Halo: Campaign Evolved is a beautiful remaster on PS5, but it's not quite the same
Blog Andrew Joseph 25 Oct , 2025 0
To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect when I sat down in front of my Xbox Series To be honest, I'm still not sure how I feel after playing it. I definitely want to be blown away by the visuals, just like I was blown away by the original Halo: Combat Evolved back in 2001. Heck, we know Unreal Engine 5 is more than capable! I also don't want Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) to get into too much trouble. Or do I? Anyway, does Halo 1 feel old? Will PlayStation 5 players still care about this 25-year-old Xbox classic when it debuts on Sony consoles simultaneously with Xbox and PC? So I went in with a lot of questions, and I left with, well… some answers. Let me explain.
I guess we might as well start with the obvious: how it looks. Did my face melt? No, but maybe yours is? I would be curious to read the comments on this. Regardless, there's no doubt that Campaign Evolved looks really good. It certainly doesn't look twenty years old. I played the legendary Silent Cartographer mission from the early days of the campaign, and the skyboxes are beautiful, the water looks great, the trees look really nice, and the terrain textures look crisp and clean. Once you're inside, the alien architecture takes on a unique sheen that the original building never had. At the same time, all the weapons look exactly as you'd expect from the modern era, and infantry, jackals, elites, and hunters all look convincingly new rather than redesigns of quarter-century-old creatures. Everything looks clean, but not soulless. At least not to me. It serves as a cohesive art direction space in the new engine. I appreciate that the narration of the main cast (at least Steve Downs and Jane Taylor) has been re-recorded, and the motion capture cutscenes have all been redone from scratch.
But let's talk about my biggest concern with this demo: the classic Halo feel. Movement, aiming, jumping, vehicle control – it all has to have that semi-floating Halo feel, and I'm happy to report that even in this very early state, Campaign Evolved has come a long way. No doubt they'll continue to tweak it over the coming months – by the way, this version doesn't have an official release date beyond “2026”, but I'd be shocked if it doesn't release on or very close to Halo: Combat Evolved's 25th anniversary next November – but there have been some gameplay modernizations implemented here that have been ported over from subsequent Halos into this remaster, and while purists may be outraged by this, most of them seem like they're gearing up for 2026 Be prepared for the best first-person shooter ever released.
First, vehicles are now boardable and destructible, just like in subsequent Halo games. This means that ghosts can no longer torment you endlessly, nor are you effectively invulnerable in a Scorpion tank. On a related note, a fourth player can now sit on the Warthog's back. Oh, and while I didn't get to try it out in Silent Cartographer, the Ghost is also now pilotable, just like it first was in Halo 2. Additionally, any weapon the bad guys use, you can also pilot. So if you took an energy sword from the corpse of a golden elite, the energy sword is now in your tool belt. Halo Studios says there will be eight weapons in Campaign Evolved that are not new to Halo but were first available in Master Chief's first adventure. On the sports side, sprinting has also been added. It has no cooldown; you can run endlessly. I can see this annoying Halo 1 purists the most, but not only do the developers say you can turn it off, but you can also…not use it. I found it handy when I was running back along the beach to my mission objective after wandering around to look at more of the new Unreal Engine 5 renders.
What about cooperatives? After Halo Studios figured this out in Halo Infinite , you might be wondering about this in Remastered. Two-player split-screen is confirmed, but sadly it wasn't available in my brief preview build, and the development team is also promising four-player online co-op, with full cross-play and cross-progression support. As for a proper competitive multiplayer game? Unfortunately, the answer to that question lies in the title of this remake: Campaign Evolved. There's no multiplayer here, which is a shame because it would certainly be interesting to see Blood Gulch or Sidewinder or Hang 'Em High in Unreal Engine 5 with support for online cross-play. I asked Halo Studios about it, and executive producer Damon Conn gave me a very media-trained answer, saying that the team is “very focused on recreating the original campaign that started it all,” and that “(Halo) Infinite and (The Master Chief Collection) make for really great multiplayer experiences.” Of course… for Xbox and PC players. But that doesn't help new PS5 players fall in love with Halo's glorious multiplayer. Presumably they don't want to turn any players away from MCC because of this, and/or adding full multiplayer support might mean the project isn't completed in time for the 25th anniversary. But still disappointing.
This makes me question the pricing. Will this be a full-price $70 version (or maybe even $80 at launch, since Microsoft has tried to push prices to that point this year)? Or will it be cheaper – especially since it's limited to events? When I asked the Halo Studios team directly, they wouldn't reveal it, so that remains to be seen. Personally, $50 feels about right, but that's just my opinion. I also think $20 a month feels like the right price for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate…
Okay, so there's no multiplayer, but there's one big addition that I'm really excited about: a new three-mission prequel campaign centered around the Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson. That could be pretty cool, but unfortunately, that's literally all we know so far. In fact, Halo Studios won't even tell me if it's available out of the box or if you have to complete the campaign to unlock it. I also asked them if they would be repurposing existing music from the Halo 1 soundtrack to accomplish these tasks, or if they would be commissioning something new (I dare imagine they would contact Marty O'Donnell himself!), and they didn't have an answer for me either.
Getting back to the gameplay, I must say I still had a blast driving the Warthog across the beaches of Silent Cartographer, with my fellow UNSC Marines in the passenger and gunner seats helping to take out the Covenant bad guys while I tried to use the front bumper to turn them into hood ornaments. Just like in the past. I also manned the turret at one point to test the friendly AI, but… it still needs work. In fact, someone on the development team later admitted this without me bringing it up, so they were obviously aware of it. Honestly, though, I'm not even worried about it when there's (probably) more than a year of development left. The same goes for framerate: no doubt some people went straight to the comments to point out any inconsistencies they saw (because I did notice a few), and while that does matter, it's not something I'd worry about so far from the end of the project.
Oh, I should also mention that Halo Studios is adding skeletons to Campaign Evolved. In fact, there are many. They used the word “dozens” to emphasize that this remake has the most skulls in a Halo campaign ever. Replayability is clearly a focus for the studio – understandable, given Halo's long history in this area and lack of competitive multiplayer – and the hope is that Skrulls will be fun for Xbox players who've experienced the game countless times.
At this point, I can't help but wonder if PlayStation 5 players playing Halo for the first time will actually care, leading many of them to become new fans of the series. This is a real question; I have a lot of personal history with Halo, so I simply can't answer it. For players who don't miss Master Chief, will Combat Evolved be as compelling as I found Combat Evolved? And if they do, so what? Will Halo Studios remake Halo 2 using Unreal Engine 5? And then 3? 4? 5? arrival? ODST? unlimited? Or will they just port The Master Chief Collection and Halo Infinite to PS5 to keep up with these players? I asked the team this question and once again got a media-trained semi-answer: “We have an opportunity to grow the fan base,” executive producer Damon Conn told me. “We believe we're bringing the most players we've ever had to Halo. So that growth is what we're really interested in, and again I've hinted at this before, it paves the way for future stories and Halo.”
So, as you can see by now, I still have a lot of unanswered questions about this remake project. But to Halo Studios' credit, this early demo does answer a few key questions about what Halo will look like and feel like. So far, so good. I'm very excited about the new three-mission prequel campaign involving Sergeant Johnson, as it will be the first new single-player content for a Halo game in five years. Can Campaign Evolved reignite the spark of Halo? That's the biggest question, and one that will take longer to answer.
Ryan McCaffrey is executive editor of IGN Previews and host of IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcasts Unlockedand our monthly talk show, IGN Unfiltered. He's from North Jersey, so it's “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate with him on Twitter: @DMC_Ryan.