Combat Evolved, Evolved

One day, when I used to work in a Game store, some college youths came in asking if they could throw a few questions my way for some project they were doing. One of them asked me what my favourite game was and, living up to the gaming “hipster” reputation I have in some circles, I said Planescape: Torment. The young fellow stood open-mouthed with his pen and notepad in hand and a look of confusion on his face. I repeated myself more slowly and he continued to look at me with an expression of perplexity and bewilderment, so I sighed and told him my favourite game was Halo.

Looking back on that moment here in 2026, and that inquisitive young fellow probably got the truth out of me in the long run. I still love looking back on the story and atmosphere of Planescape: Torment, watching YouTube videos on it, and thinking about the wonderful characters it introduced me to, but do I want to play it these days? Not really. Halo: Combat Evolved, though? That’s playable forever, and is packed with cool characters, epic story moments, and iconic set-pieces, too.

There’s just something special about Halo, you know?

I own every Halo game, collection, and re-release that’s ever come out on disc, so I had no choice but to pick up Halo: Campaign Evolved, and was eager to play through it even though I held off for a month or two thanks to having other stuff to play and wanting to save some pennies. I purchased the PS5 version recently (partially for the novelty of having a Halo game on a PlayStation but mainly due to the fact that I don’t have an Xbox Series console) and absolutely rinsed the campaign over three days.

I loved it. The original Halo is a masterpiece of pacing, atmosphere and action, and this remake brought all of that back to me with a dazzling, modern sheen that combined the severe, industrial tones of the UNSC machine, the sleek architecture of the Forerunners and the grim, pestilent bio-horror of the Flood with the glare of brightly coloured plasma and sickly glow of leaking starship coolant and Covenant blood stains. It’s a beautiful, beguiling creation and I couldn’t stop playing.

There’s nothing quite like riding around in a warthog and feeling that Installation 04 wind on your helmet.

The expanded cutscenes were appreciated and fit in seamlessly, and it was nice to actually see Foehammer. It was also a nice surprise to be able to use weapons that weren’t in the original Combat Evolved. The SMG is great for clearing out swarms of parasite forms, as is the sentinel beam, and it always felt upsetting to not be able to turn the spec-ops grunts’ fuel rod cannons against them in the original game. Campaign Evolved fixed this little oversight. I did experience some slowdown in a couple of locations, though, most notably right at the end of the warthog run on the final level, where the game plunged into slide-show mode for a couple of seconds. For the most part the frame-rate felt very stable, though.

I’ve seen some complaints floating about online about the visual direction of certain areas of the game, and I have to say I had no issues with this whatsoever. Everything looks great, and lamentations about the oversaturated purple-ness of the Covenant vessels are completely lost on me. While working my way through a basic Covenant starship corridor I’m really at a loss as to what people have a problem with, and if I’m ever disorientated by the special effects on the grav-lift or the saturated lighting in the coolant-flooded caverns beneath the Truth and Reconciliation then, well, great, this is bizarre alien technology in bizarre alien locations, it’s supposed to be weird and a little overwhelming. I really have no problems with any of the artistic decisions made by the developers of this remake.

Watch out for those sentinel beams, you don’t want to become just dust and echoes.

So, I guess if you’re on the fence about playing Halo: Campaign Evolved and potentially sullying your memories of one of your favourite games thanks to some naysayers you’ve seen online, my advice is to stick your SPARTAN helmet on and get stuck in. Keep your mind open and allow yourself to be immersed in the majesty of the original Halo all over again, and unless you’re some kind of purple-hating malcontent, you should be perfectly satisfied. I’d actually love to see the Halo 2 and Halo 3 campaigns get the same attention (not to mention ODST and Reach, but then I’d also like to see new Halo games, too, and we can’t have our plasma-flavoured cake and eat it, can we!).

Right, that’s got that off my mind. Time to go and play the bonus missions.