Halo: Campaign Evolved proves that the original Halo: Combat Evolved still knows how to deliver a great campaign 25 years later. The core combat remains excellent, with satisfying gunplay, smart enemy encounters and the freedom to approach battles using vehicles, weapons and positioning.

The Unreal Engine 5 remake provides a major visual upgrade, bringing dramatically more detail to environments, lighting and effects, but also causing optimization errors and crashes that would not occur in past games. Some of the new visuals are impressive, particularly during the darker and more atmospheric sections, although the glossy new aesthetic does not always capture the personality of the original.

The bigger changes come through gameplay. Sprinting, regenerative health, additional weapons and equipment modernize the campaign, while new Skulls and Remix modifiers add more replayability. Some of these changes may upset purists, but using weapons such as the Energy Sword and Sentinel Beam in the original campaign adds variety to the familiar encounters, which some original game purists might not like. I personally found it jarring being able to use the energy sword.

Three new prequel missions also give players around two extra hours of Halo action. They are not revolutionary, and are mildly irritating as they do not fit into the established Halo formula providing numerous retcons when put in contention with thre novels.

The problem is that Halo: Campaign Evolved is still fundamentally the same campaign players have experienced before. The Master Chief Collection already provides an excellent way to play Halo: Combat Evolved, alongside a much larger multiplayer package, since campaign evoled has NO seperate from campaign multiplayer, possibly the worst descision ever made for a halo game, at least Halo 3 ODST had firefight.

That makes the remake feel more like a technical demonstration and a foundation for Halo Studios’ future with Unreal Engine than an essential replacement for the original.

Halo: Campaign Evolved is a polished and enjoyable return to one of gaming’s most important FPS campaigns. The new missions, visual overhaul and gameplay tweaks are welcome, but they do not fundamentally change an experience that was already excellent.

This article is made by PaleShadowGaming.