Halo: Campaign Evolved review

I submit that there are two types of videogame remakes. The first type goes all in on transformation, taking big swings with its source material to the point that the remake can be embraced as a wholly new take. The most successful version of this approach is Capcom’s Resident Evil remakes—horror shooters so beloved and distinct that they comfortably coexist with their originals.

Halo: Campaign Evolved isn’t that.

What we have here is the other type of remake—the kind that goes all in on modernization, offering perceived upgrades to an otherwise unchanged foundation. Halo Studios has no discernably new take on Bungie’s landmark FPS, other than a desire to make Combat Evolved look and play more like its later Halos. The “faithful” treatment sets an admirable goal, but that also means Campaign Evolved positions itself as a replacement for, or at least in competition with, the original.

That’s a hurdle that was always gonna be tough to clear, because OG Halo is still a fantastic game 25 years later, and among my all-time favorite shooters. It’s also readily playable with modern conveniences through The Master Chief Collection (another Halo Studios joint). I completed a playthrough of the original after running through the remake, which was helpful for spotting differences, but honestly, I’d take the weakest excuse to play more Halo.

The high value and quality of the MCC makes Campaign Evolved the superfluous add-on from the jump—it has fewer features, fewer campaigns, and zero competitive multiplayer.

New ride

What Campaign Evolved does have going for it, primarily, is novelty. It’s neat to scour battlegrounds I’ve explored at least a dozen times reimagined by people who care, and to kick back to expanded and expensive-looking cutscenes that rival Halo 2 Anniversary’s work. I especially admire how Halo Studios carefully applies hindsight to Halo: CE’s weapon sandbox, allowing the occasional SMG, needle rifle, or energy sword to appear earlier in the series than expected without upstaging vanilla loadouts.

It’s also impressive to look under the hood and consider what Halo Studios has pulled off here. With the help of underlying Bungie-era code, they’ve made Halo feel like Halo in an Unreal Engine 5 wrapper. If they hadn’t done that right, the whole thing would’ve been dead on arrival, but the grenades do bounce correctly and Master Chief is appropriately floaty. Campaign Evolved is the best-feeling Halo that this team has ever assembled, and by extension, one of the slickest shooters of this scale in recent history.

Broadly speaking, it’s a decent audition for future Halo projects (more remakes, right?) that I expect to go over smoothly with many Halo fans. But I can’t help but also see everything that’s worse about this thing—stuff that you could write off as nitpicks, but I see as evidence of this team’s boring, more ordinary vision for Halo.

Master grief

Indeed, Campaign Evolved has the guts of Bungie, but that hasn’t stopped 343 Halo Studios’ historically flawed taste in Halo from gumming up the works, such as:

• A sprint button that defangs Flood encounters and makes vehicles less dangerous
• An assault rifle with such a long effective range and ubiquitous ammo that you’re rarely pushed to use anything else
• A Warthog that’s so convenient to drive and difficult to flip that the campaign’s famous “Warthog run” loses all of its tension
• Waypoints that tell you exactly where to go at all times, despite level design already doing that naturally

They’re bewildering choices made extra annoying by the remake’s measured hand in other areas. Halo Studios clearly believes some old design principles are sacred—there’s no mantling or grapple hooks, and only a tasteful sampling of later weapons. So to commit to these consequential revisions tells me the studio is not just updating a 2001 videogame for a younger palette, but truly believes that Halo is better this way. If so, they’re wrong.

I know complaining about features that have become standard practice of an FPS sounds silly, but I’m unconvinced that Halo is improved when you can always run away from problems, or when Master Chief’s mechanical steed controls like a Honda Civic, or when exploration is optional.

Yes, you’re kinda slow in the original, but it’s an appropriate speed for its mostly indoor arenas, and outside, Chief’s jog ensures vehicles are important. Sure, the old Warthog flips a lot—that’s why it’s fun to learn its quirks and eventually get good at powersliding its massive body around corners. Yes, it’s possible to get lost in the old game, but reading environmental cues can also be a rewarding part of play, and the remake doesn’t even try to maintain that (you can turn off waypoints in HUD settings, but you can’t disable them at a lobby level).

To enjoy Halo’s classic qualities and miss them within this remake is not to succumb to nostalgia. It’s to recognize the value of an FPS that does its own thing—that asks something slightly abnormal of its players for a real reason. I want to believe the stewards of Halo also think that, but my faith is shaken when modern trends are applied to a 25-year-old game as if they’re an inevitability of an imaginary design rubric. I don’t play Doom and wish for a realistic reload button. I don’t play Mario and balk at a missing grapple hook. I don’t play Halo 1 and expect to sprint.

Postcardification

I’m far less scandalized by, but still mixed on, Campaign Evolve’s big art pass. This is an undeniably attractive game. I caught myself many times admiring Halo Studios’ reassembled vistas, staring at a downright ridiculous ocean wave effect, or savoring cutscenes that highlighted Master Chief’s Mark V armor in fully realized detail.

The results are as impressive as they are expected. I’m confident that this is exactly what Halo Studios was going for—a photoreal reimagining utilizing every bell and whistle that UE5 affords. But as time with Epic’s latest tech has revealed, this is an engine that seems to excel at (or maybe insists upon) a certain “generically real” look.

Where I used to gaze out at Alpha Halo’s horizons and see a misty, hauntingly beautiful facsimile of nature floating in space, I see in its place picturesque compositions of mountains, trees, and water that belong on a gift shop postcard. This remake makes Halo, the place, less alien.

Playing both versions back-to-back, I took more notice of background environments than I usually would. I like how both games look in all of these instances, but I tended to prefer the original for its readability, atmosphere, and color choices.

Define ‘better’

Sometimes, Campaign Evolved would knock my socks off with a view that wasn’t just beautiful, but dramatic and communicative in ways the original wasn’t capable of, like the jungles of 343 Guilty Spark:

And other times (honestly, more of the time), UE5’s raytraced light bounces would produce annoyingly dark rooms with barely anything to appreciate, like in Silent Cartographer:

Rooms like that gave me a renewed appreciation for hand-crafted, baked lighting placed exactly where a developer wanted it. Every room in Halo: CE was the work of fine brush, but Campaign Evolved gives the impression of broader stroke simulations shouldering the VFX load, often with diminished results.

I had the same reaction to the new rendition of Forerunner facilities. In keeping with Halo Studios’ past games, the remake’s interpretation of Forerunner architecture is of highly reflective steel, made somewhat brushed and weathered only after fan feedback. Not only are these materials less distinct and alien than the original’s rough, intriguing marriage of brutalist concrete and metal, but those fancy reflections also turn indoor gunfights into overstimulating particle fests. It never gets so bad as to be broken, but it was an unwelcome obstacle in fights. It’s as if readability wasn’t the priority for Halo Studios that it clearly was for Bungie.

Speaking of the B word, the close timing of Campaign Evolved and Bungie’s Marathon reboot is a useful contrast. One of my favorite things about Bungie’s extraction shooter is how its gorgeous environment design zags totally away from photoreal, betting all of its chips on readability, color, and dramatic weather effects that masterfully sell its alien world. The entire visual identity of Marathon ignores the presumption of “next-gen” graphics becoming a slurry of tech demo trees and mountains, and flies in the face of the narrative that Campaign Evolved’s new look represents “what Halo would’ve looked like if Bungie was able.”

I also ding this remake for artistic changes that make Halo less fun, like how they messed up plasma grenades. In the remake, the sticky nade has lost its gaseous visuals and dampened its signature hissing, important signs for noticing when one is about to go off. I know because this is the most I’ve ever died from plasmas in a Halo game, and it was usually because I was standing right next to one without realizing it.

Then there are updated gun sounds that I’m comfortable calling downgrades. The beam rifle has lost its iconic “shutter click”, substituted with commonplace laser noises. Halo Studios, post-feedback, repurposed the assault rifle’s classic cacophonous scream, but lowered its presence in the audio mix.

And the sniper rifle. Hoo boy, what have they done to my sweet child?

Extra time

The best thing about Campaign Evolved is that you still, ultimately, get to play one of the best shooters ever made. That is points in its favor, though I doubt its proposed value to anyone who’s already acquainted.

Since I’ve seen confusion online and even among friends excited for this remake, it’s worth laying out exactly what you do and don’t get for $50:

✅The Halo: CE campaign, remade
✅3 bonus missions set before Halo: CE
✅4-player co-op (the original only supports 2)
❌No PvP multiplayer whatsoever
❌No theater mode

It’s a sparse package befitting its literal subtitle. While 4-player co-op is a big add, the absence of proper PvP is a serious blemish that ignores a huge reason people love these games, and will personally limit its lasting appeal. I’ve been denied an Unreal 5 remake of Blood Gulch’s skybox, and that must be some sort of crime.

And it can’t be ignored that The Master Chief Collection is $40 (often much less on sale) for much, much more:

✅Six Halo campaigns, two with Anniversary updates
✅Full multiplayer support for all games with crossplay
✅Forge, Theater, File Share
✅Mod Support with Steam Workshop
❌No bonus missions

Slightly dulling the blow are those three bonus story missions, though they didn’t turn out as fun as I hoped. The trio of lengthy assignments take place on a single Covenant ship, resplendent in shiny purple hallways with little variation beyond a middle chapter that goes outdoors.

I found Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson’s quipping in these episodes out of step with their dynamic in the main series, but worse was a noticeable drop off in the quality of encounters. The close quarters and reliance on door spawns did a poor job of hiding the seams between enemy waves, and battles lingered longer than was fun.

The never-ending fights chafe against wonky difficulty tuning—on Heroic (my default), there’s not enough ammo or cover to reasonably deal with bullet spongey brutes solo. It takes a lot to push me over the edge in Halo, but when I finally did switch to Normal, suddenly the challenge was in line with the base game. I suspect a balancing patch is in order.

The highlight of the optional interludes was weapon variety—this is where Halo Studios’ lets you cut loose with the later-game guns like the battle rifle, Reach’s needler rifle, and the brute plasma rifle. There’s also one area in mission one that’s basically an indoor skate park for Ghosts—a super cool idea for a Halo encounter.

Campaign Evolved ran very well for me at 1440p (90fps average without upscaling), but honestly, that’s not an illuminating observation when you play on a RTX 5090, Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and 64GB RAM. I kept everything on Ultra and didn’t babysit a framerate counter. I will say that, as the very best case scenario for hardware, I didn’t like how fuzzy DLSS can still make bright light sources look. It was distracting enough that I switched to native rendering and took the frame hit. Even though the system requirements were no impediment to me in the review, I wonder if my friends on middling hardware will want to pay to play a version of Halo that runs worse than the one they already own.

That scenario gets to the heart of it: the next time I want to play the first Halo, I don’t have many reasons to reinstall this 70GB remake. It was cool to see another interpretation of a game special to me, but the glitzy coat of paint primarily highlights how right Bungie got it in 2001, and how its modern stewards are nudging Halo in an unremarkable direction.