment in that helicopter ride where you go through the clouds. You must know what I mean. Yeah. And that's one of the standout bits of the game for me, just like the feeling that gave me. But it was kind of ruined by the gameplay around it for me. Because there was like this, you're fighting those like flying locust things. And there's one right at the end of the section that just fires two missiles at you really quick. And if you don't kill it in like five seconds flat, you're back at the start of that section,

watching that same thing again and then it loses its power a little bit. Oh yeah, there's a, there's a couple rough checkpoints here. If you die, you go back a pretty far away. And you're like, I don't really want to go that far back, please. Yeah, but it forces you to do the walking talks again every time as well. Yes, yes. But yeah, I think the step pieces are really good. I think they, they do very well of bringing back just the gears three or the gears one through three set pieces, you know.

We're like, yeah, you're up in the helicopter, you're on a train. Like you know these moments, but they did really well. I'm bringing them back and making them look great and having them really fun. I liked it all. What did you think? Let's go over back to the collectibles, but let's talk about the weapon mods, these hard cases. What did you think of them adding kind of a different layer of gameplay to everything? You being able to switch up the weapons and your armor sets.

Yeah, I really like that part of it. I thought it was great because you can kind of customize your stuff and put scopes on it, so you've got a better zoom or better bullets. And you can change, like, what the active reload does, whether it gives it more power or if it, like, stuns or fire ammo and stuff like that, and I thought that was really cool. But once you get hold of the, like, shotgun that fires acid, none of the other guns are worth fusing because the emulsion shotgun is bad in this game.

It's real cool. If you have some enemies running up on you with the emulsion shotgun, you better back up quickly because they are going to melt your face off. It's pretty amazing. I was a big fan of it. What do you call it, by the way, when you get turned into chunks in that game? Because that's how you die usually, right? You get hit by some kind of missile.

Yes, yeah. And you get turned into like 50 chunks. Me and my friend called it, getting chunked. And I've been chunked is good. That's good. I've been chunked, man. You've been chunked. And then it's like, checkpoint.

I mean, that's the Nash's shotgun. That's the, that's the boom shot is right. Just so fun. To get him's good. Gibb is right. That's good. Yeah, I really liked the hard cases. And they actually, you know, I came out of the horde mode and multiplayer preview a little down.

I didn't really vibe with the horde mode at first. And we only played a little bit. So I'm excited to dive into it. But this campaign and the hard cases actually made me appreciate the hard mode and like the new kind of vibe they're going for a lot more, right? I do now understand what the vision is of like being in this open area, hoard mode. and then doing the side objectives to go get those weapon mods because they do play, they change up these weapons so much, man. I had a blast trying on new builds,

changing up each and every weapon. And every weapon in the game all has these different abilities on it where, yeah, when you go into the weapon mods outfit or at the resupply station, it'll have a top one which will affect the active reload and what those kind of bullets do after. And then each one has one through three different new modifications you can add, whether that be like extended range, more powerful bullets. But I found that on top of that with my armor mods, I was really messing around with some

builds where I had one where every critical kill would automatically perfect reload the weapon. So I paired that with my sniper rifle. And every time I got a headshot with the sniper rifle, guess what? I never had to reload again. So it was just one after another after another. And I really thought that was a ton of fun. And I loved, I got really into finding the hard cases. Okay, I got, I got 83 hard cases.

The long shot is fantastic. We got to talk about the weapons. That makes it essential, though, that, that mod, man. Oh, my God. You don't stop, dear. You never stop. And, like, the cool part about that is, right, when you think of critical kills, you might think of just headshots with the sniper, but no, it does more than that, right?

If you melee weapon, one of the smaller grunts and you explode them into, you know, little gibs or chunks, you can. and it automatically reloads the weapon there. So I was using it in different ways as well to get that ammo back on top and moving. And so, yeah, I really liked these hard cases and it made me appreciate what will play in the new Horde mode soon enough of like, oh, now I am going to get off the main objective

and I am going to go and try to get the new weapon cases with my crew. Because, like, I'm into this now. I understand it a lot better, which I like a lot. Yeah, I do think Horde mode and the online could elevate this and maybe put a point or two on the game for me. It's just we didn't have access to that during the review period, unfortunately. I know, isn't it crazy?

I'm so excited to jump into versus in Horde mode. Of course, Horde Siege. It's going to be the big new game mode with a lot more people. But let's talk about some of the weapons because we have some returning favorites and we also have some new weapons,

Kirk. What did you think about the arsenal of weapons that you got the opportunity to use? I can't remember. Is it the incinerator? The shabler. Yes, I believe so. Yeah, yeah.

That's the weapon. for me. That was the one that I was using, that and the long shot all the way through pretty much. I mean, I'd use the classic Lancer as well because chainsawing people's always fun. But they were my two main ones. I was really, I was gutted, though, that you can't put a grenade in a guy's mouth in this one. Like, why did they take that away? We will have to talk about that. Yeah, there is some interesting stuff that the audience of gears have found with the latest blog post.

Let me just read the top of that. That is called Emergence Day Begins Tomorrow. that dropped on September 30th, 2026, which was yesterday, kind of detailing season one and what's to come in beyond for season two. But they did notice all the way at the bottom, there is a small section here called, let me find it, building E-Day from the ground up and feature development. A lot of people noticed that certain features from previous Gears games are not in this.

And so they detailed why they did that and what the details were behind that, which we're going to read in just a, moment. But yeah, Kirk, really quick on the weapons, man, I liked all the arsenal in this game. The emulsion shotgun, as you brought up, is fantastic. But that gut puncher grenade launcher gun is a ton of fun as well. They really do a great job of marrying the boom shots and the digger rocket launcher that they had before. And they married it into this grenade launcher where you shoot it and you hold and you hold it down until you see the grenade, get somebody or fly into them.

And they put like this grid on them to let you know, like, hey, you're there. And then you just let that thing explode. I use that a lot. I like this new, this new, what did they call this? It's not the breed. It might be the breach shot. The breach shot is like this four round, like, carbine rifle that married the long shot with an assault rifle that I really liked. But it had an axe on the back.

It's like a battle rifle, in it? Yeah. Yeah, dude, when you swing that axe at somebody, it was so cool. and I think they did a great job, Kirk, as well, reintroducing enemies and weapons to you throughout this game, right? Like, when you jump into gears, and if you've played for the 20 years, you know the characters,

you know the weapons you're looking for. And I thought they did a really good job at taking it slow of like, hey, it's E-Day. That means you send the smallest troops out first, so you start off with the grunts, and then you'll move on to the larger and larger guys. And the same for the weapons of like,

hey, we're not going to give you X, Y, and Z weapon off the beginning, but we'll have a cool set piece. moment for you to go, oh snap, it's finally here. I'm so excited to see whatever weapon that may be, no spoils, chap. But you know, you know there's some certain weapons that have to be in this game. And I thought they did a great job of like holding off on that until it's the right time to put it in. Yeah, the cadence at which they give out weapons is really good. And obviously, if you're really into gears, I mean, I like gears.

I'm not a super fun by any means. So your mileage may vary. But I think if you're like a diehard fun of this, you'll really get a lot out of the way. that the weapons are introduced in this game. Definitely. Yeah, I think they did a good job on that one. So, yeah, you'll see the weapons you love and a lot of new cool weapons, too. The hook shots, of course, the big brutes will come out, and they have the boom shots.

They have the machine gun that you know. But then they also have this hook shot where he fires a big anchor, in it? Yeah, he fires a giant boat anchor at you. And not only does it hit you at the beginning, but then he pulls it back and it rips people apart on the backpole. Very cool. That one was awesome. I liked that a lot. You got to get so close to them to use it, though.

You usually get a gun down way trying to pull it off. Kirk, there I was. I was like, I'll shoot this from a mile and a half away. And then it would only go halfway. I'm like, ah, shit, I got to get a lot closer. That's not good. Yeah, I loved that. And I also thought I played solo, Kirk.

So I don't know what it looked like on your side with co-op, but we can talk about that. I think they were very generous with the downs. When you go down and you die, right? You do go down to a down state where you can be revived by your teammates, which is normal. But I thought on solo, they did a really good job of like,

I get four downs as a solo player, which I'm sure you'd get in co-op, right, of like four players, everybody gets one down. I think it's two each for two players. Okay, yeah, for me it felt really generous of like, I never felt like I was like out of it, right? I would go down and I might use up one to two,

maybe three downs, but I never used up the fourth. The AI were very good of always coming right to me, picking me up right away. I never felt like I was standing there waiting for AI bots to come after me. And funny enough, you can still get executed by the big guys. So it's not like I'm down and I'm just waiting.

If you accidentally walk towards a big guy, they will execute you and you'll restart. So, yeah, I like the blend of like I felt good about it. I felt like I had enough chances. Unless you get chunked. Yeah, unless you get chung. The AI, though, even on two player, the two AI bots, they come and get you up pretty sharpish. The only issue I had with the AI is right towards the end of the game is a bit where you've got to go up a couple of elevators,

and they just would not come to them elevators, man. We had to, like, walk up to them and, like, heard them like sheep to the elevators. A couple of awkward moments there where I don't understand the game design. I think I clearly understand it from a co-op perspective. We're waiting for all four players to get in as a crew to go and load up the thing. But, like, when I'm playing solo, like you brought up Kirk is like, why am I waiting for these people to get here? If I get up to the button, just load them in, right?

And, yeah, even on solo, I felt that way. It's like, hey, climb that ladder faster, like, get over here. What are we doing? It was like hurting gas sometimes. It's a odd thing to say. Yeah, like, I had no problem with all the AI. I thought they did well. There was one part at the end.

No spoilers, but there's a character scene, a moment, and the character just starts running around. They're like having their moment. And instead of like, we're in cover, we're shooting, maybe you think they do something heroic. No, they just, my AI decided. I'm going to run from back and forth across the map at all times. And what are we doing here?

This is your moment. Like, do something cool. And they definitely did something weird. And I was like, I don't understand what's happening here. I would love some detail. I know the moment you're talking about. Yeah, yeah.

But my friend was controlling that character. So it's just like, he's just being normal. I don't understand. Okay. Yeah, that's odd. Yeah. And so, yeah, I liked everything. Kirk,

what are some of your final thoughts on the campaign itself? want us to move over to multiplayer in hoard mode, but any final thoughts that we might have missed on the campaign that you want to talk about? I don't think so. I think, like, really, at the base of it, you know, because they said they built it from the ground up again,

which is why it's missing some features and stuff. They built it because they need to rework the movement and the gunplay and everything. And if this is the basis of the future series, I think now that they've got it locked in, the next game will be really fucking good. It's just that this is, you know, this is their first baby in that sense.

I agree with you right there. Yeah, let's jump over to that blog post right now. Of course, maybe you saw the news last night started breaking after this blog post posted. I saw a lot of people talking on the multiplayer side. We're worried about ranked mode. Ranked mode is coming next week after pre-release, so you will get a ranked mode very early.

But what Kirk is talking about, I'm going to read directly from the blog post here on the Gears World websites. It says, building Ede from the ground up and feature development. As we stated before, we started Eday with an empty hard drive building our entire gameplay sandbox from scratch to ensure a more unified gameplay experience across campaign PVE and PVP. This new sandbox also allowed for innovation in cover, combat, and enemies.

The tradeoff being that including every legacy feature from Gears of War was not possible for launch. Those features like meat shields, chainsaw duels, select weapons from a franchise's past, or select weapons from the franchise's past, and online works like private, online works like private lobbies and leaderboards

are not going to be, are not gone from the franchise. Our team is working hard to deliver the strongest and most stable launch experience we can with an eye to, with an eye to how, and what to deliver and improve on fan favorite features, either post-launch or in our next title.

So, yeah, as Kirk brought up, right, you were going to notice a number of features that maybe you're super gears diehard that you would notice, right? No meat shields, no chainsaw duels, no private lobbies and leaderboards here at day one. But they're going to kind of restart and build off of that and start adding in these features later on post-launch and in the next title. And I think Kirk, a lot of die-hard fans didn't love hearing the news of certain features that they love not being in the game.

And that's where we saw a lot of conversation late last night. Yeah, I mean, I didn't even notice the Meachields thing, like, until I saw that blog post. It was like, yeah, shit, of course. But the one thing that I was gutted about was, like I said earlier, but the grenade, you used to be able to, like, melee someone with a grenade, and it just stick in their mouth. And that's just completely gone. Now, I ran up to someone and just kicked them, and then they shotguned me. So I was that out.

Yeah, I didn't notice much of that. You bring up the grenade melee, which I, I love sticking people with those spiky grenades. I didn't do that once this entire time. I felt like I was at a medium to long range most of my playthrough. Or if I was up close, it was with the Nashir shotgun. But yeah, chainsaw duels meet shields. I didn't notice that throughout the campaign.

I was really missing. I did notice that I thought the executions were kind of lacking, Kirk. I felt like I saw a lot of the same executions, or it felt like it was missing kind of those over-the-top executions that I thought, I know Gears of War for. It felt very muted and minimum whenever I would do an execution on some of these enemies. Yeah, I think when you got the chainsaw, it's pretty good because the chainsaw is always fun to rip through people. But usually, other than that, it's a variation of like curb stump or sometimes it just kicks them in the ass.

And you're like, oh, I guess they're dead. Okay, that's enough. It's right. Yeah. So it looks like, hey, as they stated, right, we started Gears of War Eday with an empty hard drive, building our entire gameplay sandbox from scratch to ensure a more unified gameplay experience. As Kirk, you said, I'm excited for the future, right?

I think this game is very good. I like this game a lot. And if this is going to be the feel, the look of the game, moving forward, I'm excited for that. I do look forward to having the conversation with you again, Kirk, on what they do next, right? Is it going to be this marriage once again of this small open world slash linear

campaign or will they choose one of the other and just double down on that feature? I don't know where they'll take the feedback and what they'll do, but right now, I leave this going, I'm excited to play more gears, and that's a positive. Yeah, I hope they get to make another one, man, with, you know, their story lead got laid off just before this came out. You don't know what's going to happen over there, unfortunately, but I do hope they get another shot at it. Yeah, that's a whole other conversation, a whole other can of waxes, right?

A can of worms right there. There, Kirk. I will save that for another day. But for me right now, I do, I agree. I hope they get more. I hope we see more. I think this is a really good jumping off points for the franchise and the series of, hey, this is a good game.

People are going to like it. Hopefully they'll enjoy multiplayer in Horde mode. And let's build off of that because you've got something solid at its core. Let's see where they go from here. Kirk, let's wrap up the podcast. Where can everybody find you? Any final thoughts that we missed? and let's get out of here for the day.

I have no more thoughts left in my head. It's like, what time is it? R-8, that's like my bedtime, almost. But you can find me at McCirk, MCK-K-I-R-K on Twitter. Please don't send me abuse. I've had enough. And that's it. Be nice to be Kirk, all right?

Talk to video games in a positive way with him. I want to give a couple shout-outs really quick. Shout out to AIL-9-157 on the Super Chat says, Kirk, thanks for jumping on the kind of funny review and sharing your review with us. Very excited to try this game out. And then Sandy Crane writes in and says, we need Markets and Dom, need a DLC called V-Day

and let them date during Valentine's Day. Thank you for that. Yep. Kirk, it's been a blast with you. Thank you for jumping on the review. Looking forward to everyone playing this game. And most importantly, you and I get to jump into multiplayer in Horde mode. That's next.

We didn't get to play that at all during the review. So I'm pumped up to play that. I'm sure we will be playing that here and kind of funny next week. But if you're watching live on Twitch and on YouTube, guess what? The fun of Gears of War E-Day doesn't stop, as Andy and Ray Narvarez Jr. are going to kick off their campaign right now here live on Twitch and on YouTube

here at Kind of Funny Games. Go enjoy that. With that, this is your games cast. Have a wonderful day. Leave some comments down below. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Goodbye, everyone.