Returning to Halo's first campaign via its upcoming remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved, I'm struck by how quickly the now 25-year-old sci-fi shooter series found its footing. Everyone has their preferred entry – mine is Halo 3: ODST, though Halo: Reach won when we ranked the best Halo games – but no matter your favorite, it's likely you can trace its best bits back to the first Halo with surprising clarity.
Halo: Combat Evolved dared to be bigger and bolder than many of its contemporaries at the time, realizing vast sci-fi setpieces while developer Bungie honed in on the moment-to-moment action that strung its levels together. Campaign Evolved takes a light touch to the original, developer Halo Studios opting for a glossy Unreal Engine 5 makeover with little in the way of mechanical tweaks. The result lets that original vision shine – often to resounding success, but on occasion leaving me to wonder whether this $50 do-over goes far enough in putting Halo's best foot forward.
Old Spartan, new tricks
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Beginning four missions in, with Master Chief leading a beach assault upon the titular Halo superweapon's surface, Campaign Evolved's updated graphics make an instant impression. The beachhead is lush and tropical, with ray-traced sunbeams adding liveliness to turquoise waters and Pelican gunships alike, but the original game's sharp lines still poke through. I like that Halo Studios hasn't crammed window-dressing into every nook: space has been left for the more emergent details, from grenade scorchmarks to ragdolled bodies and discarded weapons. It's a small touch, but helps to preserve the game's arcade-y side.
Other parts of Campaign Evolved feel exactly as they did. Some shootouts felt like puzzles, in the sense that they were so overwhelmingly challenging on Heroic difficulty that I felt like there could only be a 'magic' solution to surviving. The answer, always, was to fight smarter and harder – working within the thin margins of Master Chief's limited shield to dish out damage, finishing targets before their shields could regenerate and knowing when to duck for cover. Letting your shield regenerate is a rare luxury, as the Covenant's alien forces are oppressive. Even later in the preview, when I'd traded open beaches for narrow Forerunner corridors, Elites still found smart ways to flank and press my cover while Grunts and shielded Jackals kept the Chief pinned.
Aggression begets aggression, and in true Halo spirit I was encouraged to lean into the chaos. Grenades are powerful but scarce enough to keep handy for Brutes and Arbiters, and limited ammo meant I often had to ricochet between corpses in firefights, scooping up a plasma rifle and emptying its rounds until darting for the nearest replacement. The magnum has been kept as powerful as it was in the original, and if you're wondering whether it's still as much fun to pop Grunts with it… Do you really need to ask?
Having handled our Marathon review earlier in the year, I'm surprised by how much Bungie's latest shooter has primed me to play Halo: Campaign Evolved. The latter's mysterious ringworld sparks the same curiosity as Tau Ceti IV, both of which feel like ancient history and the distant future at once. It's refreshing to come back to the beginning – partly to see the likes of the Covenant and Flood as fresh threats again, and partly because the first game enjoyed a more endearingly hammy tone than its successors.
But with Bungie long-gone from Halo, it's strange to see Microsoft lead the series' 25th anniversary celebrations with a stripped-back remake. Given Halo Studios ditched head-to-head multiplayer to focus wholly on Halo's campaign, I would have liked to see the developer show more confidence in its stewardship of the series by pushing the remake further. The original's issues with backtracking and repetitive corridors were visible in the first mission I played (The Silent Cartographer), and given those problems get worse from there in the 2001 game's campaign, it seems strange to offer such a lavish visual touch-up but leave the same hang-ups for newcomers to stumble into.
Make no mistake, I still had a lot of fun blasting through the Halo remake. The decision to add weapons from later games made for an excellent twist in The Silent Cartographer, as I was able to cut through Elites with an Energy Sword rather than play coyly from cover. Similarly, Assault on the Control Room benefits from the Chief being able to hijack vehicles – I spent more time than I'd care to admit trying to squeeze a stolen Banshee indoors to get my money's worth. Campaign Evolved excels when it uses new tricks like these to build upon the old, and while the remake's scope remains on the timid side based on what I've seen so far, there's still enough here to sell me on a co-op playthrough when it launches next month.
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