Booting up Halo: Campaign Evolved is like seeing an old high-school friend from yesteryear. There’s a serious dose of familiarity, but they look a whole lot different over two decades later.
For those who may not know, Campaign Evolved is a full remake of the original Halo single-player story from 2001, using Unreal Engine 5 to bring the game and visuals up to speed. The result is a fantastic blend of realism and high-fidelity textures and animations, but with that original, more colourful and fantastical sci-fi Halo ‘look’ still intact.
A notable addition to the visuals is the inclusion of some spiffy particle effects during combat. The plasma rifle and grenades are notably good to look at, with the colourful blasts and explosions adding some serious eye-candy to the gunfights.
Gameplay-wise, some tweaks have been made to make the controls and general gameplay ‘feel’ more responsive. Keep in mind, this is from a time when looking down the ironsights of guns (barring the sniper rifle) wasn’t really a thing yet. So, you get the same run, gun, ‘n jump style gameplay with a subtle zoom for accuracy, and if you’re OK with that, you’re in for a good time.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the upgraded visuals, though, is the facial animations in cut-scenes. Whereas the original felt a little stiff and basic, even for its time, the newly rendered character models and photo-realistic NPC animations make the story beats in between missions signifficantly better.
As the name would imply, this is very much focused on the campaign, so there’s no iconic multiplayer thrown into the mix (which is totally understandable given that Microsoft wants to promote more modern Halo releases), but you can play play through the campaign in co-op, with split-screen co-op available too, which is a nice touch.
Is it worth buying?
Giving modern fans another run through the original Halo, albeit with some shiny new visuals, is a solid idea, not to mention the fact that it’s also available on Playstation 5. Some of the mechanics will feel a little primative to some, but beneath that, the campaign itself is still a great time as you fight through alien threats as one of the most iconic video game characters of all time.
3.5 out of 5.0 stars
