This past Friday saw the official announcement of one of the worst kept secrets in gaming, Halo Studios’ next project, the Halo: Combat Evolved remake in Unreal Engine 5. Alongside the expected plans of releasing it on the PlayStation 5, we also now know the official name: Halo: Campaign Evolved. I know, I know, pretty corny, but hey it fits and sends the message loud and clear that we’re getting the campaign remade and the campaign only.
But you already know all this, so the real questions are, how does it play? How does it look? Does it do justice to one of the most iconic games in history, one that started a massive franchise spanning tens of millions of fans over multiple decades? Well, I don’t know the full answers there, but I was able to play a short demo a couple of times over the weekend and here’s what I thought, in XboxEra’s Halo: Campaign Evolved Demo Impressions.
Halo Has Never Looked Better
Okay, so before I can talk about how the game plays, let’s talk about how it looks. Because yeah, the trailers, as great as they are, still don’t do the visuals justice. Halo: Campaign Evolved, is a damn pretty game. From the cutscenes, which look like they were prerendered by Blur Studio to the individual blades of grass, to the lifelike blobs of plasma being hurled across the battlefield, I was regularly blown away.
Of course, with this being a pretty early preview build, things weren’t perfect. There was clear hitching, some pop in, the frame rate sure wasn’t a locked 60, and the resolution would drop pretty low in the larger firefights. But from what I could tell, this build was being played on an Xbox Series X, rather than an ultra-powered PC, so overall I was still very impressed. They have work to do of course, but hey that’s why the game is still a year out!
One last thing I’ll mention, visuals wise, is that yes, this game still looks like the original Halo game. As in, a ton of care and effort was put in to keep the identity of the game intact. From the grunts, to the shores of The Silent Cartographer, to the Hunters and their fuel rods, Halo CE looks like the Halo CE (heh) we’ve always loved and remembered. At least in the little I was able to see.
But Does it FEEL like Halo?!
Okay, so they nailed the visuals. That’s nice and all but how does the game actually play? Is it still Halo? Well… The answer is yes, but not entirely. Right away as I jump off the pelican and straight into a firefight on Heroic difficulty, the game felt… heavy. I acclimated pretty quickly, but it felt like the monitor I was playing on didn’t have game mode on or something. I did play the demo twice and the second time didn’t feel quite as bad, latency wise, but it could have just been me getting used to it. Either way, it’s something I hope is improved and fixed, as part of what makes Halo feel so great to play is in how tight the gunplay and movement is.
The demo I played was essentially the first 15 or so minutes of The Silent Cartographer, starting from the landing firefight and ending with The Chief kicking a glowing rock down a deep chasm. Within these minutes is several encounters with groups of Elites, Grunts, and Jackals, and also three encounters with a pair of Hunters. And of course, some driving around on your trusty warthog, which I’ll touch on first.
The driving in the original game always felt serviceable to me. Nothing great but not really bad either, no matter what some folks who don’t vibe with the control style say. Halo: Campaign Evolved felt similar, the controls are exactly the same and the car feels about as heavy as it always does. But the whacky Halo 1 physics seem to be mostly absent, as I couldn’t send my car flying with a couple grenades. Though maybe I just needed more…
Up Close And Personal
Let’s talk a little about the big “elephant in the room”, the eternal debate between Halo fans and fanatics alike, sprint. So first off, you can toggle it on and off. So if you really, reaaaally don’t like sprint, just turn the damn thing off. I wouldn’t recommend that though, as I found being able to sprint in and out of firefights extremely useful in surviving and keeping the combat flowing. The sprint isn’t nearly as fast as, say, Halo Infinite, and you also can’t slide at all. I didn’t feel like the level was stretched out to accommodate the slightly faster movement speed either, which I know was the worry among some. But instant slight increases in speed helped considerably with some of the tougher encounters, such as the Hunters of course.
If you’ve played this level before, you know it’s one with Hunters galore. In the 15 minutes of the demo, there are three sets of Hunters blocking your way, and let me tell you that these are not the same “one pistol shot to the back” foes you may remember. As Halo Studios’ continues to do, their Hunter encounters remain memorable and challenging. I found myself weaving in and out of the fight as I’d keep pressure on one Hunter, preventing it from firing a blast of green plasma to my face, while strafing around the other in order to pump a full magazine of lead into its soft orange flesh. Even the encounter indoors with obstacles everywhere, I was able to keep the pressure up while keeping myself alive.
To be completely blunt, playing the original Halo CE over the past few years has rarely led to adrenaline pumping moments. The game is always still fun of course, no matter how many times I play it, but it was something I’d mostly just breeze through. These Hunter encounters, on the other hand, had my blood pumping throughout. I physically recoiled when I wasn’t able to dodge away quick enough and I exclaimed in triumph when I finally took one of them down. I wasn’t able to play much more than a handful of minutes of the game, but I can confidently say that the Hunter encounters are significantly improved from the original in pretty much every way. I’m now looking forward more than ever to some of the other more difficult moments in the series, and especially on how they’ll handle the Flood.
Lastly, I kept my playthroughs on Heroic, but I did hear from a friend that Legendary felt much less of a “shoot twice then hide behind cover right away” style, instead he was able to remain engaged in longer firefights. This was promising to hear, as solo legendary runs in the original always felt a bit too punishing for me.
No… I Think We’re Just Getting Started
So, after playing through just a little of Halo: Campaign Evolved, I’m feeling hopeful, excited, and cautiously optimistic about the future of Halo on Unreal Engine. The shooting felt precise (besides the “heavy” feeling sometimes), the visuals were fantastic, the level felt faithful to the original game, and the changes they did make (such as with the Hunters) felt worthwhile and positive. I think Halo fans are in for a treat next year as they relive their memories and explore the mysteries of Halo one more time.
