Review Roundup: Halo Studios’ Halo: Campaign Evolved
Although it wasn’t the first first-person shooter, Halo: Combat Evolved definitely elevated the genre when it was released in 2001, blending thrilling action and compelling level design with an epic storyline filled with twists and turns. Building on their experience from making the Marathon trilogy, Bungie delivered a top-tier classic that remains one of the greatest video games of all time, and helped establish Microsoft’s Xbox platform.
Halo: Combat Evolved spawned multiple sequels, some of them far better than others. Sadly, what was once a video game juggernaut has floundered in recent years due in part to studio upheavals and a decided lack of vision. 2021’s Halo Infinite was billed as the franchise’s next evolutionary step. Despite beginning on a promising note, 343 Industries — which took over Halo after Bungie left its Microsoft partnership — was unable to deliver on many of Halo Infinite’s promises, and so Zeta Halo’s secrets remain.
Thus, it makes sense for Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) to go back to the franchise’s beginnings with a redo of Halo: Combat Evolved that utilizes modern development tools (specifically, Unreal Engine 5) and updates the gameplay accordingly. So does Halo: Campaign Evolved represent a fresh start for the iconic video game franchise? Or is it little more than just a fresh coat of paint? Read on for a selection of critical reactions to the latest Halo effort.
As much as I love Halo, I was lukewarm to the idea of remaking the original; after all, we had a good Anniversary remaster in 2011, and it’s backwards compatible on Xbox Series X; what more could there be? Well, I’m playing on PlayStation 5, which feels unique, and it’s beautifully reimagined in UE5. When the Gregorian chanting starts, the orchestra swells, the Halo ring stretches out in front of me, and suddenly I’m right back where I was all those years ago, staring at that impossible alien landscape; I can’t resist, I need to play again.
Campaign Evolved is mostly a one-to-one recreation of the original game, but with vastly enhanced visuals and audio. Utilizing Unreal Engine 5, the game is gorgeous, especially on PS5 Pro (yeah, I had to be that guy and play Halo on PS5 because it’s just hard to fathom it happened). The dialogue has been fully re-recorded, too, making this feel like an actual remake as opposed to just an upscaling of graphics.
If you’ve never played a Halo game before, but you know you enjoy shooters, Halo: Campaign Evolved is the perfect place to start. If you’re a Halo fan, but it’s been a few years since you’ve played Combat Evolved, Campaign Evolved does just enough to feel like an entirely new game. And if you’re a Halo diehard, this really is as good as it gets. Remake or not, if this is the start of Halo’s new era, the future’s bright.
But as much as I adore Halo’s campaign, with its simple yet thoughtful combat design, you can only play the hits so often. When the base game, the Anniversary Edition, and the Master Chief Collection are all readily available in 2026, it’s easy to see this remake as more of an Unreal Engine test than anything. There’s a new batch of Skulls and three prequel missions to sweeten the deal, which are a fun few hours to blast through — but the changes outside the graphical overhaul are otherwise subtle, and as a whole, neither definitively improve nor detract from what I played 25 years ago. So, while it’s great to see how well Halo has aged, we’ve been down this road many times before.
Halo: Campaign Evolved does a phenomenal job of capturing what made the 2001 original so much fun while updating certain elements to better suit modern sensibilities. The core game shows its age in some notable ways, but there’s no mistaking the magic that made this formula work all those years ago is still very much intact.
What we have here is the other type of remake — the kind that goes all in on modernization, offering perceived upgrades to an otherwise unchanged foundation. Halo Studios has no discernably new take on Bungie’s landmark FPS, other than a desire to make Combat Evolved look and play more like its later Halos. The “faithful” treatment sets an admirable goal, but that also means Campaign Evolved positions itself as a replacement for, or at least in competition with, the original.
First and foremost, it’s great to see such an epic experience on newer hardware. Even the iconic menu and menu music look and sound great. That’s one area where Halo Studios has succeeded here: the graphical fidelity and the sound of the game. Whether you remember sound bites or some of the music, it’s undeniable that many moments of epic gameplay are backed by the original’s audio excellence. From Grunts yelling “save yourself” to Elites laughing when they kill Chief, to the satisfying reload sounds and engine roars; it’s all here.
The original Halo is a work of archival significance, a watershed moment for first-person shooters and video games as a whole. Halo Studios had an impossible task in being asked to improve on (or even reinvent) perfection. Campaign Evolved represents a diligent effort — at least at reinvention, if not truly accurate reproduction — and a worthy addition to Halo canon. But it also lives in the long shadow cast by the monolithic status of Combat Evolved.
Through its first two generations of existence, Xbox held its own against its more established rivals Nintendo and Sony, and a big reason for that was Halo. Bungie’s shooter coupled a grand sci-fi story with nearly pitch-perfect action and single-handedly created a reason to buy an Xbox. Now, the game has gotten a full remake, reimagining the same core experience for modern audiences. In a testament to the original design, Halo remains a thrilling game more than two decades after it debuted. But the remake is also a reminder of just how far Xbox has strayed from its initial promise.
If you’ve never played Halo before and think the original game looks too old, this is a good option. If you want to play Halo with your PlayStation 5 pals, this is, well, the only option. For everyone else, I’d suggest asking yourself how big a Halo fan you are and if you really need to spend more money on replaying the first game again. Again. Again.
Halo: Campaign Evolved will be released on July 28, 2026. Watch the trailer below.
