Gaming Weekly: Post-World Cup Blues, Halo on PlayStation, Splatoon Raiders, and Palworld 1.0#

Long Zhiri | July 27, 2026

Hello everyone, Long Zhiri here. An unusually lively week in the newsroom — the World Cup just wrapped, new games are piling up on store shelves, and Halo somehow turned up on PlayStation. Everyone’s stretched a bit thin. Sit down; let’s go over the week in gaming.

After Spain’s Title, the Gaming World Starts Its Withdrawal#

On July 19, Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in the final, lifting the World Cup trophy for the first time in 16 years. Ferran Torres’ extra-time goal is still on repeat in the newsroom group chat. Rodri took the Golden Ball, Mbappé left with the Golden Boot on 10 goals, and Spain became the first country to hold both the men’s and women’s World Cup titles at once.

But what does the World Cup’s end mean for gaming? For football-game players, the standard post-World Cup lull sets in — real-world football cools off, and the big football titles pivot toward hyping their next entries.

On new entries: the site has already compiled the official EA SPORTS FC 27 announcements, confirming the new game launches in 2026 at a $69.99 standard price with a global release window in late September. Chasun’s retrospective issue was thorough, working through the FC 26 season’s wins and losses item by item — defensive balance, market inflation, and online stability all got called out. For annual-football-release players, the World Cup’s end means attention swings back to the club season and what’s next.

If you’re like Wubian and only care about mobile games, though, the pickings were slim this week. The World Cup’s heat concentrated on console and PC football blockbusters; mobile will have to wait for the next seasonal events.

Halo Is on PlayStation, and the Internet Fought About It Again#

On July 28, Halo: Campaign Evolved lands on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and PS5 — the first time in series history Halo appears on a PlayStation platform. The standard edition is priced at $49.99, and it’s on Game Pass from day one.

The newsroom fought about this for three days.

Zixing’s position was blunt: “This is a victory for platform neutrality. The UE5 remake’s visuals genuinely impress, the three new prequel missions show good faith, and $49.99 buys the same experience on every platform — there’s nothing to argue.” He even produced a long list of expected frame-rate and load-time comparisons across platforms — if only he applied this energy to writing guides.

Wubian cared about a different angle: “This proves Microsoft’s strategy has completely changed. Once Game Pass subscription growth slowed, cross-platform day-one releases became the only option. It’s unambiguously good for players — you no longer need to buy a whole console for one IP.”

My take: Halo arriving on PlayStation is more historically significant than anything about the game itself. That old line, “Halo is the reason Xbox exists,” now sounds like an epitaph from another era. That said, the three new prequel missions do tempt me — the story of Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson before the first Halo falls, courtesy of 343-era scripting… ah, forget it, never mind.

For this game, the site’s Halo: Campaign Evolved guide hub is already built: complete walkthroughs for all 13 campaign missions, collectible routes for all 42 skulls and 13 terminals, and a breakdown of the campaign remix mode, ready to consult on launch. The combination of the original’s 10 classic missions plus the 3 prequel missions of “Operation Meteor” is a solid entry point for veterans chasing nostalgia and series newcomers alike.

Splatoon Raiders Is Here, but This Time It’s PvE#

Released July 23, Splatoon Raiders is a Switch 2 exclusive and the series’ first major pivot toward PvE play. Players form squads to take on the Ancient Ink Colossus, delving into ancient ruins with no pure turf-war competition in the traditional sense — it’s all built around cooperative stage runs.

Wubian’s take was interesting: “Nintendo finally figured it out — not everyone wants to get stomped by grade-schoolers online. The Splatoon world and art style deserve a proper co-op adventure.”

Honestly, though, the newsroom is split on this one. After two hours, Chasun said “the level design has ideas but the pacing drags,” while Zixing grumbled outright that “Switch 2’s hardware somehow still drops frames running visuals like these.” My view: as part of the Switch 2 launch escort lineup, Splatoon Raiders’ job was to give the new console a reason to be exclusive — and by that measure, it succeeded.

We’ve also built a full guide hub for it on the site: the four class roles, raid stages and boss strategies, and Turf War rules, covering everything from first steps to advanced technique. Since raid mode is the core selling point, new players should read the class-system piece first, get the roles straight, then move to the boss guides — it smooths the onboarding considerably.

Palworld 1.0: After the Controversy, Is It Actually Better Now?#

Palworld 1.0 ended more than two years of early access on July 10 with the full release. The patch notes run over twenty pages — new regions, new Pals, new weapons, and a completed main story; the only word for the volume is substantial.

Wubian, our resident Palworld follower, delivered his verdict: “The core loop is still the core loop, but in the details it finally feels like a complete game. If the controversy kept you away two years ago, now is a good time.”

Honestly, Palworld has always been a minefield in this office — Zixing still refuses to file it under “real games,” his exact words being “a Frankenstein’s monster, however well stitched, is still a Frankenstein’s monster.” Wubian’s rebuttal: “Games are about the experience, not originality. What Palworld achieved in the survival-crafting genre, plenty of ‘original’ games never managed.”

I stand in the middle — I dug into Palworld 1.0 again after the full release, and it genuinely has its own rhythm within the survival-crafting lane; whether it earns that sales figure… time will tell. We’ve tracked Palworld’s version updates on the site all along, from the launch content breakdown to the community’s ongoing controversy, each with its own article.

Still Happening This Week#

Beyond the three big stories above, a few more releases worth noting this week:

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is two weeks out, and player word of mouth is surprisingly good.

Honestly, I expected nothing from a “faithful enhancement”-tier remaster, but Ubisoft somehow didn’t botch it — parry-focused swordplay changes, new story content, and that classic Caribbean atmosphere. You want me to call it bad? For details on how it plays, the site’s Black Flag guide hub has you covered.

July 29 — Mistfall Hunter launches, a PvPvE extraction shooter.

Zixing has it preloaded, calling it “this year’s most promising indie extraction shooter.” Its core hook is the high-pressure loop of extract-with-your-loot-or-die-and-lose-everything, paired with dynamic fog and random weather events that make the loot-versus-survival tradeoffs genuinely tense.

July 31 — The Relic: First Guardian, a soulslike action RPG.

My notebook is ready and the guide grind begins at launch. It stuffs relic-driven progression and elemental reaction chains into the traditional soulslike frame — plenty of build space.

We covered Palworld 1.0’s update content above; the new Pal species alone number plenty, and Wubian has caught roughly half of them.

Newsroom Talk#

After this week’s Halo cross-platform argument, I took Chasun and Zixing downstairs for BBQ. Between chicken wings, Zixing said: “Has it ever struck you that a handful of us running a game guides site is itself kind of surreal?”

He’s right.

Taking this site from zero to guides for over a hundred games has honestly not been easy. Back when I edited at a big outlet, content always felt like an assembly line — pitch, write, publish, read the analytics, write again.

Running our own shop, I’ve recovered that earliest feeling of writing guides on forums: you write with care, someone reads with care, and once in a while a comment says “this guide saved me two hours” — enough to keep you happy all day.

Chasun says that’s probably a game editor’s destiny — whatever happens to the platforms, the thing that lasts is the content itself.

Wubian skipped dinner that night — he was home playing Splatoon Raiders.

See you next week.

— Long Zhiri, NTGame Editor-in-Chief