RELEASE RADAR
July is stacked: Halo rebuilt in UE5, Palworld hits 1.0 and Black Flag returns
Halo: Campaign Evolved lands 28 July as a ground-up Unreal Engine 5 rebuild, Palworld finally leaves early access on 10 July, and Ubisoft remakes the best pirate game ever made.
The Transfer Siren · 1 July 2026
For a month the industry usually treats as a dead zone, July 2026 is absurdly loaded.
Halo: Campaign Evolved — 28 July. Microsoft is rebuilding the original Combat Evolved from scratch on Unreal Engine 5: remade visuals, new motion-captured cutscenes, re-recorded lines and three brand-new prequel missions. Early access opens 23 July. This is the swing that decides whether Halo still matters.
Palworld 1.0 — 10 July. The 'Pokemon with guns' phenomenon that sold tens of millions in early access finally calls itself finished. The question is whether 1.0 brings lapsed players back or the moment has passed.
Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. Ubisoft confirmed the remake of the 2013 pirate classic — new Anvil engine, ray tracing, seamless city exploration with no loading screens, reworked combat.
Also on the radar: DOOM The Dark Ages gets its first major expansion on 7 July, and Nintendo ships Splatoon Raiders — a treasure-hunting co-op spin-off, not Splatoon 4.
Big-budget nostalgia is doing the heavy lifting this month. It's going to work.