Halo Campaign Evolved Review: Third time’s the charm

Better in every way.

Halo has always been a pretty important game; the flagship title launched with Microsoft’s first dip into the world of console gaming. While the original Xbox was in its own right a great console — and in my opinion superior to its competitors — arguably, Halo kept the big green X afloat and had a significant impact on Microsoft’s success in the years that followed. In the same way that you couldn’t have owned a PlayStation without also owning Crash Bandicoot, a Sega without Sonic the Hedgehog, or a Nintendo without Mario, Master Chief was the character to accompany an Xbox console. 

Having played the absolute guts out of the first Halo in my 20s, I remember thinking how amazing the game looked and felt. Then, after giving it a break for 10 or so years and jumping back into its Anniversary Edition, switching from the then refreshed visuals to its original presentation was unsettling to say the least. Did the OG really look that bad? Clearly my mind, tainted by nostalgia, had remembered a completely different game.

Here we go again with a third version of this icon — though this time, Halo Campaign Evolved has been entirely rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine bringing a complete visual overhaul to the mix, not to mention new cinematics, re-recorded dialogue, and other overall improvements. 

It would be easy to go on and on about improved lighting effects, more believable animations, and beautiful vistas to behold, but you can see all this in the trailers. While this version of John 117’s first adventure is certainly prettier, while I have no specific criticisms about the improved look in the grand scheme of things, there’s nothing considerably mind-blowing about its graphics either. This version of Halo has essentially been brought up to date by today’s graphical standards — it looks great, but it’s nothing to write home about. 

That being said, and after playing through the campaign countless times before, this new version felt like a scavenger hunt where I was constantly looking for and appreciating subtle changes and improvements. This includes things like the burning and broken trees in the trail of destruction left behind by Master Chief’s crashed escape pod, or new holograms that appear in the Forerunner map room. These not only highlighted how much the limited technology of the early 2000s relied upon gamers to use their imaginations to fill in the blanks when it came to graphics, but they also seem to now represent the game that Bungie dreamed of making back then. 

Sadly though, playing on my launch PS5 came with some pretty awful framerate drops when up against a large number of enemies, especially in the open areas that Halo pioneered. Weirdly though, these drops didn’t appear to impact the whole game; instead, it was just the enemy models that were affected, reducing to what I would estimate at less than 15 frames per second at worst. When this occurred, Covenant and Flood enemies alike would move in a way that resembled the animation style of the Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse films which was quite disappointing to see in a game that was supposed to revolve around its graphics.

In addition to its graphical overhaul, dialogue has also been refreshed. With key cast members reprising and re-recording their old lines of dialogue, some lines are almost identical to the point where they’re indistinguishable from the original recordings; others are different to the point of things feeling just a little off due to the tone, timing, or even the specific words used which vary significantly from the original. While this can be forgiven when it comes to roles that were voiced by new actors, it’s harder to dismiss with those who return.

The most prominent example is Jen Taylor’s return as Cortana — while her part is played with as much skill and talent as her original portrayal of the beloved AI, the degree that her recordings differ from her first time as Cortana is quite jarring. This new Cortana is just a little less familiar; it’s comparable to hearing your favourite song played over and over again over years and years, and then hearing the same artist play the same song but in a slightly different key. This probably wouldn’t bother most people, but my mental wiring just can’t unhear the differences.

Beyond all this, the the true evolution of Campaign Evolved rests in the abundance of quality of life improvements that address well-known bugbears from the source material. The original Halo, while fantastic in its own light, was by no means a perfect game; because it was played by so many people, so many years after launch, its flaws became more and more obvious as video game development and design evolved  — pun intended — over the past quarter century.

Remember the slog through the repetitive rooms of The Library? Or the frustration of having to play Assault on the Control Room backwards in Two Betrayals? These levels, among others, have been vastly improved with backtracking and repetition shaved down to a minimum taking away large sections of Halo’s campaign that always felt like a chore. Though this does bring with it a cost to the overall campaign length — on normal difficulty, I was able to complete this within seven hours, a reduction to the 8-10 hours it would typically take to complete the original. 

I should highlight that the above mentioned seven-hour playthrough included my time spent playing the additional missions set before the events of the first Halo. These three missions have Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson fighting through a covenant ship which has an entirely new look compared to anything we’ve seen before in Halo, while still staying true to the general covenant aesthetic. For the sake of chronology, I played these prequel missions before jumping into the campaign proper; seeing this new, but familiar environment led me to be hopeful that the copy/pasted purple halls of the Covenant ships in the main campaign might have been completely redesigned. Alas, this wasn’t the case. 

To criticise these three missions for being tacked on feels like a cheap shot because, well, they are by their design tacked on. While they do offer a somewhat different experience in that Halo 2’s brutes and their weapons are featured in the gameplay, the missions are in essence more of a prequel to Halo 2 than Halo: CE. The fact that these missions didn’t end with an explanation as to how or why the Master Chief was placed in a cryo pod on the Pillar of Autumn is to me an obvious oversight. When I return to Campaign Evolved — which I certainly will — the bonus missions will not likely get a look in.

Simply put, the new missions don’t hit the mark as a worthwhile reason to pay for Halo Campaign Evolved for a third time. But to reiterate points made earlier, they don’t need to be a selling point — the actual campaign and its improvements do the job well enough. This is especially true if you haven’t returned to the first Halo in 10 or more years. 

The best thing about Halo Campaign Evolved is that it’s for almost everyone simply because the source material is so good and it holds such cultural significance. For younger gamers who might have struggled to see past the dated visuals of the previous versions, this may be just what they need to truly understand why the Halo series is so revered.

For older gamers like me who had boots on the ground as it happened, Campaign Evolved is a faithful and respectful recreation with all the original foundations and the right amount of improvement to a timeless classic. If in another 25 or so years time this version of the game is what I remember, then I would be totally comfortable with that.

Halo Campaign Evolved is available from 24 July on Windows PC via Steam, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PS5.

Halo Campaign Evolved was reviewed using a promotional code on PS5, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.