Halo: Campaign Evolved Review (PS5)

Halo: Campaign Evolved is an interesting game for a number of reasons, and the fact you’re playing as Master Chief with a PlayStation controller might actually be the least controversial of the lot.

What would have been considered absurd just a couple of years ago has become commonplace: first-party Xbox games release on PS5. Or do they? Halo is supposed to be “on PlayStation going forward”, yet the Microsoft of today might now wish those words were never spoken.

It’s impossible to know whether the series will continue on PS5 — only Xbox will have an idea of what’s to come and where it’s launching — so, for now, all we can do is laud what we have today: a legendary shooter brought back in style.

25 years on from Microsoft’s console introduction, its statement piece is back. The campaign of Halo: Combat Evolved has been remade in Unreal Engine 5, restoring the classic story for modern times with graphical updates and gameplay improvements, along with a set of completely new missions.

PlayStation fans can experience Master Chief’s debut for the first time, allowing them access to what they missed out on when they were busy with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3.

For both them and the veterans there from the start, this is a worthy remake that returns Halo to glory. It was a revolutionary FPS in 2001, and it remains a genre masterclass all these years later.

At the same time, Campaign Evolved is largely still a product of the sixth console generation.

Halo doesn’t look or feel like a game from 2001 anymore, but it’s still designed and structured like one. It doesn’t faff about with open worlds, skill trees, or side quests — you’re there to shoot the Covenant… and then shoot them some more.

The campaign follows a strictly linear path all about fighting your way to the next objective, where you’ll repeat the process to reach the one after. It’s a very simple approach compared to the games of today, stripped of optional activities that balloon playtimes in the modern era.

You spend 10 hours of a 10-hour campaign shooting aliens. This is refreshing, as it leans into one of the best things about the franchise: the shooting.

From the reliable assault rifle to the surprisingly capable pistol, from the grenade spam to the power trip of the rocket launcher, every weapon Bungie created shines in the right time and place. With the Covenant guns on top, like the Needler and Plasma Rifle, there’s strong variety in what you kit Master Chief out with.

Halo Studios has brought back the full arsenal and coupled it with a few weapons from later entries to provide an incredible array of blasters for alien slaughter. Every one feels good to the trigger touch, pumping satisfaction and highs into every gameplay moment, sequence, and combat scenario.

Encounters with the Covenant — and the Flood later on — consume the experience, as you battle through spaceships, forests, swamps, and alien constructions. It doesn’t have the diversity of a modern single player effort; a lot of firefights take place in copy-and-pasted hallways and rooms.

It faithfully remains a product of its time — which is no bad thing for a title as special as this — but some modern enhancements make it a better-playing game.

Where the original had a single running speed, Campaign Evolved introduces a sprint option. Where the original had two-player co-op, Campaign Evolved expands the capabilities to support four online players (crossplay included). You can also zoom in while aiming, there’s better vehicle handling, and the controls have been updated to suit today’s button preferences.

My one big issue is it doesn’t go far enough with the latter: promotional material claims the remake utilises the PS5’s DualSense controller features, but not once did I notice them in action.

None of the weapons come with any kind of resistance from the adaptive triggers and the haptic feedback doesn’t feel a step above the standard vibrations of any other controller. Such lacklustre support is disappointing as it presented a chance to genuinely differentiate the PS5 version from any other Halo iteration. That sadly hasn’t happened.

On top of a gameplay update, the other idea fuelling the project was to make the Xbox classic a graphical standout all over again. I think Halo Studios has done a solid job bringing it up to par, with visuals, character models, and environments that wouldn’t look out of place stacked against any other PS5 game.

It won’t win any awards; I wasn’t particularly blown away by any single vista or location. However, what Campaign Evolved has managed is good enough. The graphical highlight is its pre-rendered cutscenes, which depict the Halo ring in very high quality.

A performance mode displays those visuals while targeting 60 frames-per-second, and it achieves that for the most part on a PS5 Pro. I had many smooth sessions working my way through the 10 missions of the campaign, only encountering drops during busy combat scenes. It’s definitely not a locked 60FPS, though the visible dips are few and far between.

There’s also a quality mode providing even better graphics, but I don’t think the hit you have to take to the framerate is worth it. The fast-paced combat of Halo should be matched by a high framerate, and you don’t get that when prioritising visuals.

Campaign Evolved also brings with it a set of three new missions, which serve as a prequel to the main story as Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson sneak aboard a Covenant ship and become tied up in what they find inside.

Each new level is brilliant, to the point where they feel like cut content from the original game. All of them continue the mantra of blasting Covenant enemies without any distractions; they fit perfectly into the overall package, like they were there all along back in 2001.

I enjoyed these new missions just as much as I did revisiting the old ones, like The Silent Cartographer and Assault on the Control Room to see all their little tweaks and updates. I also didn’t get lost once in The Library, infamously the worst level in Halo history. That’s what I call progress.

A remixed campaign feature will have you replaying those missions often, too, as Skulls (a collectible type) apply gameplay modifiers to form custom playthroughs. Either alone or in co-op for up to four players, you can test your skills against the toughest challenges in the Halo series, like LASO (Legendary All Skulls On).

This provides the package considerable replayability beyond simply revisiting a classic every so often. As such, unless you want multiplayer, this is the version of Halo to play going forward. It’s a faithful yet expanded and improved remake of an everlasting great.