Halo: Campaign Evolved PS5 Review
Summary: Halo: Campaign Evolved gives long time fans plenty of reasons to return to Alpha Halo, while making the series more accessible than ever with its first release on PlayStation.
4.6
Modern Classic
Let’s get one thing out of the way first: Halo: Combat Evolved has aged remarkably well. Unlike many shooters from the early 2000s, it’s still just as enjoyable today, and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary already modernised its presentation over a decade ago. That means Halo: Campaign Evolved has a different challenge. Can it make a classic feel fresh again without losing the spirit of the original? Thankfully, it has more than a few answers.
Halo Studios has rebuilt the entire campaign from the ground up. The original ten missions are all here, with their layouts faithfully preserved and enhanced by stunning new visuals. Fans shouldn’t expect every encounter to unfold exactly as they remember, though. Enemies from across the Halo series have been added throughout the campaign, and weapons from later entries regularly appear where you least expect them, meaning even Halo veterans won’t always know what’s waiting around the next corner.
Built in Unreal Engine 5, Alpha Halo has never looked or sounded this good. Every environment has been reimagined, with dynamic lighting, weather effects and new character animations giving the ringworld a new sense of life. The same care extends to the cinematics too. New motion capture, re-recorded dialogue and a beautifully remastered soundtrack make the story feel more cinematic. It was satisfying to see familiar locations realised in a way the original hardware simply couldn’t achieve.
Anniversary introduced fourteen hidden Skulls to collect, but Campaign Evolved raises that number to forty-two, with every original Skull relocated and additional ones hidden throughout the three new missions. Even players who could previously collect them from memory will have to start searching all over again. Finding three Skulls unlocks Campaign Remix, which also introduces three Remix-exclusive Skulls that remain permanently active while the mode randomises enemy encounters, weapon placements and faction behaviour. Even after finishing the campaign, I found myself replaying missions just to see what the game would throw at me next.
The remake also introduces three brand-new prequel missions, following Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson a year before the events of Combat Evolved. The opening mission wastes little time throwing players into the action before opening into a Covenant training facility packed with weapons from across the Halo series. Having almost the entire arsenal at my fingertips made it feel like a giant playground. It’s a brilliant introduction to the expanded sandbox. More than anything, it reminded me just how satisfying Halo’s combat still is over twenty years later.
The tight corridors of the opening level give way to larger outdoor battlefields, before the third mission delivers some of the most ambitious level design in the entire remake. Bigger combat spaces and a handful of memorable set pieces make it feel refreshingly different from anything in the original campaign. The finale throws you into the cockpit of a Covenant Seraph for a space battle that caught me off guard in the best way. It gives the prequel arc an ending that feels unique rather than simply fading back into Combat Evolved. More than anything, these missions prove that Halo Studios understands how to expand Combat Evolved without losing sight of what made it special.
As Xbox’s flagship franchise, seeing Halo on a PlayStation still feels slightly surreal. Master Chief was synonymous with Microsoft’s consoles for over two decades, making Halo: Campaign Evolved‘s arrival on PS5 one of the biggest platform shifts the series has ever seen. Thankfully, this doesn’t feel like a compromised port. The DualSense controller is put to good use, with adaptive triggers adding a subtle amount of resistance to each weapon and the controller’s speaker providing audio cues, such as your shield recharging. Even the DualSense light bar changes colour depending on what’s happening in-game.
Performance on PlayStation 5 is also solid for the most part, maintaining a smooth frame rate throughout the majority of the campaign. Missions such as Assault on the Control Room and Two Betrayals, however, where the battlefield fills with vehicles and enemy forces, suffered from noticeable frame drops and occasional stuttering during my playthrough. They never made the game unplayable, but they’re hard to ignore given how polished the rest of the experience feels.
Final Thoughts
The best remakes remind you why you fell in love with the original in the first place. That’s exactly what Halo: Campaign Evolved does. It preserves everything that made Combat Evolved special, but layers enough new ideas on top that even after all these years, stepping back onto Alpha Halo feels like an adventure again. For longtime fans, it’s the perfect excuse to return. For anyone discovering Halo for the first time, Halo: Campaign Evolved is the perfect place to start.
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