Review – Halo: Campaign Evolved

Halo has been a longtime heavyweight in the FPS genre, even if it’s lost momentum in the past few years. Halo: Campaign Evolved hopes to capitalize on the game’s 25th anniversary and reclaim the nostalgia of Halo: Combat Evolved through updated graphics and even adds 3 bonus missions. Is this one worth waking up from your cryosleep for? Let’s find out. 

Content Guide

Violence
Plenty of blood splatters, but limbs will remain attached to bodies, unless it’s the zombified Flood. 

Sex/Nudity
Cortana, an advanced AI and main character in the game, is in a skin-tight tech suit with certain body parts accentuated.  

Language
“D***,” “h***,” and “a**” can be heard across many battlefields and cutscenes. 

Spirituality
The Covenant has their own religion, led by the Prophets, which is really only touched on here in the 3 bonus missions. 

Positive/Negative Themes
The two main enemy types, the Covenant and the Flood, both want to destroy humanity. So there’s plenty of positive themes of survival, fighting evil, etc. that you’d expect from a “good guys” vs “bad guys” game. There’s also more concrete themes like loyalty and self-sacrifice for the greater good, played out in many rescue missions. Master Chief, the protagonist, is your classic bad apple FPS hero without any dubious morality. This plays out especially clearly in the bonus missions, where you clearly see his desire to save not just humanity as a whole, but individuals. 

Review

Halo: Combat Evolved was my first FPS, contains my favorite level of any video game (Assault on the Control Room), and is still my favorite FPS campaign. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary thrilled me in 2011, especially with the Reach tie-in, and boy have I been excited about Halo: Campaign Evolved. 

The game opens with a partially redesigned cutscene featuring more material and wildly updated graphics. At first, I was a bit upset by the additions to cutscenes, and even omission of a few classic lines within the first few missions, but the more I played and thought about it, the more I’m glad the designers took this route. First, the title is Halo: Campaign Evolved, suggesting that this would be an evolution of the classic campaign, and secondly, anyone who wants to play the classic Halo Combat Evolved campaign ought to play Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Re-doing the original campaign with only updated graphics would have been more redundant than Two Betrayals. 

The feel of the game isn’t the exact same, but I think most of that is because of the updated and expanded weapons. The pistol still packs the same punch, but it doesn’t feel as powerful in your hands as the almighty M6D Magnum Sidearm did in the original. You can now board enemy vehicles, charged plasma blasts disable vehicles, and vehicles (unfortunately) can be destroyed. Fighting back with every Covenant weapon is a real treat, especially the Energy Swords, Beam Rifles, and Fuel Rod Cannons. Needle Rifles and BRs are also available in the 3 bonus missions 

I can’t critique the design of the 3 bonus missions: they flow incredibly well, and there’s one section in particular that feels like a respectful but not-too-long nod to the classic Firefight game mode. I also don’t want to critique the story element: the designers crafted a solid story that scratches the surface of the creation of Brutes, and we get a strong bit of banter between Sergeant Johnson and Master Chief. However, the settings of the levels, particularly missions 1 and 3, are what I found lackluster. The initial level is called Board Action, and I was hoping for some sort of callback to the polarizing Halo Combat Evolved multiplayer map, but alas, instead what I played through was a mission about boarding a Covenant ship… for the third time in Halo: Campaign Evolved, which already features 2 missions where players board a Covenant ship. 

The setting of the second bonus mission easily makes up for the redundancy of the first, but the third mission gets you right back inside a ship. Yes, the ship is well-designed from a gameplay perspective, new features, and displays the opulence found in Covenant technology in Halos 2 and 3, but when the original campaign already featured 2 missions about boarding a Covenant ship, why add 2 more? Why not take us to a new setting, as they did in mission 2, in all of the bonus missions? Perhaps the story and design came first, and the setting was an afterthought, but I found them slightly disappointing nonetheless. 

The original 9 missions, however, delivered in spades, as they always seem to do for me. Active waypoints help guide players through some of the bigger levels (particularly helpful for me in Halo and 343 Guilty Spark), and sprinting is a big help in getting around these large maps, especially with destructible vehicles. Legendary difficulty is as hard as ever, made even more so by the smarter AI and overcharged Plasma Pistols disabling vehicles. Players will still experience the joy of riding around Halo in a Warthog, the invincibility of a Scorpion, and the impractical but oh-so-fun Rocket Launcher/Sniper Rifle combo. 

Despite my affection for the campaign, the campaign-only remaster had me concerned about the replayability… until I discovered that the game featured 42 skulls hidden throughout the game. When you find a skull, you essentially unlock a mission-modifier. The designer brought back 26 fan-favorite skulls like Grunt Birthday Party, Catch, and Black Eye, while adding 16 all-new skulls that allow you to re-create classic Halo (indestructible vehicles, no sprinting, and even 3rd-person POV) and put a completely new spin on your game (Floor Is Lava).  

4-player co-op is something from the 10th anniversary remaster that we see here, though I noticed a framerate dip in the 2-player splitscreen, which is unfortunate because that’s how I prefer to play Halo. Not a dealbreaker, and mostly only noticeable on the 3 bonus missions, but it’s still difficult for me to believe that designers can’t figure that one out with all our technology today. 

Campaign Evolved delivered in just about every area I was hoping. It rekindled my joy for a game that I haven’t played in years, touching on just the right amount of nostalgia and modern game design. Even if the 3 bonus missions didn’t impress me with their settings, the story and design was strong enough that I have no problem returning to them, even if most of my time has been and will continue to be spent with the original 9 missions. Halo: Campaign Evolved is what I was hoping for and what many old-time Halo players will find delight in re-treading old stomping grounds.