Gears of War: E-Day is almost here–unless you’re hopping in a few days early with the Premium Edition–and if you’re looking to try out the campaign, you can settle in for a few days of action and chainsaw executions. While Gears of War: E-Day is primarily a linear cover-based shooter, the game also sprinkles in some semi-open-world environments for you to explore between missions, giving you the opportunity to hunt down collectibles, upgrades, and take part in side missions. Here’s how long it’ll take you to beat Gears of War: E-Day.
How long to beat Gears of War: E-Day depending on your play style
If you tackle the Gears of War: E-Day campaign on normal difficulty, do a little bit of collectibles hunting and take part in the game’s non-story missions, expect the campaign to take 10-14 hours to complete.
In my own playthrough, I motored through the campaign and finished it in 11 hours, occasionally stopping along the way to track down a hidden item, find an upgrade pack for my arsenal, and take part in a side quest. I’d done roughly 60% of that content before I reached the end, and Gears of War: E-Day has a war journal that provides a very comprehensive list of things you missed in each mission, so you can go back and find them for a completionist run.
That’s a fairly standard playthrough time for a game in this series, and once you’ve rolled credits, the various multiplayer modes look like they’ll consume plenty of your hours. You can increase the difficulty and spend more time in the campaign, but on higher challenge levels, enemies can be bullet-sponges that quickly burn through your stock of spare lives. Horde Siege looks like an especially enjoyable timesink, as this new take on the Gears of War horde mode revolves around three teams of four players taking on waves of enemies, co-operating with each other to accomplish objectives, and survive against increasingly overwhelming odds.
Gears of War: E-Day mission list
The campaign for Gears of War: E-Day is spread across five acts, each comprising several chapters. Acts 1 and 5 are the shortest of the bunch, while Acts 2-4 are lengthy, meaty parts of the overall narrative. You could easily do an Act per night, and spread them out over a week. You can see the full list of Acts and Chapters below, and if you ever want to go back to an earlier one to hunt down a missing collectible or gear upgrade, you can easily do so from the main menu.
Act 1
- Prologue
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
Act 2
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
Act 3
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
Act 4
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
Act 5
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
For more Gears of War: E-Day guides, you can read up when the game launches globally, if it’s coming to Steam, and what its post-launch roadmap looks like.
