Halo: Campaign Evolved

This ain't it, Chief. The campaign devolved.

this is a review based on the base campaign and not the bonus levels. keep in mind that halo CE is my favourite game of all time and I'm pretty precious about specific things from it. I feel pretty conflicted about this game so I'll ramble a bit but there's a TL;DR at the bottom. I'm mainly writing this as not recommended as to signal to halo studios that as a halo fan, there's a lot here that I'm unhappy with, and even though it's a fun game that feels nice to play, even to someone who's basing almost this entire review on comparing it to the original, I would suggest someone new to halo to go play MCC instead. it's cheaper and more authentic as a halo experience. what I like: the game is fun. it feels fun to run around and shoot in. the environments look fantastic and the level redesigns are really good. yes, it's got sprinting and weapon zoom, but I played most of the game like those didn't exist and it played just fine. a lot of the weapon sounds are really good, barring a few here and there, but generally it's a positive. the music is exactly the same, and the new elite dialogue is hilarious and acted amazingly. what I don't like: primarily the voice acting. what the hell happened??? cortana's dialogue is so, so aimless, so much less dynamic than the original, I can't describe it any other way than saying it sounds like marvel movie dialogue. it's still the same actress but the direction is just so bad I'm genuinely confused at how it happened. johnson and keys are recast, and it's the same problem. the pacing of the dialogue in a lot of the cutscenes is completely off with some characters talking immediately after another, and some leaving long gaps between each other. some of the cutscene animations also feel a bit weightless and soem of the shot composition leaves a lot to be desired. it feels like it's trying *so hard* to be cool and epic and high production that it just falls completely flat. it feels like they hardly used the original as reference which is utterly vexxing to me. on top of that, the game holds your hand way too much. the original had a lot of moments where the level design allowed you to come up with alternative strategies or creative solutions to hard encounters, or even to be able to identify not-completely-obvious shortcuts. in this game, cortana makes sure that you know that you could yoink that banshee or that you can hang back while two different enemy types fight each other because she (the developers) doesn't trust you to be able to figure that out. the waypoints all over the levels are *fine* when it's a big open level to give you a basic idea of where you need to be, but when I'm in a small room with only two exits, I think I can figure that out on my own (also I know people say you can turn waypoints off but I genuinely couldn't find the option for it, I thought I did but apparently not). lastly, my keybinds get reset every single time I open the game. just plain annoying. also, I'm playing on a decent, albeit slightly old rig that could definitely use a new SSD while livestreaming, but on medium graphics I got more framedrops than I would've liked. TL;DR - the game is really fun, the presentation is great, the level design is solid, but the cutscenes and new voice acting ruined a lot of it for me. it's also very very hand hold-y. if you want to play halo for the first time, go play the master chief collection and play on the non-anniversary graphics.

I loved the original, I lasted 97 minutes on this one before uninstalling it.

Crashes after completion of every level. I missed out on the ending cutscenes as it crashed while I was getting on the Longsword. Avoid until Halo Studios patches their mess.

This is my first Halo game and I played alongside my friend who has played all of the series. The story isn't the issue I'm having but rather the bugs and lack of quality. For a UE5 game; the performance is a hit or miss, meaning I will crash so often or not, but why can't I see cutscenes when we finish a chapter? The audio plays but my screen is showing only the first frame. Another problem we encountered were the achievements. I am missing the storyline achievements from roughly the midway point to the end of the story. My friend has all of them and we played it together but we also seen that he had XBOX notifications of the same achievement spamming nonstop. All things aside, we enjoyed the game but with all of these annoyances, I was told to just get the MC Collection for $10 and mod it to make it better (and I suggest you do the same as well).

I regret paying full price for this game. If you are interested in buying the game, I'd wait till it goes on sale. The graphics look great but I don't care about 3rd person or sprinting. When you switch from the driver seat of the Warthog to the gunner seat, Master Cheif just teleprots back and forth. Even in Halo 3 in 2007 they had a transition animation. In Assault on the Control Room, some of the doors when they open, they just sink into the wall. Even back in 2001 in Halo CE the doors had a gap in the wall they would go into. Obviously not a whole lot of effort went into making this. They even decided to make Cortana into a dude. If you want to play Halo Combat Evolved with some good graphics, just go play Halo CE Anniversary. Nothing good has come of Halo since Bungie lost the rights.

I'm trying to have fun and the games poor design won't let me. On the mission Keys they have huge battles between the covenant and the flood. If the player is anywhere near the fight they stop fighting each other stand still and shoot at you. There was 3 spec op elites and they shot over or around the flood to shoot me as they where being beaten to death. When I hid they all stopped moving...... don't mind the zombie monster that's standing right next to you. Your aim slows down when you get shot as a side effect of them nerfing sprint that shouldn't be in the game in the first place. Also no H4 Cortana after we asked them for 14 years and in the surveys and all social media platforms even as an optional unlock. The game for me was nearly stutter free which was surprising for a UE5 game, I do have a high end system.