Standout for me was definitely Hi-Fi Rush. It's the kind of variety I was hoping to see more of from Xbox 1P after some of these acquisitions. Nice, sweet AA-style game that's just focused on being fun but still looks visually polished and interesting. I think games like that benefit in particular from the Game Pass subscription model, more so than bigger AAA games, and in fact I'm hoping Sony can leverage PS+ (all tiers) in the future to maybe bring back some AA-style 1P games of their own. I know some people want Gravity Rush back, I personally wouldn't mind a new Parappa/UmJammer kind of Paper Mario RPG with rhythm mechanics, or a new Tomba!, etc.
Forza looked good, it always does. But I'm upset there wasn't as much direct gameplay as I hoped, and no firm month of a release date is giving me H2 2023 vibes for the game. There's a chance it could hit before RedFall, but that seems slim; they didn't even open up preorders for it. Again though, very pretty game; it's got some obvious visual advantages over GT7 but I wouldn't say it's leaps and bounds ahead of it, and GT7 still has better use of color and grounding for its color & lighting than Forza (IMO), which can feel a little too glitzy and glamourous sometimes visually. I'm curious if they'll offer VR support for Forza on PC, though.
RedFall looks fun; visually it actually doesn't look that great. Plasma/particle effects are very good, but the actual world geometry seems pretty simple, same with character models. It does look clean, though, from a visual POV and mostly in terms of IQ (noticed some pixelization but that might've been the stream feed; noticed similar with Hi-Fi Rush but again, prob stream feed). I think it'll have more of a benefit for Game Pass than actually doing big retail numbers, though, TBH.
Minecraft and ESO were "fine" but considering those are multiplat, they're mostly just nice value-adds for Game Pass as Day 1 content. Plus I don't necessarily have an interest in either of those games, so there's that. Overall, I think I'd give the presentation an 8/10, mostly off the strength of Hi-Fi Rush (having it available today was a VERY good surprise; might try to play it on PC over the weekend TBH) followed by Forza, and the fact that none of the games looked "bad" or boring. However, no release date for Forza outside of "2023", and RedFall coming later than what some of us probably thought, are negatives. None of these games really do much in terms of having blockbuster-style mass-market appeal (in terms of actual sales, and aside from Minecraft), but I kind of expected that to be the case a long time ago. 1P-wise those games may hopefully start coming later, starting with Starfield.
But yeah, I think overall I'd give it a decent 8/10, though if it weren't for Hi-Fi Rush I'd of probably knock it down to a 6.5/10.
