Gears Of War: E-Day’s New Ballsack Enemy Keeps Kicking My Ass

Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel, and it mostly earns its place among the series. The campaign runs 12-15 hours, follows Dom and Marcus alongside new squadmates Mags and Lucas, and shows the early days of the Locust invasion — Emergence Day itself and the chaos that followed. But one enemy stands between players and that enjoyment: the floating ballsacks, officially called spore maidens, but everyone in the game just calls them by the name that sums them up.

Ballsacks at a Glance

These creatures are huge, fleshy balloons that hover through the air. They take far more damage than they look like they should. On standard difficulty, it takes 200+ bullets from a lancer rifle to bring one down — even when shooting directly at their weak point, the eyeball. That is a lot of ammo spent on one target.

They are also spore factories. Each ballsack fills the sky with tiny, floating spores that shoot needles at the player. These spores spawn constantly while the ballsack lives, and they can overwhelm a fight fast. Across the campaign, these spores downed me and my NPC squadmates more than any other enemy.

The Damage Problem

The annoyance goes beyond sheer toughness. Fighting ballsacks eats up bullets, makes cover less useful, and demands full attention. Players are pushed to use explosives rather than saving them for other threats. Managing the rest of the Locust around these enemies just doesn’t work well together, and if I’m being really nitpicky, I don’t even think they look like they belong in the horde at all. Go back to your knock-off Lovecraft novel or fantasy RPG and leave me alone, you damn ballsack.

What Makes Them Hard

The ballsacks combine three major irritations:

• They are incredibly tough, requiring hundreds of bullets to down.
• They spawn endless spore turrets that fire needles.
• The game throws two or more at you at once.
• During one side mission, I fought four of them and wanted to chainsaw my TV in half from pure frustration.

The worst part is the simultaneous spawn. Having two or more ballsacks at once compounds the bullet drain and the spore spam. The reviewer describes wanting to destroy their TV during one side mission where four appeared at once.

The Prequel Question

As a prequel, E-Day is meant to set up the future of the series. The Locust brought these hard-to-kill floating death machines to the party on day one and then forgot about them entirely. Marcus and Dom never had to fight these ballsacks in later games.

I guess I should be happy about that because it means Marcus and Dom never had to fight these ballsacks in the later games.

The Verdict on the Ballsacks

If these spore maidens were covered in armor that players shot off over time and they did not spawn as many spore turrets, the annoyance would still exist. The ballsacks do not belong in the horde, and the reviewer wants them gone.

The design problem is not just a complaint about balance. It is a question of fit. These enemies feel like a creature from a knock-off Lovecraft novel or a fantasy RPG that wandered into the wrong franchise. The reviewer wants them to go back to their own world and leave Gears of War alone.

The ballsacks are the biggest annoyance I found while playing.

Source material: “Gears Of War: E-Day’s New Ballsack Enemy Keeps Kicking My Ass,” Kotaku.

ballsack · E-Day · game review · Gears of War · Locust