Halo had one of the most legendary runs in all of gaming. Halo: Combat Evolved dropped near the end of 2001 as a launch title for the original Xbox, and the rest was history. Incredibly, I got my Xbox console for free from a Taco Bell promotion, and ended up hosting Halo LAN parties for years to come. Like GoldenEye 64 before it, its sheer popularity managed to unite a ton of disparate first-person shooter fans everywhere, and recruited new ones to the genre.
That popularity pretty much propelled Halo through the original trilogy, into an era of online play and more widely marketed gaming competitions. While I competed in multiple regional tournaments for the first Halo, by the time Halo 2 rolled around, organizations like MLG were already making their mark.
Now, 25 years later, we're back to the original Halo. It's a game pretty much everyone should play, and Campaign Evolved manages to remake just enough to not glaze over what made Combat Evolved so special. In some ways, they didn't go far enough.
If you're wondering how the original campaign holds up, don't worry. Halo: Campaign Evolved leaves most of the level designs (including the 10 original missions) untouched, which is a great thing. Halo does a fantastic job of nailing pacing and tension already, as you're immediately thrust into the role of the Spartan Master Chief and put on the back foot by the Covenant army. It never really lets up from there as you encounter new threats, and learn where the battle is going to take you in the future.
The key to Halo's success is easilyMaster Chief in more ways than one. He doesn't just look cool; he's fun to control too, as you're essentially taking the role of a super-soldier. It still delivers on that superhuman power fantasy of grabbing weapons from other allies when you're running low on ammo, chewing through an entire alien army basically by yourself. Or, in classic Spartan fashion, you end up with two completely different weapons than what you started the level with due to frantic resupplying from dead enemies. It's a great marriage of old and new-school shooter design.
Since Halo: Campaign Evolved brings back the four core difficulties (easy, normal, heroic, legendary), everyone can acclimate to the campaign, even in 2026. If you're a hardcore Halo veteran, you may want to try legendary out of the gate and test your mettle. For complete newcomers, easy is a good way to get your bearings. Since difficulty levels alter damage as well as enemy frequency, some missions can feel completely different on a tweaked setting.
Where Campaign Evolved falters a bit is that some of the bells and whistles feel like hats on hats. For instance, the Needler now has a HUD showing how many bullets it has left, whereas the original design for the weapon was more sleek. Some stages do look transformative, like the snow-capped bridges of Assault on the Control Room. Others weren't altered enough.
Some gameplay additions are more subtle. Extra weapons make it in from Halo 2, there are more Skull modifiers (anything from challenge parameters to wacky cheat code-like concepts), and split-screen is available on consoles. The "Campaign Remix" mode (with randomized enemies and weapons) is another treat for long-time fans, or folks who want to replay the original game over and over. All you need to do to unlock it is find three skulls hidden across the game, so it's an attainable goal.
The biggest draw here is easily the three new missions, which are the meat of the new content you're getting here with Campaign Evolved. Taking place a year before the events of Halo 1, you'll join Sgt. Johnson in a set of three prequel missions, which include extra weapons not featured in the core game from future entries, as well as the chance to modify the parameters of each level with Skull modifiers.
Having played through these three missions several times, I had a blast. They'll take you through a Covenant ship (which is laid out differently from the one in the main game), a big game hunting reserve outdoors, followed by another big ship battle. The Covenant is the core villain here, with a few surprise cameos to boot, and redesigned enemies and armor.
There is some exploration of narrative themes, including the relationship between Spartans and humans in the UNSC army. However, it stops short of having much meaningful to say, and suffers from some repetitive dialogue as you're taking down the Covenant with UNSC NPCs. Clocking in at roughly an hour and a half to finish all three, there isn't a lot of gravitas to fit in here amid all the action.
All that said, the levels are designed well, and the arsenal you have access to in these new missions significantly mixes things up tactically. If some multiplayer maps were included and this theoretically dropped in 2002, it could have been a DLC expansion for the original Halo. I would have liked more missions, but what we have is well-crafted at least.
If you've already 100%ed Halo multiple times over, there isn't much here for you. However, for casual fans who are looking to get into Halo for the first time, or don't have much experience with Combat Evolved, there is a ton to pore over as they finish the campaign and replay it on a greater difficulty with friends.
Halo: Campaign Evolved is in a very weird spot, given that it doesn't have competitive multiplayer as a selling point. Once you're done with the campaign and the short new spread of missions, you're going to have to start replaying what you have. For some people, replaying Halo for years on end with different partners is a treasured pastime. For others, it's an experience you may want to try down the line at a reduced cost.