The end of July is doing that odd summer thing where the release calendar looks quieter than autumn, but the individual games are not small. Nintendo has a single-player Splatoon spin-off landing on Switch 2. Halo is about to try the remake conversation again, this time with PlayStation in the room. Game Freak is stepping outside Pokémon with a one-person, one-dog action RPG that previews like a riskier project than the studio usually gets credit for.
This is a preview roundup, not a review roundup. There are no final Metacritic or OpenCritic averages yet for Splatoon Raiders, Halo: Campaign Evolved, or Beast of Reincarnation at the time of writing. OpenCritic lists all three among its upcoming popular games, but critic scores are still pending. Hands-on previews can tell us what people noticed when a controller was in their hands. They cannot tell us whether the full campaign holds together after ten or twenty hours.
Still, the previews are useful. They show where reviewers are already aligned, where they are nervous, and what questions are worth keeping open when the review embargoes lift.
Splatoon Raiders preview consensus: more than Salmon Run with a map
Splatoon Raiders releases July 23, 2026, exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2. Nintendo has positioned it as a mostly single-player Splatoon adventure with online and local co-op, Deep Cut in the supporting cast, and the Spirhalite Islands as the new setting. The question in most previews is simple: can Splatoon work when it stops being built around competitive multiplayer?
The early answer is surprisingly warm. IGN's Will Borger came away almost startled by the structure, writing that "Splatoon Raiders is kind of a roguelite with persistent progression." His preview is full of the usual Splatoon texture: ink surfing, Salmonids, strange gadgets, Showstoppers, and a bot companion piloted by Big Man. The useful part is that he does not describe the game as a side mode stretched thin. He describes a loop: explore, collect, upgrade, get knocked around in harder raids, refine the build, try again.
Nintendo Life sounds similarly relieved. Its preview says the game plays as smoothly as the mainline entries, then points to the loadout system as the big change. Gadgets replace sub-weapons, tanks give different special abilities, Bot Buddies add movement and combat options, and gear tweaks health, damage, and ink reload. That is a lot of systems for a series often praised for immediacy. The previewer's hope is that the levels keep finding new ways to use those systems instead of settling into repetition.
GameSpot's preview framing, based on its headline, is the boldest: Splatoon Raiders is "a bold rethink" of what makes a Splatoon game. TheSixthAxis, in its release-date coverage, is more cautious but useful on the basics. It notes the game is primarily single-player, although co-op is part of the package, and that players search the islands for salvage while fighting waves of Salmonids.
The agreement is clear. Movement still feels like Splatoon, which is the part Nintendo could not afford to lose. The surprise is the RPG shape around it: gadgets, upgrades, dungeons, boss fights, and retry pressure. The concern is also clear. A few preview sessions can make a customization loop feel fresh. The full game has to prove that the island objectives and enemy encounters change enough to keep that loop alive.
Halo: Campaign Evolved preview consensus: beautiful, familiar, and technically unsettled
Halo: Campaign Evolved releases July 28, 2026, for Xbox Series X/S, PC, and PS5. It is a remake of Halo: Combat Evolved's campaign, with Unreal Engine 5 visuals, campaign remix options, Skull modifiers, and three new prequel missions. There is no final review average yet. The preview coverage is already split in a way that feels very Halo: some people are relieved, some are suspicious, and both reactions make sense.
IGN's final preview is the best snapshot of that tension. The hands-on covered The Silent Cartographer and Assault on the Control Room, played on Xbox Series X. The preview says the game sounds right and plays well, but spends a lot of time worrying about the look. The criticism is not that the remake is ugly. It is almost the opposite. Indoors, IGN found it too shiny and visually noisy, with weapons and bodies blending into Forerunner spaces and plasma effects becoming distracting in darker areas. The line that stuck with me is blunt: "this game is too dang shiny."
Digital Foundry is more optimistic, though not uncritical. Its preview calls Campaign Evolved a much more cohesive remaster than the 2011 Anniversary Edition and says the outdoor scenes can look physically correct and beautifully lit. But it also flags Unreal Engine 5 artifacts: sparkling, boiling, temporal noise, and denoising issues, especially in darker scenes. On Xbox Series X, the preview build targeted 60fps with dynamic resolution scaling. On a mainstream PC with an RTX 4060, Digital Foundry saw CPU bottlenecking in The Silent Cartographer when enemy AI piled up.
That gives us a useful split. IGN is worried about readable play, especially on higher difficulties. Digital Foundry is impressed by the reconstruction but worried about image quality and performance edges. Eurogamer's release-date coverage confirms the launch platforms and timing, including PS5, which is part of why this remake has more cultural weight than a normal campaign reissue.
The positive side is easy to see. The core campaign remains one of the cleanest FPS campaign structures ever made, and the preview build includes remix systems that could make repeat runs less museum-like. Campaign remix uses always-on Skulls such as Adaptation, Armistice, and Reload, then lets players layer more modifiers on top. Third-person play is also possible through the right Skull. That is not a tiny addition for a game people have replayed for decades.
The worry is whether the remake can respect muscle memory while changing the surface this much. Halo is unusually sensitive to readability: enemy silhouettes, plasma bursts, shield feedback, weapon placement, the shape of a dark hallway. If the final build cleans up the lighting and image artifacts, critics may land on "safe but worthwhile." If not, expect the reviews to praise the campaign and still pick at the remake frame around it.
Beast of Reincarnation preview consensus: Game Freak's strangest swing is not just a curiosity
Beast of Reincarnation releases August 4, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. It is developed by Game Freak and published by Fictions, and that fact alone makes it an SEO magnet. "The Pokémon studio made a post-apocalyptic action RPG with a dog" is the kind of sentence people click because it sounds made up.
The previews suggest it is more than a novelty. IGN played the first two hours and came away high on the combat partnership between Emma and Koo. Emma fights with a sword and wrist-mounted crossbow. Koo, her dog companion, can use special abilities while the battlefield slows down, giving the combat a tactical pause without turning it into a menu RPG. IGN's key mechanical observation is that parrying feeds Koo's abilities, so the dog is not just a passive helper. The preview also praises traversal, especially Emma using her hair as vines to grapple, make platforms, and reach ambush points.
Game Informer played 90 minutes and focused on the same bond from a slightly different angle. Its preview headline, "Parrying Helps Your Dog," is basically the pitch. It describes Koo's Bloom Arts as a real-time action system with a turn-based twist, because selecting Koo's moves slows the world down and successful quick-time inputs improve the result. It also confirms some practical scope details from director Kota Furushima: the game is not open world, but has roughly ten stages and about 30 hours of gameplay.
Polygon is the useful dissenting voice. Its preview likes the world, the melancholy post-apocalyptic setup, and the customization potential, but says the opening throws too much at the player too quickly. The criticism is not that Beast of Reincarnation lacks ideas. It is that the tutorialization may not explain those ideas cleanly enough. Polygon says it spent too much time misunderstanding traversal and combat tools, then got flattened by the first serious boss while still unsure how some systems worked.
That range is healthy. IGN and Game Informer see a stylish action RPG with generous parry timing, a strong companion hook, and layered exploration. Polygon sees the same promise but worries about onboarding and readability. GameSpot's preview headline says it has Sekiro vibes but "won't beat you down," which points to the same middle ground: challenging, but not trying to punish the player for sport.
There are no OpenCritic or Metacritic scores yet. The review question is whether the full game can turn its unusual ideas into rhythm. Companion action systems can feel brilliant when they make you smarter. They can feel fussy when they make you manage one more cooldown in a fight that already has enough going on. Beast of Reincarnation seems to be balanced right on that line.
What to watch when reviews land
If you are only tracking one game for review-score movement this week, Splatoon Raiders is probably the cleanest bet. It releases first, it has Nintendo attention behind it, and the previews are unusually aligned around the idea that the single-player structure works. The score range will likely depend on mission variety and how much critics value the co-op layer.
Halo: Campaign Evolved is the loudest bet. It has nostalgia, platform politics, and technical scrutiny all packed into one remake. The preview language already suggests the final reviews may split between players who want the campaign modernized and players who care deeply about the exact feel and readability of Combat Evolved.
Beast of Reincarnation is the sleeper bet. The Game Freak name will draw people in, but the review conversation will come down to fundamentals: combat clarity, boss design, traversal, and whether Koo feels like a partner instead of a gimmick. If those pieces hold, it could become one of August's more interesting critic stories.
For now, none of these games has a final critic score. That is fine. The point of a preview roundup is not to pretend the verdict is already in. It is to mark the questions worth remembering before the number appears at the top of the review page.
For Perthro players keeping a backlog or wishlist, this is a good week to make a small note beside each game instead of just adding everything blindly. Splatoon Raiders: watch mission variety. Halo: Campaign Evolved: watch readability and performance. Beast of Reincarnation: watch onboarding and combat flow. Those notes will probably tell you more than the first score you see.