Halo Studios rebuilt the 2001 classic in Unreal Engine 5, added a third-person mode, three new missions and four-player co-op, and it looks, feels, plays and sounds amazing.
Disclosure: Xbox provided OnPoint 4 Gamers with a review copy of the game.
Halo was the first game I played when I brought my Xbox home on day one in 2001. Twenty-five years later, Halo is still my favorite franchise, and that’s not a casual statement. For a long time, the original Halo: Combat Evolved sat on the throne. Then Halo Infinite came along and took the top spot from it. I didn’t think anything was getting it back.
Halo: Campaign Evolved got it back.
There was a lot of negative noise around this remake before it came out, and a lot of it felt overblown or flat out made up. Don’t believe the hate. I put more than 15 hours into this game across Xbox Series X, PC, the ROG Xbox Ally X, Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce Now. I finished the campaign. I played the whole thing in third person, then went back and replayed a lot of it in first person. And I’m here to tell you exactly why the game that started it all is the best way to play Halo in 2026.
Want to see it in action first? Here’s my RAW IMPRESSIONS video, where I play through The Pillar of Autumn and the mission Halo, and you can read my written RAW IMPRESSIONS too.
Halo: Campaign Evolved Review: Don’t Believe the Hate, Halo Just Took Its Crown BackWhat Halo: Campaign Evolved actually is
Halo: Campaign Evolved is a full remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved campaign, built by Halo Studios in Unreal Engine 5 and published by Xbox Game Studios. It came out on July 28, 2026, and it’s the studio’s first game since 343 Industries became Halo Studios. Campaign Evolved Art Director Donnie Taylor calls it “Halo Studio’s first offering and a taste of the future of Halo.”
This is not Anniversary 2.0. Every piece of art was rebuilt from scratch, but the gameplay underneath runs on code and systems carried directly over from the original games. That’s the secret sauce. Game Director Greg Hermann said the goal was gameplay that is “100% authentically Halo at its core,” and Halo Studios kept the wild physics, crate launches and all.
You get all ten original missions plus Operation: METEORITE, a brand-new three-mission prequel arc with Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson. On top of that you get sprint (you can turn it off), nine extra weapons from across the series, hijacking, a drivable Wraith, 42 Skulls, a new Campaign Remix mode, two-player split-screen on console and four-player online co-op with crossplay and shared progress between console and PC.
The Standard Edition is $49.99, it’s included with Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, and Xbox Play Anywhere means one purchase covers Xbox and PC. The $69.99 Premium Edition adds skins, a digital artbook and Halo: Hungry Buzzards, a Troy Denning short story that leads into METEORITE. The $199.99 Collector’s Edition, with its 12-inch Master Chief statue, sold out.
Story and missions: Same legend, more soul
The opening cinematic on the Pillar of Autumn, with Keyes and Cortana realizing the Covenant tracked them all the way from Reach, looks unreal. The lighting is already doing so much work. Then the cryo sequence hits, and it’s a great reintroduction. You wake up, run through your calibration and get your energy shields online, and the screen reacts in a way that really sells being inside the suit. Then the Covenant hit the ship and it’s go time. Captain Keyes on the bridge, the Cole Protocol, Cortana loaded into your neural implant. The facial work and lip sync in these cutscenes are excellent.
The story beats are the ones you know, and Halo Studios didn’t rewrite them. What it did was add context. Creative Director Max Szlagor told Xbox Wire “We’re not changing the stories, it’s about refining and adding context.” The best example is The Library. That’s the level everybody loved to hate in 2001 because of its repeating hallways. In Campaign Evolved, 343 Guilty Spark has new lines that guide you through it, there’s new dialogue that fills in the story, and the team reworked the pacing and environmental storytelling. Reviewers also called out the Flood growth that gets heavier as you go and the Halo 3 Tank Form joining the fight (WhatCulture). That’s the fix The Library always needed.
The lineup is the classic run, from The Pillar of Autumn and The Silent Cartographer’s beach landing to the swamp in 343 Guilty Spark where the Flood show up, Two Betrayals, Keyes and the Warthog escape on The Maw. By the time you hit the lifeboat at the end of mission one and watch the ring fill the window, with the monks chanting in your ear, you’re reminded what an amazing opening this has always been.
One of my favorite changes is what Halo Studios did with the Marines. In the original, you’re the Chief, you’re the boss and everybody else kind of stands around looking up at you. Here, the Marines have pride. They want to destroy the ship themselves, get the glory and not let the Spartans take the credit. I love that push and pull. Yes, Chief is a badass, but before Chief and the Spartan program, the Marines were the badasses, and they don’t want to be seen as less. The banter is great, and I’ll get to the voice cast in a minute.
I also love how the story uses the Covenant species’ actual alien names, not the names the UNSC gave them. It’s a small change that makes the world feel more like theirs, and it stuck with me.
Then there’s Operation: METEORITE. Set a year before the main campaign, it sends Chief and Johnson aboard a Covenant research vessel to steal navigation data (Halo Support), up against a new faction, the Sacristan, that Halo Studios calls “dogmatic and extreme.” You fight Brutes, including the new Brute Berserker, you pick up the Spiker, and you even fly a Seraph fighter in space. Award-winning sci-fi author Troy Denning helped develop the story. These bonus missions are phenomenal, and they make running into Johnson at the start of the classic campaign hit harder.
Graphics and presentation: Lit like a dream
The graphics are beautiful. The particle effects are insane. The lighting is fantastic. Combine those particles with bullets that emit their own light, and every firefight looks like a fireworks show you’re standing inside. The intensity is a huge step up. Chief looks so good I kept catching myself staring at him.
There’s real tech behind that. Halo Studios built this on Unreal Engine 5 after years on Halo Infinite’s Slipspace engine, and Halo Studios Art Director Chris Matthews names Nanite, Niagara, Lumen and MegaLights as the tools that let the team hit “a level of richness, scale, and fidelity that simply was not possible before.” Digital Foundry’s pre-release look found it uses hardware ray tracing even in the 60 frames per second mode on Xbox Series X (Pure Xbox).
The material work is highly detailed. Every surface is made of multiple materials that look distinct from each other. Reflections on metallic surfaces accurately show Chief’s animation, so even in first person, Master Chief is fully animated. Cutscenes and the world around you feel like the same game, and the animation work is excellent.
The art direction deserves credit too. Taylor made the team play both the original and Anniversary, decided Anniversary sometimes strayed from 2001, and pushed Campaign Evolved “darker, moodier.” The team restored lost details like the swing arms on the Warthog’s wheels and balanced Cortana’s original purple with the electric blue fans know now. Cortana looks different, but good.
You can change Chief’s armor and weapon skins, and some of them look amazing. You can even play as the original-graphics Master Chief, which is a treat for anyone who was there in 2001. That Classic 2001 Mark V skin came with every pre-order, Silver Anniversary is free the first time you play, and Damascus Prototype, Sandstone Ancient and Recompilation are free codes on Halo Waypoint. Xbox also handed out a free Halo armor code for the 25th anniversary. Just know your custom look doesn’t show up in cutscenes, so the story stays faithful.
Sound and music: Put the headset on
Make sure you’ve got a good headset or surround sound for this one. It sounds phenomenal. The second that music kicks in during the cryo wake up, it hits you right in the chest. Later on, hearing Covenant footsteps around a corner before you see anything is wild. The weapons have been updated in the mix too, especially that plasma pistol.
The soundtrack is a remaster of Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori’s original music, the monks, the strings, the drums, all of it, and the sound design was fully rebuilt (Xbox Wire). Halo Studios even dropped a six-hour extended version of the main menu theme before launch. Six hours. That’s how much they know we love that chant.
The cast came back too. Every line was newly recorded, and the official credits bring back the legends: Steve Downes as Master Chief, Jen Taylor as Cortana and Tim Dadabo as 343 Guilty Spark. Keith Silverstein takes over as Captain Keyes, Keston John is the new Sgt. Major Johnson, and original Marine voices like Mark Dias and Andrew McKaige are back, joined by Aisha Tyler, Ron Livingston and Greg Grunberg as Marine troopers. My favorite credit? Joseph Staten, who directed the original’s cinematics, voices the Classic Grunt. The voice acting is excellent across the board, and it’s a big reason the Marines feel so alive.
Combat and weapons: The plasma pistol glow-up
Fighting your way through the Autumn feels like Halo. I don’t know how you can see it any other way. Every weapon has been upgraded, and they all feel amazing to handle.
The plasma pistol is the biggest upgrade for me. In the original, I used to avoid it like the plague. Now I love how it feels to shoot and how effective it is. Here’s what changed: Halo Support says standard shots deal steady damage, while a charged shot tracks its target, fully strips most energy shields and stuns vehicles to a stop. Charge it, pop an Elite’s shield, swap and finish him. Or charge it and shut down a Ghost before it runs you over. Now it has a job, and it’s great at it.
The arsenal is bigger than 2001’s. Nine weapons join the classics, including the Energy Sword, Battle Rifle, Needle Rifle, Spiker, Beam Rifle and the Forerunner Sentinel Beam. Szlagor pointed out that some of these were used against you in the original, but you couldn’t pick them up. Now you can. The SMG brings a 60-round magazine. The SPNKr locks on to air and ground vehicles. And you can drop a weapon for a co-op buddy anytime, a feature first added in Halo Infinite.
Sprint feels great too. Chief isn’t super fast now, just enough of an increase in speed to feel worth using. If you’re a purist, you can turn it off, and the new Speed Limit Skull disables it too.
Vehicles got love as well. For the first time in this campaign you can hijack enemy rides and drive a Wraith tank, and the Warthog now seats four, so your whole squad fits. The Warthog looks fire, the vehicle physics are as wild as ever and the Marines riding with you have plenty to say about your driving.
And then there’s the Warthog run on The Maw, the most famous drive in shooter history. WhatCulture found it a little less punishing with the updated physics, and a lot of fun.
Enemies and AI: Smart, mean and hilarious
Grunts look amazing. Hunters are strong. I took one out by blasting the exposed part of its knee, and that fight earned my respect.
Normal difficulty is very real. You will die. Higher-level enemies are smart enough to flank you for a better position. Lower-level enemies retreat when they feel they have no chance, or when a higher-level enemy goes down, because they lose their bravery. And when the Grunts do get you, they celebrate and take the credit. I love that.
Halo Studios kept polishing enemy AI right up to release, and it shows. In co-op, the game gets meaner the more players you add. Enemies can get upgraded to higher ranks, avoid grenades more often, target you more efficiently and fall back to recharge their shields (June Q&A). The August update also fixed Jackal hit registration, so shooting through the slot in a Jackal’s shield now staggers them every time (Halo Waypoint).
On top of Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary, new Difficulty Modifiers let each player tune damage, shield recharge and ammo for themselves (Halo Support), which is huge when your squad has mixed skill levels. Just know the tougher achievements won’t pop with modifiers on.
Third person vs. first person: It’s glorious
Here’s where it gets brand new, and this is the part I can’t shake. Campaign Evolved has a Perspective Skull that puts the Chief in third person, and I played the entire campaign that way. Then I went back and replayed a lot of it in first person. It’s glorious.
Seeing the Chief himself move through Halo’s valleys, with the light pouring through the rocks and the Banshees overhead, is something I never thought I’d get to do in this campaign. Zooming works just like first person too, so if your weapon goes full screen when you scope, it still does here. There was a moment standing on a ledge looking out at the ring where I got a little choked up. I never imagined the original Halo looking this good. You can watch the moment I switched over in my RAW IMPRESSIONS video, and I broke down why I stuck with it in this short.
Here’s what you need to know to set it up. Perspective is one of 13 brand-new collectible Skulls, and you have to find it in one of the game’s 13 missions before you can use it. Skulls are switched on before you load into a mission, which is why I couldn’t flip it on mid-mission on the Autumn. Grab it, set it on the mission screen and you’re good. There’s also a separate field of view setting for the third-person camera, from 65 to 120 degrees (Halo Support), so you can pull the camera out and take in more of the world.
I also played a lot of this with the HUD off because I wanted to see the game in all its glory, and honestly, it’s doable. Your aim lives in the center of the screen, so you can still handle everything you need to handle. Content creators also get a Machinima mode with a free camera, no Skull required.
Co-op and extras: Bring the squad
For the first time, you can run this story with up to four players online, with crossplay and shared progress between Xbox and PC, plus two-player split-screen on console. The levels were rebuilt for double the Chiefs: weapon spawns stack with your player count, and on Assault on the Control Room your team can grab Ghosts, Wraiths and a Scorpion so nobody has to walk. Friendly fire is your call. On Xbox, online co-op needs an active Game Pass subscription.
Then there’s the replay value. There are 42 Skulls in all: 26 returning favorites like Black Eye, Mythic, Grunt Birthday Party and IWHBYD, plus 16 new ones (Halo Waypoint). Every Skull moved, so your 2001 muscle memory won’t help. Find any three and you unlock Campaign Remix, which randomizes enemy factions and weapon placements and can throw in Nightvision or a thick Flood spore fog. There are also 13 terminals to hunt down, a new Stowed Reload Skull that brings back the old backpack reload trick, and LASO, Legendary with 17 Skulls on, for anybody who wants to suffer (Halo Support).
And it’s getting bigger. In June, Halo Studios said it had no plans to turn this into a live service. Then on November 12, during the 25th anniversary, Xbox announced that Firefight is coming to Halo: Campaign Evolved as a free update this winter. It’s the four-player wave survival mode on new maps, and Halo Studios will share more at Halo Fest in Seattle on December 12 and 13. It isn’t in the game yet, but a free mode landing months after launch tells you how Halo Studios is treating this one.
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Performance across five platforms
I played on five platforms, and your progress follows you everywhere.
Xbox Series X: You get two modes. Quality targets 30 frames per second and Performance targets 60, both with dynamic resolution that adjusts on the fly (Halo Support). Testing covered by Pure Xbox puts Quality at a 4K output and Performance at 1880p, with lower internal resolutions and a very stable frame rate. Play it in Performance. Halo at 60 is the way.
PC: This is where you can push it. Halo Support’s spec sheet runs from an RTX 2060 Super or RX 6600 for 1080p at 60 on Low, to an RTX 3080 Ti or RX 9070 for 4K at 60 on High, up to an RTX 4080 for Ultra. You need 100 GB on an SSD. You get DLSS, FSR, XeSS and TSR upscaling, frame generation, low-latency modes, eight graphics settings and HDR tuning up to 2,000 nits (optimization guide). Need frames? Drop Global Illumination and Lighting first.
ROG Xbox Ally X: Halo: Campaign Evolved carries the Handheld Optimized rating, the highest there is for Windows handhelds (Halo Waypoint). Halo Support recommends Very Low through Medium settings on handhelds and warns that High or Ultra can cause stability problems. It’s a demanding Unreal Engine 5 game, so lean on upscaling.
Xbox Cloud Gaming: The game supports Xbox Cloud Gaming with Game Pass Ultimate, so you can jump in on almost any screen without a 100 GB install.
GeForce Now: It joined GeForce Now launch week, streaming the Steam, Xbox and PC Game Pass versions. Ultimate members stream it on RTX 5080-class hardware with DLSS, ray tracing and Reflex.
Accessibility is deep too: full remapping, a screen narrator, filters for three types of color blindness, custom subtitles, separate sliders for music and dialogue, and voice chat transcription with text to speech (Halo Support).
What I want next
Playing like this convinced me of something bigger. Halo has such a strong foundation that it could jump into any genre and just work. Halo Studios, if you’re listening, give me a horror Halo, because those dark maintenance hallways on the Autumn are already halfway there.
Give me a Marines game too. Before Chief and the Spartan program, the Marines were the badasses, and Campaign Evolved finally gives them the pride to prove it. I want a pre-Chief Halo game where the Marines take center stage, with the lieutenant from the prequel missions leading the way.
And now that I’ve lived in third person for a full campaign, I want that mode more fully featured. Let me climb the environment. Give me a mantle, so the Chief can climb up ledges instead of falling short of them. I get that there’s a limit to how much they want to change the original’s feel, but Halo Studios already added sprint and made it optional. A clamber that you can switch off would fit right in.
Pros
- Gorgeous Unreal Engine 5 lighting, particle effects and material work, with bullets that emit their own light
- Master Chief looks incredible, and metallic reflections show his full animation even in first person
- Every weapon upgraded, with the plasma pistol as the biggest glow-up, plus nine extra weapons
- Marines with real pride and personality, backed by a stacked voice cast
- A remastered soundtrack and rebuilt sound design that hit you right in the chest
- Smart, mean AI that flanks, retreats and celebrates, even on Normal
- A third-person campaign that feels brand new, and still holds up when you go back to first person
- Four-player crossplay co-op, 42 Skulls, Campaign Remix and three excellent new missions
- Progress follows you across Xbox, PC, Ally X and the cloud
Cons
- No mantle, so you’ll still come up short on some ledges
- The Perspective Skull has to be found and set before a mission, not switched on mid-mission
- Third-person mode should be even more fully featured, including climbing the environment
Verdict
Halo is my favorite franchise. Halo Infinite had taken the crown from the original for me, and Halo: Campaign Evolved took it right back. I played the entire campaign in third person, then went back and replayed a lot of it in first person. It’s glorious.
Halo Studios absolutely crushed this remake. It looks amazing, feels amazing, plays amazing and sounds amazing, and it takes the 2001 classic that started it all and makes it feel brand new in 2026. The Marines have pride, the weapons finally feel the way they should, the Covenant fight smarter and meaner, the music still hits you right in the chest and third person alone is worth the trip back. The misses are small: you’ll still come up short on some ledges, and I want that third-person mode built out even more, with real climbing through the environment. None of that took the shine off this thing, and with a free four-player Firefight update on the way this winter, it’s only getting better.
Coming from a diehard Halo fan who played it on day one in 2001, this should be an 11 out of 10 for me. It’s a 10 out of 10.
Halo: Campaign Evolved is out now on Xbox Series X|S and PC for $49.99, with Xbox Play Anywhere, and it’s included with Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
Played on: Xbox Series X, PC, ROG Xbox Ally X, Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce Now
Hours played: 15+ hours (campaign finished)
Sources
- Xbox Wire, Jun 7, 2026: Halo: Campaign Evolved Launches July 28: date, editions and prices, METEORITE, Troy Denning, Game Pass, Play Anywhere.
- Xbox Wire, Oct 24, 2025: Answering the Big Questions: Unreal Engine 5 on legacy code, Hermann and Szlagor quotes, Library changes, nine weapons, hijacking, Wraith, sprint toggle, remastered music, re-recorded voices, Xbox Cloud Gaming.
- Xbox Wire, Jul 23, 2026: The Brand New Features: four-player scaling, Assault on the Control Room vehicles, relocated Skulls, Campaign Remix.
- Halo Waypoint: Inside the Art of Campaign Evolved: Nanite, Niagara, Lumen, MegaLights, darker tone, Warthog swing arms, Cortana color, Sacristan, menu rebuild.
- Halo Waypoint: Skulls and Campaign Remix: 42 Skulls, 26 returning and 16 new, Perspective, Speed Limit, Stowed Reload, Remix.
- Halo Waypoint: June Community Q&A and July Community Q&A: Perspective unlock, co-op scaling, modifiers, cutscene armor, Mark IV, Collector’s sold out, no live service plans, Machinima mode, weapon drop, friendly fire, handheld ratings, physics.
- Halo Waypoint: August Update: video toggles, Jackal fix, free armor styles.
- Halo Waypoint: Firefight Update Winter 2026
- Halo: Campaign Evolved credits, Halo Waypoint: voice cast and partner studios.
- Halo Support: Player Guide, Weapons and Vehicles, Graphics Modes, PC Specifications, PC Optimization, Accessibility, Difficulty Settings and Modifiers.
- Pure Xbox: Series X vs Ally X (Digital Foundry) and Series X vs Series S.
- TechPowerUp: GeForce Now adds Halo: Campaign Evolved
- NME: six-hour main menu theme
- WhatCulture review: Library Flood growth and Tank Form, Warthog run difficulty.
The verdict
I played the entire campaign in third person. It's glorious.
Pros
- Gorgeous Unreal Engine 5 lighting, particle effects and material work, with bullets that emit their own light
- Master Chief looks incredible, and metallic reflections show his full animation even in first person
- Every weapon upgraded, with the plasma pistol as the biggest glow-up, plus nine extra weapons
- Marines with real pride and personality, backed by a stacked voice cast
- A remastered soundtrack and rebuilt sound design that hit you right in the chest
- Smart, mean AI that flanks, retreats and celebrates, even on Normal
- A third-person campaign that feels brand new, and still holds up when you go back to first person
- Four-player crossplay co-op, 42 Skulls, Campaign Remix and three excellent new missions
- Progress follows you across Xbox, PC, Ally X and the cloud
Cons
- No mantle, so you'll still come up short on some ledges
- The Perspective Skull has to be found and set before a mission, not switched on mid-mission
- Third-person mode should be even more fully featured, including climbing the environment
Platform played: Xbox Series X, PC, ROG Xbox Ally X, Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce Now
