Every Gears of War Game Ranked by Critics and Players: E-Day Is the Best-Reviewed Since 2011

The first Gears of War is still the best-rated game in the series, by the narrowest margin we could measure: a 94 Metascore and an 8.2 user score put it 0.01 points ahead of Gears of War 2. Gears of War: E-Day, out in full on 6 October, enters fourth with an 87 on Metacritic, the series' best critic score since Gears of War 3 in 2011.

This ranking is built from Metacritic critic and user scores, Steam review data and OpenCritic, all read on 4 October 2026, combined with the same 70/30 critics-to-players formula we use in our reviews. Nobody played through ten games for it; every number below links back to a page you can check.

How did we rank the Gears of War games?

Each game gets a critic score and a player score out of 10. The critic score is the Metascore on the game's main Metacritic page, divided by ten. The player score is the Steam percentage of positive reviews, divided by ten, for the four games sold on Steam; for the six that are not, it is the Metacritic user score on the platform Metacritic treats as the game's main one. The final score is 70% critics plus 30% players, the weighting our evidence-based reviews use.

We counted ten games: the five main-line entries (Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Gears of War 3, Gears of War 4 and Gears 5), the prequels Judgment and E-Day, the strategy spin-off Gears Tactics, and the two later versions of the first game, Ultimate Edition (2015) and Reloaded (2025). Mobile spin-offs and DLC are left out, because Metacritic and Steam do not score them in a comparable way.

Every Gears of War game, ranked

Why does Epic's original trilogy still sit on top?

Because critics loved it and nothing since has matched those numbers. The three Xbox 360 games developed by Epic Games are the only entries above 90 on Metacritic: 94, 93 for Gears of War 2 and 91 for Gears of War 3, from between 88 and 96 critic reviews each. They also have the highest user scores of the games without Steam data, all between 8.2 and 8.4 from about 2,000 ratings each.

The gap between first and second is cosmetic. Gears of War wins on the critic side (94 against 93), Gears of War 2 wins on the player side (8.4 against 8.2), and the formula's 70/30 weighting decides it by 0.01. Treat the top two as a tie that the method breaks in favour of the critics.

The fourth Xbox 360 game is the series' low point. Gears of War: Judgment, a 2013 prequel co-developed by People Can Fly and Epic Games according to IGDB, has a respectable 79 Metascore but a 5.9 user score, the lowest player number in the table. It finishes last, 0.08 behind Reloaded.

What about the middle of the table?

Places five to seven are separated by 0.08 points, and they tell the story of the series on Xbox One. Ultimate Edition, the 2015 version of the first game, scored 82 with critics and holds a 7.8 with users. Gears of War 4, developed by The Coalition according to IGDB, scored 84 from 103 critics, the largest critic sample in the series, but only 7.2 with users. Gears 5 matched that 84 and is the best-supported game on Steam, with 25,352 reviews at 70.8% positive.

Below them, Gears Tactics, the turn-based spin-off IGDB credits to Splash Damage, has an 80 Metascore from 99 critics and a 74.5% Steam score: a smaller audience than Gears 5, but a happier one. Reloaded and Judgment close the list, both on 79 with critics and both held back by players.

How have Gears of War review scores changed in 20 years?

Grouped by console generation, the critic numbers fall after the Xbox 360 years and then level off. The four Xbox 360 games average 89.3 on Metacritic, pulled down only by Judgment; the four Xbox One-era releases average 82.5; the two games of the current generation average 83.0, with E-Day doing most of the lifting.

That is why E-Day's 87 matters more than its fourth place suggests. It is the first Gears game since 2011 to land closer to the Xbox 360 average than to the Xbox One-era one. A ranking built only on critics would put it fourth as well, behind the original trilogy; a ranking built only on players would, for now, put it ahead of every game in the series sold on Steam.

Where do critics and players disagree most?

Every Gears game is rated lower by players than by critics. The gap is smallest for Ultimate Edition (0.4 points) and largest for Judgment (2.0 points) and Reloaded (1.73). For the games sold on Steam, the source of the player score matters: Metacritic users are noticeably kinder to Gears 5 and Gears Tactics than Steam buyers are.

That sensitivity is worth spelling out. If we had used Metacritic users for Gears 5 instead of Steam, it would score 8.31 and move from seventh to fifth, above Ultimate Edition and Gears of War 4. We kept Steam because 25,352 buyer reviews are a sturdier sample than 3,719 user ratings, but the honest reading is that places five to seven are separated by less than the noise in the player data.

Is E-Day's 87 built to last?

This is the part of the ranking most likely to change. E-Day's 87 Metascore comes from 58 critic reviews, and OpenCritic shows an 88 Top Critic Average from 31 top critics, with 92% of critics recommending it. On critic numbers alone, the case that The Coalition has made its best-reviewed Gears is solid: its previous high was 84, for Gears of War 4 and Gears 5.

The case against is about what those reviews covered. Several were published before multiplayer was playable: VGC's is explicitly a campaign review and PC Gamer's is a review in progress, as we noted when the E-Day reviews landed on 1 October. The Steam figure is just as provisional: its 2,324 reviews were written during early access, which only Premium Edition owners and Game Pass members with the Premium Upgrade could start.

Our reading: on the critic side E-Day has a cushion, because it would have to lose three Metascore points just to fall level with Gears of War 4 and Gears 5 at 84. Its fourth place overall is less secure. If Steam's score after launch fell to the 70.8% that Gears 5 holds, E-Day's AFK score would drop to 8.21, still fourth but only 0.13 ahead of Ultimate Edition. We will update the table after launch.

Which Gears games can you still buy on Steam, and how are they doing?

Four of the ten games are on Steam. The other PC versions, such as Ultimate Edition and Gears of War 4, are not sold there, so they have no Steam reviews or player counts. The snapshot below was taken early on a Sunday in Europe, so treat the player numbers as a floor rather than a daily peak.

Two things stand out. E-Day already has a better Steam score than any Gears game sold there, before most players can start it. And Reloaded, the 2025 version of the game that tops our overall ranking, is the weakest of the four with Steam buyers, at 61.7%: the same campaign that critics scored 94 in 2006 earned a 79 Metascore in its newest form.

Which Gears games should you play before E-Day?

E-Day is a prequel set 14 years before the first game, according to VGC's review, so in story terms you need nothing before it. If you want the series' best-rated games anyway, the ranking points to the first three, which also happen to be the oldest. On Steam, the 2006 game is available only as Reloaded, which is also the lowest-scored version of it with Steam buyers.

If you are deciding how to get E-Day itself, our guide to E-Day's editions, early access and Game Pass covers what each version includes, and the crossplay and cross-progression explainer covers playing across Xbox, PC and Steam. Everything else we publish on the game lands on the Gears of War: E-Day hub.

What this ranking can't tell you

Aggregate scores are a snapshot of reception, not a verdict on how a game plays today. The Xbox 360 games were reviewed against their own era; their user scores were collected over many years from a self-selected group; and Metacritic's main-page score reflects one platform per game. Sales are left out entirely, because we found no recent per-game figures from Microsoft that would make a fair column. The ranking will be refreshed when E-Day's post-launch scores settle.