Doom! Perfect Dark! Fable! Atomfall! Mixtape!
Sorry, I got a little excited there. But for good reason: today’s Xbox Games Showcase was exceptionally good by any standards. While it’s too early to declare the showcase one of the best ever — there were a lot of games that aren’t scheduled until 2025, and release dates that far out can be awfully tricky — the 80+ minutes of games on display certainly gave reason to be hopeful about the future of Xbox and Game Pass.
You can watch the whole thing below, but Microsoft were good enough to cram them all on a single graphic:
As you can see, some of the highlights include:
- Doom: The Dark Ages, a prequel to the 2016 Doom reboot that allows you to blast your way through a fantasy world, occasionally while riding a dragon
- a first look at the Perfect Dark reboot
- a longer look at the new Fable, which added a bit of darkness to last year’s more funnier reveal while also showing off some gameplay
- Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel to the first Gears of War
- an extended look at South of Midnight, which looks like it’ll be combining stop-motion animated cutscenes with Soulslike gameplay, while also featuring a heavy dose of the Deep South
- Atomfall, an open-world, postapocalyptic action game from Sniper Elite creators Rebellion
- Mixtape, an artsy game being published by Annapurna that features a heavy dose of ’80s nostalgia and an era-appropriate playlist
Somehow, that list only skims the surface and includes my personal favourites — others are just as likely to be intrigued or excited by the new trailers for Indiana Jones and the Perfect Circle, or Avowed, or Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, or State of Decay 3, or the new World of Warcraft Expansion, or the new Starfield expansion, or the new Diablo IV content, or…did I mention it was a packed conference?
Again, a lot will depend on whether developers and publishers can deliver on these release dates, but if they can, this showcase will be looked back upon with a lot of fondness. Watch the whole thing right here!