Halo: Campaign Evolved PS5 review – the multiformat remake you never expected

What once was the killer app for Xbox is now available on PlayStation 5, but how much does this remake change and is Halo: Combat Evolved still relevant today?

If you’d told anyone in the mid-2000s, at the height of the franchise’s popularity, that Halo would one day be released on a PlayStation console you’d be dismissed as a lunatic fanboy. But so much has happened in gaming this generation, including the near collapse of Xbox, that a remake of the original Halo on PlayStation 5 feels considerably less shocking than it would have been even just a couple of years ago.

However, rather than a clear statement of future intent, regarding Xbox’s multiformat aspirations, it already feels as if Microsoft regrets releasing the game on PlayStation. They’ve already made upcoming prequel Gears Of War: E-Day an Xbox console exclusive, despite the fact that a remaster of the original game appeared on PlayStation 5 last year, so the suspicion now, especially given the consistently vague statements from Xbox execs, is that this may end up as the first and only Halo game on PlayStation.

Of course, that’s assuming there are any more Halo games in the near future, with recent rumours suggesting that nothing is currently in full production. The situation is a confusing mess of Microsoft’s own making but, even if it wasn’t, this remake should only be judged on its own merits. Although that’s easier said than done given the minefield of complications involved in remaking a 25-year-old game that also happens to be one of the most important first person shooters ever made.

The original Halo: Combat Evolved, from 2001, already had a remaster, back in 2011, which was later incorporated into The Master Chief Collection. It was fairly extensive but since it was originally made for the Xbox 360 the graphics were only a modest improvement and the game design was left exactly the same, to the point where you could switch between the new and old versions at the press of a button.

Campaign Evolved is very different, in that not only is it a full remake but some details have been changed and gameplay elements from the sequels quietly added. However, to the casual observer it still looks and plays exactly the same, so it’s not the complete reimagining that the Resident Evil remakes have been and also doesn’t go as far as Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced in changing the gameplay.

The problem with remaking a game like Combat Evolved is that while there’s naturally a lot of love and nostalgia surrounding it, much of its importance is based around innovations that today are completely commonplace. It’s a shame the remake doesn’t come with any kind of documentary to explain its historical importance – not the sort of self-aggrandising piffle that Microsoft usually goes for but something that could get across just how much of an impact the game had on the games industry.

Gameplay elements like a recharging shield and only having two weapons at a time were adopted almost overnight, as the standard for action games, but it’s equally interesting that other famous aspects, like the sandbox style gameplay, commandeering vehicles, and an emphasis on competent AI have remained almost solely the preserve of Halo. Even today it remains almost the only time that AI (in the sense of computer-controlled enemies that seem to know what they’re doing) was touted as a major selling point.

It’s hard to appreciate things like the two weapon rule nowadays (previously the norm was to have multiple weapons that could be switched to at any time, like in Doom) but the open world areas of Halo still seem unique, even if they are very small by modern standards and the physics unconvincing. It’s odd that the physics, and the animation in general, feel below standard but then the graphical glow-up is very inconsistent across the board. A lot of the vegetation and landscapes look great and yet the faces for some of the human soldiers look like something out of a PlayStation 2 game.

By far the biggest technical issue with the remake is that, incredibly, it’s riddled with slowdown. The final section of the game was famous for its poor frame rate, back on the original Xbox console, but oddly that’s not too bad here. However, in several of the open-ended sections in the middle of the game, that involve multiple vehicles at once, the action slows down to a slideshow, as the number of animation frames are reduced almost to zero in an attempt to compensate. It’s an effect we’ve only seen before on Switch games and seems like it should be impossible in a game like this.

Presumably the technical faults can be fixed with a patch, but the whole remake gives the impression of being rather scrappy and something of a compromise. There’s now much longer and more involved cut scenes, but they’re not particularly good and the voice-acting and dialogue is very mediocre. Adding in features from the sequels will also be controversial for some but we were fine with all of them, including being able to use Covenant energy swords, hijacking their tanks, and the ability to run.

New Skull collectibles are also present, even though they weren’t introduced until Halo 2, and offer various buffs and cosmetic options that can be toggled on and off. The Skulls are hard to find but if you collect any three of them then it unlocks the Campaign Remix option, which randomises enemy and weapon positions, as well as various visuals changes – which is a neat idea, even if most players are probably never going to see it.

Some of the level design has been changed as well, including removing trees and rocks to get around more easily in the Warthog jeep, which does make some sections easier – even if the controls are still as inexplicably slippery as always. There’s also been some notable changes to the Library section, which in the original was a non-stop, and very repetitive, slog against the Flood. It’s still the same basic idea but with a little more variety to differentiate the various floors you move between, with different enemy types in different areas, instead of just an endless wave of everything all at once.

The Flood are a parasitic alien introduced roughly halfway through the game, which increase the game’s obvious debt to the movie Aliens even further. All of the military hardware is already a direct rip-off of James Cameron’s classic, several lines of dialogue are quoted, and the character Sgt. Johnson both looks and acts exactly like Sgt. Apone. The Flood were contentious even at the time, as they’re entirely mindless and while they were obviously created as a juxtaposition to the Covenant, they’re nowhere near as interesting.

All of which brings us to the key question: is Halo: Combat Evolved still an entertaining game today? Although still good, the gunplay feels far less unique than it did 25 years ago and while the vehicles are an interesting novelty the small map areas feel very constricting. The campaign’s enjoyable but we’ll be honest and say we enjoyed the all-new levels more. There are three of these, which the game strangely undersells by describing them only as bonus missions on the campaign sub-menu, even though they’re really a three-hour mini-campaign, complete with its own cut scenes and prequel storyline.

The bonus missions look and play much more like a modern game. Bungie’s infamously repetitive level design has been completely jettisoned, with no pretence that it’s something that should be preserved beyond the remake, and the graphics look much more impressive. Although there doesn’t seem to be any way to tell via the credits, it gives every impression of being made by a completely different team with a different graphics engine – although we believe it’s still all Unreal Engine 5.

None of the bonus missions are doing anything new, and there’s very little ground vehicle combat, but you do get a number of new weapons from the sequels, as well as aliens that weren’t introduced until after the first game, such as the Brutes. It may also be hinting at possible plot threads for a future game, although it keeps things sensibly vague on that point.

Originally Halo: Combat Evolved did not have any online options – that didn’t come until Halo 2 – but it did have four-player split screen competitive modes and a 16-player LAN mode for those that were organised enough to get a bunch of consoles and TVs together. None of this is replicated in the remake, although it does have four-player online and two-player split screen co-op for both the main campaign and the bonus missions.

That’s very welcome and, as always, co-op elevates even the most mundane games. Not that Halo is friendslop but it’s clear that this is no longer a franchise on the cutting edge of gaming. Whereas the Resident Evil remakes were ambitious enough that they started influencing the mainline entries, Campaign Evolved doesn’t introduce anything, in the bonus missions or elsewhere, that is either new or an obvious route forward for the series.

The bonus missions are entertaining enough that they prove a back-to-basics new sequel could work but at the moment there’s no sign of any greater ambition than that. It’s a familiar problem, where a series that was once innovative and influential only has two choices: to rely on the diminishing returns of very similar sequels or to realise that constant reinvention is the only way to stay relevant – as difficult as that is to engineer. So far, Halo has always opted for the former.

No franchise can last for long without new ideas and while the open world map of 2021’s Halo Infinite did offer some promise, overall the game was unconvincing. After playing Campaign Evolved, that situation seems unchanged and the future of Halo remains as murky as ever.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Developer: Halo Studios (original campaign: Bungie)
Release Date: 28th July 2026*
Age Rating: 16

*early access from 23rd July if you buy the Premium Edition

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