Gears of War: E-Day Fixes PC Gaming's Most Annoying Wait

Gears of War: E-Day early access is here, and it brings a clever PC feature called Advanced Shader Delivery that slashes those dreaded shader compilation times to seconds.

Ever sat staring at a 'Compiling Shaders' bar for what feels like forever before you can actually play a new PC game? Yeah, we've all been there. Well, Gears of War: E-Day might just put an end to that misery.

Early access for the game has kicked off for anyone who snagged the Premium Edition, and PC players have a pleasant surprise waiting. The game supports something called Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD), which basically pre-translates and delivers shader files to your device ahead of time. Instead of waiting ages for your system to calculate how light, shadows, reflections, and textures should look, you're in the action within seconds.

If you're not a tech wizard, think of it like buying a Gundam model kit that's already assembled. No tedious snapping together pieces while you're itching to play. ASD works across a wide range of systems, including those powered by AMD, Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. That means no matter what hardware you're rocking, you should benefit.

One of our writers loaded up E-Day on an Asus Xbox ROG Ally X and the shader compilation took around 20 seconds. Compare that to the up to 15 minutes they've experienced with other new games. That's a massive difference. No more making a sandwich while your PC chugs away.

Gears of War: E-Day is the first game to support ASD across Windows devices, which is a pretty big deal. Right now, it's available for users with AMD graphics cards. If you're on Nvidia, don't worry—ASD-compatible drivers will arrive shortly after the game launches.

As for the game itself, the campaign is a solid excuse to take cover and pop some Locust heads. GameSpot's Richard Wakeling wrote in his review: 'For better or worse, E-Day is distinctly Gears, and I had a good time with it, even if the story is disappointing and the open areas are fairly dull. But that’s all it is: a good game, propped up by combat that hasn’t changed all that much over the past 20 years. That’s enough to skate by, but I wish Gears of War would dig deeper.'

So, if you're tired of waiting for shaders to compile, Gears of War: E-Day might be your new best friend. Will you be picking it up on PC? Let us know in the comments!