6.5/10 for me but if I have to round, 7/10. My unquestionable favorites were Ravenlok, Enberma (I know it starts with an "E" but forgot the rest of the title), Diablo 4, Forza Motorsport, RedFall, Plague's Tale: Requiem and that side-scrolling gothic-detective game. However, if I'm being honest, Forza visually doesn't look that much better than GT7 and I think GT7 has the superior lighting system and color palette, but Forza has real-time RT in-game and car damage modeling which are pluses over GT7 (at least until PD add in real-time RT, which is a possibility). RedFall actually got me interested a lot more now that the concept's been explained and they showed some gameplay. The visuals aren't
show-stopping but I never expected that, and they look good enough to sell the vibe. It's on my radar.
Ravenlok, that Enberma game, the side-scrolling detective game and Plague's Tale: Requiem also looked really good but I know they're either also coming to PS Day 1 (meaning they're mainly just GamePass exclusives), or might be timed exclusives for 3 months max since that seems to be MS's style with indie timed exclusives. And I'm not a heavy "Day 1" type of guy, I can wait until I have time to realistically play a game, hell I'm still crawling through HFW and that came out in February.
Games I'm interested in playing for sure, but cautiously optimistic about, are mainly Overwatch 2, Scorn and Starfield. The former just looks like an expansion for the first game IMO. Starfield as a concept is something I definitely am into wanting to play and seems ambitious as hell, but I don't know if the engine can support their ambitions. They really need to iron out technical performance and I think it needs a 60 FPS option at least for Series X and PC. I wouldn't say the visuals were amazing; it's maybe more of a looker than Elden Ring but still falls flat to HFW and at least in terms of framepacing seems to have similar issues to Elden Ring but this isn't a cross-gen game, so there shouldn't be a reason why the final game has the same issues.
Hopefully they fix that or they may have to push it to H2 2023 if they need the time on the technical side. I've seen some people saying it's Halo Infinite 2020 levels tho and, no, it's nowhere near that IMO. I just hope the engine can be optimized a bit more to fix what looked like jerkiness due to framepacing issues, that's all. As for Scorn, I'm definitely interested in it, there aren't enough Giger-influenced games, but I just hope the extended time it's been in development is a good sign and not a bad one.
Most of the other games were nice to see there, but not stuff I'm actively anticipating, so they were kind of whatever. Only a few of those seemed appealing to me personally, but I'm sure they have their fans, like the new Minecraft game. Either that, or they were just DLC content updates, which they probably could've saved for the Extended showcase on Tuesday. However, there were some big omissions and disappointments for me there though; I genuinely can't believe As Dusk Falls is just a "storyboard game", with a seemingly Choose Your Own Adventure book-like setup. Is that really the extent of the gameplay? I was expecting something at least kind of like a Tell Me Why or Life is Strange, or even a Telltale style setup. If the gameplays' really a bunch of storyboards then you might as well just call it a flash game and host it on Newgrounds. At least it releases soon. That Pentiment game is also not exactly what I was expecting, not necessarily in a good way. I know what they're going for aesthetically, but it needs a lot more work to actually nail it.
Then there are the no-shows. Nothing new for Hellblade II, nothing on Avowed. I was at least expecting some new gameplay for those since they always seemed the furthest along, but there's a real possibility they are 2024 (or later) releases. I know some people were teasing Banjo-Kazooie remake, but that was more of a cherry on top, not really holding that against them for not revealing. Gears Remake Collection was another one but again, mainly Xbox-centric people were ever bringing it up. I figure it would've been big enough to include today but they could still reveal that one on Tuesday. No Everwild or Perfect Dark, but that's expected given what's been going on with those games. It's also really wild to consider that they really don't have anything 1P for 2022 at all in terms of new game releases, unless you count Grounded coming out of beta. All other new 1P content is DLC for existing games.
I suppose getting the Persona games into GamePass is a good get, tho a weird one considering they aren't bringing them to PS or even Switch. The advent of seemingly all the Persona & Yakuza games going into GamePass, I wonder if it'll have a knock-on effect for Sega-Atlus where people on PS and Nintendo just decide not to buy them Day 1 and wait for what seems like inevitable inclusions into GamePass, or possibly PS+ Extra/Premium in Sony's case, because it's probably going to irritate some longtime fans that the platform which is the least popular for both franchises is getting the best deal on them for owners of that platform, and it's not a secret that a growing number of PS5 & Switch owners have also been buying Series S systems, primarily for GamePass. I guess we'll see where things go in that direction but I'm sure PS & Nintendo Persona/Yakuza fans are making note of this.
While it probably doesn't seem like that high a score, the show itself did have some big improvements, mainly a lot of actual gameplay, which I'm glad they did and hope they'll continue doing going forward. I don't know where I'd put this show overall between the State of Play and Devolver's event, but I know for a fact it beat the shit out of Summer Game Fest's show, so that's a plus in my book. However I won't be surprised if Capcom, Square-Enix and Nintendo's events are at least on par if not better for me, though I guess it also depends on what type of stuff you really prefer as a gamer.
If you're big into FPS and WRPG games for example, nothing's really touching this Xbox Showcase in your opinion. If you're more into indies, it's a tossup honestly. If you're more into JRPGs then the SoP and Square-Enix's shows will be more your thing. Fighters? Again SoP and Capcom's (also interesting that SF6 was not in the Xbox Showcase; if it's not in Tuesday's either then I'm pretty sure Sony have co-marketing rights on the game and that wouldn't be surprising at all). And if you just wanted a really interesting and fun presentation alongside game stuff, Devolver's.
The Japanese style fighting game looked interesting.
What game was that?
