ZZZ is a feastful affair full of pop, color, and awe—a free-to-play mobile game with a buffet platter of complexity for you to chew on that puts most other mobile games on the market to shame. And as I slid my way through the game’s first chapter, I increasingly kept thinking, “Wow, I’d happily pay tens of dollars for this, actually.” Unfortunately, at the same time, it also became abundantly clear to me that if I wanted to play the game the way it seemingly is meant to be enjoyed, then I’d have to play developer MiHoYo’s game of slots—a dangerous, money-siphoning game that rarely ends with little more than a brain full of frustration and an empty pocket.

Don’t get me wrong, the money-grubbing aspect doesn’t put me off. Zenless Zone Zero is free-to-play, after all, and it’s not really doing anything different than other gacha games. In fact, it’s downright standard. But it feels as if ZZZ’s gacha mechanics rub against the game’s finely-tuned, character-driven gameplay with a friction that can spark a dumpster fire. Simply put, the game’s too well made for its primary feature (team building and monster smacking) to be driven by random-chance collection, which essentially amounts to a dull time at the casino.

Now, I’m no stranger to gacha games. I wouldn’t say I’m the most ardent player, but I’ve dedicated years of my dumb little life to dumb little mobile games like Fire Emblem Heroes, Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, and Pokemon Masters EX. None of their gacha mechanics disappoint me the way ZZZ’s does. And that’s largely because most other gacha games I’ve played have shallow, bite-sized gameplay that mostly serves as a playground to place all your collectible characters and admire their cutesy glory. They’re one-or-two button-tapping near-auto-battlers that you can futz around with for a few minutes before getting on with your life. You can happily pull new characters endlessly because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you get. They’re all ultimately the same anyway, and you’re just trying to amass a collection.

In contrast, ZZZ’s sharp gameplay, which feels closer to a tag-team fighter, is far from brainless button tapping. Characters all have their own unique fighting style, all hitting with satisfying impact; they all synergize with one another differently; they’re each attributed with elemental aspects that may be better or less suited for particular enemies. The game begs for you to build well-synergized teams while rotating out characters to adapt to fluctuating situations. But that’s hampered when you have little to no control over the characters you unlock and your ability to level them up is limited by various stylings of far-too-many premium currencies with hard-to-conceive names.

And that’s nothing to say of its impact on the narrative. ZZZ’s meaty combat is intercut by flashy, comic book-styled visual novel segments (fun!). However, the fact that it’s a never-ending gacha game means that the full narrative will likely never come to a satisfying conclusion, and most characters will inevitably have little story relevance. As such, you probably won’t really get to know most characters in a meaningful way (not fun!). For a character-driven game, that’s a huge flaw.

The most frustrating part is that the fixes for many of Zenless Zone Zero’s problems would be clear as day if it were an average premium experience. You need only to make all characters unlockable through the story and/or through optional side quests, slap a traditional leveling system in there, and call it a day. When fleshed out, you’d have a fun, addictive game that fully comes together as a cohesive whole, with lovable characters every fan could get to know and want to die for. There doesn’t have to be much more to it than that.

I keep thinking back to Fire Emblem: Awakening, a game that featured nearly 50 unlockable characters throughout its main story and side content. And most of its characters, including the optional ones, are all memorable and quite lovable, helped along by the game’s support mechanic, which saw characters get closer to each other and progress in unique dialogue the more they’re paired together. If Zenless Zone Zero were to adopt such a system, it would surely be something special.

Perhaps I’m just being nostalgic for the days before rampant microtransactions when video games had a plethora of unlockable content. But I don’t think so. Character-driven games need you to be able to access and interact with their characters, especially when the primary gameplay revolves around team building.

 Unfortunately, I don’t think MiHoYo will ever stray from the HoYoverse gacha games they’ve become known for. Not implementing a gacha mechanic into their games would probably feel like money left lying on the table. And for Zenless Zone Zero, it’s too late. The game’s already out, and it is what it is. But who knows — maybe one day we’ll get a proper, premium HoYoverse game that I can feel good about slamming some money down for. One can only hope.

Zenless Zone Zero is available now.

The new five-minute gameplay trailer is a mix of old and new footage, showing off some of the game’s fisticuff and whip-slinging action characteristic of the iconic archeologist. In it, we see Indiana adventuring and puzzle-solving in the Himalayas as he searches for a new stone artifact. Naturally, his escapades are interrupted by Nazis, per usual.

While the majority of the trailer is cinematic, showcasing some fun, quippy dialogue that feels true to the original Indiana Jones trilogy, we also got a brief look at a few snippets of what looks like actual gameplay. A few moments see Indy whipping men and serving a gut punch or two in first person. He also looks to be armed with a pistol and the occasional clubbing item. Interestingly, no UI has been shown yet.

We know from previous information that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will primarily feature first-person gameplay, with the occasional third-person segment peppered in during environmental interaction. Supposedly, the game will largely be linear but feature some wider exploratory areas.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a collaborative effort between developer MachineGames and publisher Bethesda Softworks. It’s set to take place in 1937, between the Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade films, featuring an original story that sees Indy traveling the globe as he faces off against a nefarious group who wants to harness the power of the Great Circle — a ring of locations that form a circle when connected on a map. Ubiquitous voice actor, Troy Baker, will be taking on the role of Indy, and, frankly, he’s doing a bang-up job. You can almost forget it’s not Harrison Ford in the new trailer above.

We don’t have an official release date yet, but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is slated to arrive sometime this year on Xbox and PC and will be available on Xbox Game Pass day one.

After what feels like years of stagnation, Xbox is finally bringing the hits, and soon. From a new medieval-inspired Doom game to the imminent release of the next Dragon Age, there were plenty of exciting trailers and announcements during the showcase’s roughly 90-minute runtime. There was a lot to be said, and we don’t blame you if you don’t want to sit through it, so you can check out exactly everything that was announced at the 2024 Summer Game Fest Xbox Games Showcase below.

Everything Announced at the Summer 2024 Xbox Games Showcase

• Call of Duty Black Ops 6 revealed gamplay in a new trailer.
• Doom: The Dark Ages was officially announced as a new medieval-inspired Doom game.
• State of Decay 3 finally received a teaser trailer, nearly four years after its initial announcement.
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard was officially revealed in a teaser trailer, coming Fall 2024.
• An expansion for Starfield, titled Shattered Space, was revealed, will be coming this year. Additionally, Starfield will be receiving new content later tonight (June 9) in a new update.
• Fallout 76 will be getting a new update on June 12, Skyline Valley, including a map expansion for a new region, Appalachia. Players will also be able to play as a ghoul sometime early next year.
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which looks to be some sort of RPG, was announced as Sandfall Interactive’s debut game coming next year.
• South of Midnight got a new gameplay trailer and release window of next year.
• Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater (the MGS3 remake) got a new gameplay trailer.
• The next World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, will release on August 26.
• The 13th season of Sea of Thieves will release on July 25.
• A new Soulslike, Flintlock The Seige of Dawn, is coming to Xbox on July 18.
• Age of Mythology: Retold, a new game from the creators of Age of Empires, will be coming to Xbox on September 4.
• Perfect Dark received a new gameplay trailer.
• Diablo 4’s upcoming Vessel of Hatred expansion releases on October 8.
• Fable got a new trailer and release window of sometime next year.
• Fragpunk is a new 5v5 hero shooter coming next year.
• Winter Burrow, a new game with a storybook art style about a mouse who returns home to ruins, is coming to Xbox early next year.
• Mixtape is a new music-centric game from the developers of The Artful Escape that tells a coming-of-age story that seems to be 80s-inspired. Coming next year.
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 announced with a November 19 release date.
• The Elder Scrolls Online expansion, Gold Road, showed off a brief teaser. Will be releasing on June 18.
• Life Is Strange: Double Exposure announced as a new Max Caulfield story. Set to release on Oct 29.
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle received a new gameplay trailer. It’s still maintaining a release window of sometime this year.
• Mecha Break is a new mech game and has a beta coming in August.
• Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, a new Chinese-inspired soulslike, will release next year.
• Avowed got a new trailer and it’s still set to release sometime this year.
• Atomfall, a new survival game set in the UK, is giving off some serious Fallout vibes. It’ll release next year.
• Assassin’s Creed Shadows received a new gameplay trailer. It’s set to release on November 15.
• Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl received a gameplay trailer and will release on September 5.
• Gears of War: E-Day was officially announced as the next entry in the series.

And that was everything announced at the Summer 2024 Xbox Games Showcase! The showcase is immediately followed by the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Direct, a deep-dive into the next Call of Duty entry, similar to last year’s Starfield and Xbox showcase double feature.

The Latin American Games Showcase presented around 70 games during its hour-and-a-half-long presentation. That’s a whole lotta games, so below I’ve curated a list of what I thought to be some of the showcase’s top highlights. But, frankly, almost every game featured felt worth mentioning, so I encourage you to check out the full showcase when you have a chance!

Goblin Cleanup

Clean up dungeons with slimes stuck on mops in a co-op dungeon cleaning game. Goblin Cleanup will be coming soon to PC.

Deathbound

A cyberpunk-leaning Elden Ring seemingly set in what looks to be a modern city. The game is a party-based souls-like coming soon to PS5, Xbox, and PC.

Heaven Crawler

An isometric, physics-based, rougelite dungeon crawler similar in appearance to Ico but starring a boy with some very long mech arms. Heaven Crawler is coming to PC and has a demo available on Steam now.

Mark of the Deep

An isometric pirate adventure with a mix of metroidvania and souls-like elements. Mark of the Deep will be coming to PC soon.

The Coldest Winter

A stylish point-and-click horror experience with an adaptive narrative and some striking, vibrant illustrative artwork. The Coldest Winter will be coming to PC soon.

Mexico, 1921: A Deep Slumber

A narrative video game documentary following the life of photojournalist Juan Aguirre who gets involved in the assassination of president-elect Alvaro Obregon in the 1920s. As you navigate through levels, Juan can pick up historic collectibles, some of which are in collaboration with institutions such as the National Archive of UNAM and the Museum of Popular Art. Mexico 1921: A Deep Slumber is coming to PC and Xbox, and a demo is available now on Steam!

Keylocker

Developed by Moonana, an isometric turn-based rhythm RPG where you play as a singer in a silent world where music is outlawed. The game has some lovely pixel art and gives off the vibes of old-school Persona 1 and 2. It’s slated to come out sometime this summer for Xbox and PC.

Bittersweet Birthday

A 2D narrative action exploration game that is part boss-rush and has a distinct pixel visual style. Bittersweet Birthday will be coming to consoles and PC early next year.

Abyss X Zero

A stylish and polygonal 3D metroidvania where you control two different characters that are destined to battle each other. Abyss X Zero will be coming to PC sometime soon.

Beacon of Neyda

A side-scroller strategy game set in a wasteland where a robot revolution failed and featuring some great pixel art. Beacon of Neyda is coming soon to Xbox and PC.

Stay With Me!

A found footage psychological horror game about an alien abduction. Stay With Me! will be coming sometime next year and has a demo available now on Steam.

Digital Exorcist CF1_Defrag

A visual novel starring disgraced DATA Agent Sawyer undercover as a high school teacher who gets involved in the mysterious death of a superstar idol. Digital Exorcist will be coming to PC soon.

Mariachi Legends

A 2D hack and slash action platformer that blends Mexican folklore and classic arcade gameplay. Mariachi Legends features some truly gorgeous pixel art and will be coming to PC and Nintendo Switch soon.

As seen in the PlayStation.Blog post detailing new gameplay features, Monster Hunter Wilds will include some of the following innovations:

• Changing environments: As stated by PlayStation.Blog, “… hunters will discover harsh environments contrasted by abundant landscapes teeming with life, and even extreme weather conditions that transform the locale in unexpected ways … environments will change drastically. Monsters and organisms will change and adapt according to changes in the environment, resulting in a world that feels truly alive.”
• A living ecosystem: Supposedly every monster has its own unique behaviors, and you’ll see large-scale herds of monsters both big and small roaming in packs and interacting with one another.
• A new mount providing some quality-of-life features: The raptor-like creature, called a Seikret, will serve as your mount in Wilds, likely replacing the Palamutes introduced in Monster Hunter Rise. Apparently, they can use their sense of smell to take you directly to destinations indicated on your map, and you’ll be able to heal, sharpen your weapon, gather materials, and even switch to a secondary weapon(!) all while riding your bird-thing. 
• New actions for the usual weapons: All 14 of the iconic Monster Hunter weapons are set to return, and they’ll each receive some new actions to freshen up gameplay.
• Focus Mode: As PlayStation.Blog puts it, “In Focus Mode, hunters will have more precise control over how they guard, aim, and attack in order to target a monster’s weak points for big damage. Focus Mode makes it easier to adjust your distance to the monster and aim your attacks, making the distinctive Monster Hunter hunting action more accessible to a wider variety of players.” In a series that doesn’t let you lock on to your enemies, this change may greatly alleviate the struggle to properly aim weapons in the right direction.
• New monsters: Of course, Monster Hunter Wilds will introduce some new monsters in the series, which you can see in the recent gameplay trailer. We have the giant lion-like bear-thing, called a Doshaguma, and the amphibious weirdo with the thick tongue, called a Chatacabra. I’m sure we’ll see more soon. 

All that info already sounds far more innovative than Monster Hunter Rise ever was!

 Rise is technically the follow-up to 2018’s Monster Hunter World, but despite its largely positive critical reception, it never quite reached the same heights as World, with many players sticking to or returning to World well after Rise’s release. A big part of Rise’s pitfalls is undoubtedly due to it being developed for the Nintendo Switch, whose limited capabilities meant Rise’s visual presentation and various game mechanics would never have been able to match World’s despite the three-year gap between the two titles. When placed side by side, you’d never guess that Rise is the more recent of the two titles. Rise is a great game with its own strengths and innovations to the Monster Hunter series. But it doesn’t have the wow-factor that World brought with it.

Now, simply glimpsing at Monster Hunter Wilds, I feel we can confidently say that Wilds absolutely possesses that wow-factor. Not only does it have the visual flair that greatly improves upon World but we can also glean it’s set up to have a far more dynamic game world, featuring changing environments, dense monster populations, large monsters moving in herds, and more seamless gameplay. However Wilds shapes up to be, it definitely seems to already be the World follow-up we’ve always wanted. Now we just need Poogie to return.

Monster Hunter Wilds is set to release sometime in 2025 on PlayStation and PC.

On its face, it sure looks like something. Pokemon has had annual releases for major games in the series since 2016’s Sun and Moon, so a break in the release schedule is quite notable. But it’s also important to note that 2021’s major Pokemon release was the Gen 4 remakes, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, which weren’t developed by Game Freak but by ILCA, a developer best known for the Pokemon HOME app. So while Pokemon has been releasing games annually for quite a while, Game Freak did take a break in 2021.

If you look at the pattern of previous Game Freak-developed Pokemon games, they usually release in three-year increments. And nothing about that has changed. In fact, Gen 9’s development cycle is shaping up to look exactly like Gen 8’s when we remove ILCA’s contribution from the equation:

• Gen 8:
  • 2019: Sword and Shield
  • 2020: Sword and Shield DLC
  • 2022: Legends Arceus
• Gen 9:
  • 2022: Scarlet and Violet
  • 2023: Scarlet and Violet DLC
  • 2025: Legends Z-A

Each of Gen 9’s entries comes three years after its Gen 8 counterpart. It looks as if Pokemon’s ninth generation of games is following the same exact release schedule as the eighth generation of Game Freak-developed games. So nothing here has changed.

The best we can hope for is that Pokemon Legends: Z-A releases in mid-to-late 2025, which would likely push Gen 10 to 2026. But that seems unlikely. Game Freak has rarely deviated from its strict development cycle, and there’s little incentive for it to change right now when we all keep buying their mediocre games anyway. Not to mention that Game Freak needs to keep pushing out a steady stream of games to fuel all of Pokemon’s merchandising and franchise tie-ins, which likely depend on the games to keep a steady schedule so they can stay relevant and timely.

At this point, it’s probably more important for Pokemon as a business entity to consistently release new games than to have the games be good. There’s a reason Pokemon has remained the most profitable franchise in the world, and it’s not because the games sell well.

So, looking at Game Freak’s development pattern, we can probably still expect the 10th generation of Pokemon games to be released in late 2025, three years after Scarlet and Violet. And unless Game Freak has significantly reduced its ambition, you shouldn’t expect Gen 10 to have any major improvements over Scarlet and Violet. Game Freak has shown that three years simply isn’t enough time to put out a quality game anymore.

Besides, even if Gen 10 is pushed to 2026, would four years even be enough time to produce a high-quality, well-polished 3D Pokemon game? Modern AAA games now routinely take five or six years to make, and that’s coming from developers with much larger teams than Game Freak.

I sympathize with Pokemon going through growing pains. Pokemon has always been a low-tech, handheld series, and the Nintendo Switch has disrupted its roots, forcing it to modernize faster than it’s currently capable of. In the past, Pokemon constantly received criticism for always reusing the same stale formula, but reinvention takes time. Game Freak needs to allow time for Pokemon to reinvent itself as a AAA console game. Unfortunately, Pokemon as a capitalistic conglomerate has become too large to slow down.

I don’t see Pokemon’s development cycle changing, nor do I see it changing anytime soon without some sort of major shakeup. We can pat The Pokemon Company on the back for not releasing a game in 2024, for allowing us some breathing room, but don’t think it means anything. Pokemon’s hardly doing anything different.

Some fans certainly think a new Eevee evolution is on the horizon. The next Pokemon game was recently revealed to be Pokemon Legends: Z-A, a follow-up to 2022’s Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Most notably, this new game is set to return to Gen 6’s Kalos region, which players haven’t seen since its initial appearance a decade ago in Pokemon X&Y. Pokemon X&Y is also the last time we saw a new Eevee evolution in the form of Sylveon. Strangely, Sylveon never received a counterpart, unlike previous Eevee evolutions.

After Sylveon’s reveal prior to the release of Pokemon X&Y, many fans expected to also find a Dragon-type Eeveelution in the game to complement Sylveon. Historically, Eevee evolutions always released in pairs that counteracted each other—Gen 2’s Umbreon and Espeon and Gen 4’s Leafeon and Glaceon—and with the Fairy type being newly introduced to Gen 6 specifically to counter the all-too-powerful Dragon types, it only made sense for a Dragon-type Eeveelution to exist alongside Sylveon. But Pokemon X&Y came and went, and a Dragon-type Eeveelution never appeared.

Pokemon X&Y always felt like unfinished games, with strange omissions and story threads that never resolved themselves. Fans expected a Pokemon Z to arrive soon after and rectify all of Pokemon X&Y’s wrongs, but Gen 6’s third entry never came, and Pokemon X&Y seemed like a one-off, forgotten and left behind.

Now, a decade later, Pokemon Legends: Z-A is revisiting Gen 6, and many are expecting it to serve as the pseudo-Pokemon Z title we never got. As such, Pokemon trainers across the world are eagerly anticipating Legends: Z-A to satisfy their unfulfilled X&Y dreams, with the inclusion of new Mega Evolutions and, of course, that missing Dragon-type Eeveelution.

It should be said that there is currently no confirmation nor evidence to suggest that we’ll see a new Eevee evolution in Pokemon Legends: Z-A. In fact, we know next to nothing about the game aside from its setting and release window. But there’s also little evidence to suggest future Eevee evolutions are off the table.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus showed it wasn’t afraid to introduce brand-new evolutions and regional forms for old Pokemon despite the game being nebulously categorized as something between a mainline entry and a spinoff. It’s only to be expected that Legends: Z-A will do the same, and there’s no reason to think Eevee is too sacred to touch. Eevee routinely received new evolutions before, and it can happen again.

Aside from that, a Dragon-type Eevee evolution just makes sense. Beyond serving as a Sylveon counterpart, all Eevee evolutions share the same feature: their types are categorized as “Special” as opposed to “Physical” types.

If you’re unfamiliar, before Gen 4, a move’s type determined whether it would be a Physical or Special attack rather than each move having its own individual categorization. The Special types included Fire, Water, Electric, Grass, Ice, Psychic, Dark, and Dragon (at the time, there was no Fairy type, but you can still see today that Fairy heavily favors Special attacks as well). If you’re keeping track, the Dragon type is the last Special type that doesn’t have an Eevee evolution attached to it.

But with that said, I wouldn’t count on it. In a past interview, three Pokemon designers and the original creators of Eevee seemed to dismiss the idea of making new Eevee evolutions with a lighthearted joke bashing the idea of a bug-type Eeveelution. Reading between the lines, it seems to me that they presume an Eeveelution based on any other type not currently represented wouldn’t be “cute” and Eeveelutions need to be cute.

The “cute” perspective seems a little ridiculous considering there are cute Pokemon that exist for every type in the franchise. I mean, just look at the Dragon-type Pokemon Alteria and tell me that thing isn’t exuding some cutesy vibes. In fact, the things the Pokemon Company considers to be dragons are just ridiculous—if you can have a tree, an apple, and a skyscraper be a dragon, why not a cute dog-thing?

But beyond the cute factor, the Eevee family may just be getting too darn big. If you had an Eeveelution for every type, Eevee and its evolutions would take up nearly 5% of an average regional Pokedex. Considering there are now well over a thousand Pokemon in the franchise, devoting that much space to a single Pokemon family would be ridiculous. Maybe we can squeeze one more Eevee evolution into the franchise, but the Eevee evolutions have to end at some point.

Regardless, I suppose we’ll have to wait until Game Freak can figure out new ways to make Eevee cute before we see a new evolution for it. Maybe it will happen in Legends: Z-A. Maybe it won’t. Only time will tell when Pokemon Legends: Z-A releases sometime in 2025.