Halo: Campaign Evolved Review: Play It Again, Microsoft Sam

The definitive version of a landmark shooter — and, on PlayStation, probably a one-time-only novelty.

The latest Halo game arrives in a strange continuum. I played the entirety of Halo: Campaign Evolved on my PS5 Pro, an eyebrow-raising novelty as far as the franchise is concerned, but one that, thanks to a recent shift in Microsoft’s agenda, will probably never happen again. It’s also the third time the game has been re-released in 15 years, this being the latest attempt to rejuvenate interest in the Bungie-crafted universe of Master Chief and The Covenant, and this tightly woven 10-mission campaign from 2001.

As I worked through the mess hall of The Pillar of Autumn, it Forward Unto Dawn-ed on me just how much history I have with this campaign. I’m not someone who replays games much, but I’ve played the original Halo across four console generations, with four different controllers and several variant groups of people. So playing through Campaign Evolved, short of its triumvirate of bonus missions, felt instinctive, like doing my dailies in a live-service game. With regard to the project’s ambitions, this is impressive.

I knew when to double back from the first substation in The Silent Cartographer, and where to stop two-thirds through The Maw for a chat with a Thirsty Grunt. And even though the number of Skulls has been expanded and their locations altered significantly, I seemed to have a sixth sense for the surely irresistible alcoves and hovels where Halo Studios’ level designers might place them. Over 25 years, this digital architecture of these spaces has bored its way into my brain, Gravemind-style. So making my return to Master Chief’s first outing in 2026 has certainly been comforting… and maybe even a little bit profound.

In Praise of Preserved Jank

Halo: Campaign Evolved looks incredible. That first post-Pelican vista in the second mission, Halo, feels like how I imagined the game to look when I was younger, made manifest. Ask anyone who played the Xbox version, Duke in hand, and they’d agree that there’s an eerie atmosphere that underlies the sparse environments in this game, and Campaign Evolved is constantly embellishing this ambience under and over the hood. I respect the minute attention to detail that has gone into these levels, which have already been pored over and realigned by a handful of development teams to varying effect. It’s not just a case of extra greebles in Campaign Evolved — Halo Studios demonstrates a deeper understanding of what makes these missions tick.

Truly, what makes Campaign Evolved so compelling is the restraint with which it preserves its jank. The way that the UNSC marines spray their assault rifles as they lurch, in a single awkward motion, was surely annoying to figure out, but so delightful. The ragdoll physics, too, and the back-and-forth dance of melee attacks you can get into when you’re too close to an Elite. All the 2001 charm is there, just smoothed over with high production values elsewhere, like in the game’s interstitial cutscenes.

Despite the re-recording and addition of extra dialogue, I didn’t notice anything controversial about the changes Campaign Evolved makes to the campaign. If anything, it feels more like a cohesive story, with greater focus on the horror-adjacent Flood sequences, creating a grander sense of scale to the infighting among The Covenant, The UNSC & the aforementioned parasite scourge.

What Operation METEORITE Adds

If you’re coming back to Halo, I’d suggest you play the Bonus Missions first. The context Operation METEORITE provides for Master Chief’s relationship with Sgt. Johnson & the ODST is valuable, and the three-mission run slots neatly into the runtime. There are some fatiguing corridors and tedious wave defence sequences, but they’re offset by more cutscenes and cute lore nuggets to keep your brain busy.

All in, the Bonus Missions aren’t sensational feats of level design that rival any of the missions from the core campaign, but they’re a solid addition to extend the replayability of a game that can be over in several hours, especially without the inclusion of competitive multiplayer. I enjoyed how the developers deployed gravity lifts and rampaging brutes to alter the tenor of a typical Halo 1 map. And while a lot of it takes place indoors, it’s when you stumble into its open-world environments that the map pack easily justifies itself. I’d happily play Halo 2 and 3 ‘Evolved’if Halo Studios were to continue this approach, faithfully maintaining the experience while adding tasteful touches.

The main campaign has the same peaks and valleys as in 2001, of course, and this isn’t helped by poor checkpointing in later missions like Keyes. Either way, it’s a bit tighter — the introduction of vehicle hijacking, extra enemy types, and weapons from later entries successfully emboldens the pacing, making it feel like you’re playing a subtly remixed version of the original. It’s not as ambitious as something like Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, but there are places where you won’t be able to use your muscle memory, and the encounters are made more challenging with the help of some architectural and encounter design tweaks.

Skulls, Terminals and Campaign Remix

Like previous entries, Halo Campaign Evolved is now replete with extra collectables — namely 42 skulls and 13 terminals to pore through. This plays into a new mode called Campaign Remix, where missions are more meaningfully altered by quirky modifiers like the Adaptation skull, which randomises the enemy factions present in the mission. It’s pretty cool to see The Flood appear where they shouldn’t or work alongside The Covenant because of the Armistice skull, too.

However, something I was expecting that Campaign Evolved lacks is a developer-curated skull setup for each Campaign Remix mission. In the preamble, you can pick which modifiers you want to activate and randomise the selection of skulls, but it would have been a welcome replayability boon for Halo Studios to provide their own layouts to show how a mission can be meaningfully altered with skulls — like, say, The Pillar of Autumn but with low visibility and an onslaught of deadly Flood. Similarly, you can’t designate a handful of skulls as your favourites to set up quickly-accessible layouts — you have to painfully click through them all every time you start a mission, which gets annoying when there’s 40+ on the docket.

Of course, first you have to find the skulls to use them: there are three in each level, and based on the ones I’ve found, I’d say they’re placed in more accessible locations than previous entries, but there are some real headscratchers here too. At first, I spent a lot of time pixel-hunting tirelessly on the edge of maps, only to run into a skull in an area that seemed obvious, so be careful of that. The spirit of skull-hunting isn’t hampered a bit by the abundance, as it gets meaningfully tricky later on when you’re running out of collectables to find, and I think it’s a fair tradeoff given the sheer scope of modifiers and how they alter the co-operative campaign experience.

My favourite skull by far is Perspective, which allows you to play every level from an over-the-shoulder third-person viewpoint. I stumped for this throughout to experience the game from a different angle, and, as well as giving me a better chance to appreciate the gorgeous scenery of Campaign Evolved, it meant I wasn’t so bogged down by the fatigue of running those same halls I had in years gone by. Naturally, it’s more enjoyable to throw a bunch of skulls on and run the campaign in co-op, as piling dozens of modifiers on yourself can feel a little masochistic without any rewards to be gained beyond rare dialogue.

The Postgame Problem

Beyond the trophy criteria, it would have been nice to see a metaprogression system in Campaign Evolved that asks you to complete missions in unusual ways, or wield certain skulls in unison to unlock collectables, concept art, or extra lore. Risk of Rain 2 comes to mind as a game that deploys this concept effectively. As it stands, it’s difficult to recommend to players who don’t have friends waiting and are here just to experience a game they missed in solo and dip out after the credits — all told, Halo-curious and solo-only PlayStation players may feel short-changed by the postgame suite. I’m saying this as a Halo fan who wants to collect everything — I just recognise that isn’t going to enthral everyone.

And, as much as I enjoyed the hours I spent with this relic from the past, I can’t help but feel that Campaign Evolved doesn’t have the necessary fanfare, documentary insight or upgraded feature suite befitting a definitive 25th-anniversary remake of one of, if not the most significant game in Xbox’s history. It’s worth a look as a newbie, but you shouldn’t arrive expecting something revolutionary to codify your relationship with the series — it’s just another really solid overhaul of a fantastic first-person shooter, just like Anniversary was back in 2011.

The Verdict

Halo: Campaign Evolved beautifies a high point in Bungie’s fabled sci-fi series and allows PlayStation lifers to see what all the fuss is about for a fleeting moment. Thanks to the reimagined cutscenes and admirable atmosphere-enhancing changes that have been brought to the original levels by Halo Studios, it’s safe to say that Campaign Evolved is now the definitive way to experience one of the greatest shooters of all time. However, despite a bevvy of new skulls and a trio of extra missions, it’s more complicated than expected to justify for curious players, especially if you don’t have a group of friends waiting with bated breath to attempt a LASO Legendary run.