Halo: Campaign Evolved - REVIEW

By Ameer Ammar

Halo: Campaign Evolved is the first Halo remake of presumably the entire original Bungie trilogy, and overall I've come away from it having both had fun and also feeling deeply disappointed by it. My thoughts are quite mixed on this remake, and that stems from a general feeling that this launched unfinished.

Halo Campaign Evolved moves the franchise to Unreal Engine 5 and gives Halo the best graphics it’s ever had. It’s visually absolutely gorgeous, the way lights reflect off each other in the Pillar of Autumn as the ship burns down, or how the Flood infestation is spreading. The swamp in 343 Guilty Spark is especially a breathtaking section. However, I do have an issue with the art design here, particularly with the Forerunner structures. I am deeply disappointed they did not stay faithful to the original ancient designs and instead went with the generic sci-fi designs of Halo 4 onwards. They simply do not look as good as the original, and Halo CE loses a huge part of its original identity as a result. Aside from that loss, this is a visual upgrade across the board in every way and obviously much better than 2011's CE:A. I also have a big issue with the fact that film grain being not toggleable at all, going directly against the clean look of the original game by applying a noise filter to the visuals, is something I am not a fan of, and I hope they add a setting in soon. I played this on PS5 Pro, which feels weird to say about a Halo game. On performance mode, the game generally stuck to a consistent 60FPS with only a few minor drops towards the end of the game. It runs remarkably well considering it’s a UE5 game, they did great work here on optimization.

Now to get into the gameplay itself, Halo: Campaign Evolved's gameplay is a mix of multiple Halo titles. The general gunplay is right in-between Halo Infinite and the original Halo CE. The assault rifle, for example, feels very Infinite, while the shotgun is as faithful to the original as it gets. Overall, the gameplay loop is still a ton of fun, especially with additions such as new weapons that fit right into Halo CE's framework. Sprint is here, and while I'm still not a fan of it, it doesn't increase your speed so much that you're suddenly playing Halo 5. It's acceptable, and while my own preference for Halo is no sprint, I think it works fine here. There is just no denying that Halo CE and this remake in extension, are an absolute blast to play. I especially love the addition of hijacking vehicles from later entries which adds another fun layer to the gameplay that was missing in the original. Level design is absolutely the one aspect of this remake that I do think is generally a big step up. Halo CE, more than any other title in the franchise, had a big issue with constantly re-using rooms and repeating parts of levels. Now in the remake, most of these have been adjusted to be entirely new rooms, new paths through missions, and generally just a more varied experience. I loved this change, and levels like Two Betrayals especially benefit here. The Library, which was my least favorite mission in the game, is still my least favorite mission in the game, but it is vastly different. They've changed it up entirely, and it is now a lot more tolerable with less repetition. Everything just flows better in these levels now. But overall, most levels are pretty much the same as they were in the original, which I honestly was expecting more changes to be done but they've kept it faithful for the most part.

The bonus missions are... a mixed bag. They go on for way too long and do not enhance the original game. Their storyline ends up going overall nowhere, and Master Chief is weirdly too chatty in these sections. You can FEEL that these missions were not made by Bungie and not in a good way. It is fun to face brutes in the Halo CE gameplay, however, and it is just general fun to have more encounters in this game, but they aren't essential to the experience in any way. One of the biggest issues and steps down from the original game is the difficulty balancing. Simply put, difficulty balancing in this remake feels broken. Higher difficulties spawn in countless enemies with no real thought put into the encounter's flow and resources, while lower difficulties are way too easy. It is a huge contrast to the original game, which felt like it had perfect balancing for each difficulty. I had a few major issues with this remake, none of which were things I ever experienced playing the original game on MCC: I had constant issues playing this game in co-op. For some reason, when my co-op partner got disconnected, I'd get a "Disconnected from host" message despite the fact that I am the host of the session, and I'd be kicked out. And for some reason, there is no "resume from checkpoint" option if you are playing in co-op. You can only restart from specific checkpoints in missions that could mean 20+ minutes of lost progress depending on your luck. I have excellent connection quality, so this issue has to be something wrong with the game and its servers. It was extremely frustrating to constantly lose progress this way. AI also had a tendency to just break at times, with enemies staring mindlessly into space on several occasions that never occurred in the original game. The other aspect that gives this remake an unfinished feel is the new pre-rendered cutscenes. Some of these cutscenes have strange moments of awkward silence, facial animations that are just blank, and very often, music did not sync up properly, letting down some of the original game's big moments. This isn't true for all cutscenes, and many of them look incredible, enhancing Halo CE's biggest moments like the Flood reveal, but some of the cutscenes feeling unfinished, especially in the bonus missions, cannot be ignored. There's also a few cutscenes that just do not match up to what is there in game, entire rooms just change up when a cutscene starts then you are popped in a completely different looking room from whats in the cutscene afterwards. It gives the remake a strangely disjointed feel at times, this was noticeable for me in the bonus missions as well. 

I generally wished these new cutscenes looked as amazing as Halo 2 Anniversary's scenes, but they rarely match up to those. It does feel like these were rushed. The voice acting is also another aspect that feels off at times, especially Cortana, whose voice direction is a general miss for me. Her reactions to certain moments don’t have the same tone or sense of urgency that was in the original game. I also am just not a fan of her re-design and would've preferred if they stuck to the original or attempted to emulate Halo 2A's design, as I think that’s the best she's ever looked.

FINAL VERDICT

With the lack of multiplayer and no extra modes. You can easily finish the campaign and the bonus missions in 7-10 hours. There isn't enough content to justify its own price tag. As it stands, this remake doesn't get to the point where it feels like it’s the "definitive" version of Halo CE because of how many issues it has, and the general unfinished feel to it all. That's not to say I didn't have fun, as mentioned earlier, Halo CE's campaign is still a blast and retains much of what always made it so good, with a strong gameplay loop and less repetitive level design. Overall, this remake is good but not truly great.

Halo: Campaign Evolved - 7.5/10 - GOOD