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There's a very good chance that if you grew up anywhere near a console in the early 2000s, Halo: Combat Evolved shaped how you think a shooter should feel. It sold the original Xbox to half a generation, it made Master Chief a household name, and it took the PC-honed formula of regenerating shields, vehicle combat and FPS controls and successfully translated that to console.
Halo: Campaign Evolved isn't a remaster. We've had one of those already, courtesy of the Master Chief Collection. This is a full remake, where every single asset has been rebuilt from scratch in Unreal Engine 5, with nothing carried over from Infinite or earlier Halo games. Halo Studios has clearly poured a lot of love into this, and for the most part it shows. It's just a shame the PC version doesn't run as smoothly as the game deserves.
Halo: Campaign Evolved screenshots (PC, max settings)
Story, for newcomers and veterans alike
If you've never touched a Halo game, here's the short version. Humanity discovers a way to jump across space, they colonise a planet called Reach, and get discovered by an alien coalition called the Covenant, who decide mankind needs to be wiped out. Reach falls, a UNSC ship jumps into the unknown darkness, and what it finds is a colossal ring floating in space. Add roughly two decades of novels, a TV show and spin-offs built on top of that one setup.
You play as Chief throughout, with Cortana, your AI companion, chattering away in your ear as you fight across the ring's many biomes and Covenant ships. She's had a visual refresh here, but the character underneath hasn't changed: talkative, nosy, and occasionally annoying. Chief, meanwhile, remains the strong, intelligent but silent type, the kind of super soldier who shoots first and asks questions later. It sounds like it shouldn't work as a double act, and yet it's still one of the best things about this story. Cortana's the mouth, Chief's the fist, and the relationship between the two of them carries the plot more than one of them would manage alone.
Without spoiling the specifics, all the original's big twists are intact, and they still hit in the same way as back in 2001. One cinematic in particular, where Chief plays a helmet cam footage from a fallen soldier, is exactly as unsettling as it was back then.
The new missions
Alongside the main campaign, Halo: Campaign Evolved ships with three new missions collectively titled Operation Meteorite, starring Chief and Sergeant Avery Johnson. Set roughly a year before the events of Combat Evolved, before humanity has any idea the ring even exists, the pair infiltrate a Covenant vessel to steal data that could point towards the location of the Covenant's most closely guarded secret. If that setup rings a bell, it should. It's Halo's take on the infamous Star Wars' Death Star plans heist.
Chief actually talks in these missions, noticeably more than in the base campaign, which is a nice change of pace. The dialogue between him and Johnson is great, but the same can't be said for Sergeant's AI since he's mostly useless in fights against the Covenant. Structurally, these missions are a bit more linear than the main game, but the new planets, ships and biomes on show are consistently gorgeous. Gameplay-wise it's more of the same rather than a reinvention, but when the core loop is this good, that's far from a criticism. Operation Meteorite is around two to three hours long, and it really feels like a nice little bonus on top of the great campaign.
Gameplay and combat
That classic core loop hasn't changed and quite frankly it doesn't need to: shoot, take cover, wait for your shields to top up, throw a grenade, pick your moment to push forward - that is still the core of what Halo Campaign Evolved is. What has changed is how good it all feels doing it, even after all these years. Enemy variety is still one of Halo's strongest cards and it's incredible to say that a game so old puts other AAA titles to shame in this department. Those small Grunts still panic and scatter, cloaked Elites come at you with energy swords that will absolutely ruin your day if you're not paying attention, and shielded Covenant force you to actually think about which weapon strips armour and which one finishes the job.
That decision-making, working out which two weapons to carry into the next fight, is still the heart of Halo's combat, and it's more satisfying here than it's ever been. The returning energy sword is gorgeous and still as satisfying to use as ever, and the new Needle Rifle is a proper highlight, and perhaps my favourite weapon of them all.
Sprint makes its way into this remake too, and it's likely to split the fanbase right down the middle. Some Halo purists will hate it on principle. For what it's worth, it feels right at home here and I'd argue that the game feels better with sprint implemented. It certainly gives the action more dynamic.
Difficulty options stayed the same - the iconic Legendary is brutal - the kind of difficulty that's really only survivable if you've got years of Halo muscle memory behind you. This is proper veteran stuff. And on top of that, there are difficulty modifiers, allowing you to tweak damage resistance, ammo, melee damage and more.
Vehicles are a mixed bag. Tanks are magnificent, all raw, unstoppable power, and flying vehicles are proper fun. The Warthog, unfortunately, isn't at its best here. It slides about more than it should and doesn't feel anywhere near as responsive as the version in Halo Infinite, which is a shame given how iconic that jeep is to the series.
As for multiplayer, you probably know that it's missing in this release, which is the whole reason for the "Campaign" in the title. But that's probably a smart choice - rebalancing Halo 1's multiplayer for 2026, in a landscape now dominated by battle royales and extraction shooters, would have been a huge undertaking for a mode unlikely to amass large numbers of players. Co-op is supported for players who want company, though only one review code was made available for this piece, so co-op impressions will have to wait until it's live on Game Pass.
Graphics and atmosphere
Obviously, this is one of the reasons why developers decide to make these remakes and it's where Campaign Evolved really earns its keep. The art direction is stunning throughout, faithful to the original's silhouettes and colour palette while giving assets a proper modern polish as you'd expect from a remake. Sometimes though, remakes change things for the worse, but I'm happy to report that's not the case here. The Forerunner architecture in particular is a highlight with stunning cold metal, blue light and looming holograms.
For me, two moments really stood out. Boarding the Covenant ship in the third, The Truth and Reconciliation mission, looking up at the sheer scale of the thing from beneath, is genuinely intimidating in a way the original could only gesture at due to its low polygon count and basic lighting. It's worth just standing there for a minute taking it in. The swamp level is the other standout, fire and darkness and water combining into something close to horror, which is exactly the kind of vibe you want for what comes later in this mission.
Ray tracing is in, with global illumination and reflections that make a real difference on the Covenant's glossier surfaces. One thing that is problematic is that the denoiser doesn't always keep up, and you'll notice visible grain after big effects or during fast movement in darker areas. It's not a Halo-specific problem, bigger games like Cyberpunk 2077 have the same issue when ray tracing is switched on, but it's the sort of thing the wider industry needs to sort out rather than something that is exclusive to Campaign Evolved.
Performance
Now, for my biggest complaint. On an RTX 4080 and Ryzen 7800X3D with 32 GBs of RAM, Halo: Campaign Evolved doesn't run as well as it should. Performance issues are most prominent in large outdoor areas; for example, the meadow you crash in the second mission, struggled to hold a steady 60fps even with DLSS set to Balanced or Performance. Traversal stutter shows up too whenever you move between locations, which is a common enough Unreal Engine issue at this point. Indoors, on ships, things get much better, but a touch of stuttering is still there and FPS drops are also frequent when you're fighting a large group of enemies and VFX is all over the screen.
Hopefully patches sort this out, because on capable hardware you shouldn't be fighting the frame rate as much as the Covenant.
Is Halo: Campaign Evolved worth buying?
If you want a modern shooter with levelling, crafting and a loot spiral, this isn't it, and it never pretends to be. What you get instead is a shooter from 2000, rebuilt with 2026 visuals: shoot, take cover, regenerate, grenade, repeat. No bloat, no filler systems bolted on for the sake of it.
For newcomers, this is genuinely one of the best entry points the franchise has ever had, and it's a chance to understand why Halo mattered enough to standardise so many console shooter conventions in the first place. For long-time fans, it's a faithful, gorgeous retelling with good bonus missions on top of that.
The people who should think twice are anyone hoping for the return of Halo's competitive multiplayer, or anyone particularly sensitive to stutter and frame drops, because right now the PC performance needs work.
It's hard not to hope this is the start of something bigger. It's sad and baffling that there hasn't been a mainline Halo game since Infinite in 2021, and the fact that a strong single-player campaign on its own feels like a big deal says a fair bit about how the franchise has been managed over the last ten years. If this is Halo Studios laying the groundwork for what comes next, it's a solid foundation to build on.
The Good
Faithful, confident retelling of one of gaming's most important stories- Genuinely stunning art direction and atmosphere
- Three new missions that feel like a proper bonus, not filler
- Master Chief and Cortana's dynamic is as strong as it's ever been
The Bad
Performance on PC needs serious work, even on capable hardware- Ray tracing introduces visible noise and grain
