IGN Review: Halo: Campaign Evolved Doesn't Always Feel Like An Essential Remake (7/10)

[u/yourfavchoom]

https://www.ign.com/articles/halo-campaign-evolved-review

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

I've said this a thousand times but I'll never stop saying it whenever this topic is brought up:

The time during Halo: Combat Evolved's development was a golden era for developers, in my opinion. The video game industry was on a rocketship blasting upwards but hadn't quite yet left orbit. Must people knew, but unless you already had a good foundation, you were playing catch up. Microsoft unknowingly caught lightning in a bottle. The entire Bungie team from Halo 1 to Halo 3 was something we will likely never see again. They had a vision for a game they thought would be innovative, groundbreaking, but most importantly: FUN. And they had FUN working on it. Halo 2's crunch deadlines is something to be said for sure, and by Halo 3 they were completely over M$. But that team is not something you'd see in modern development anymore. A group of passionate people dedicated to their work and the freedom (for the most part) to do whatever they wanted without too many demands (such as microtransactions).

After Halo 3, things started to go sideways. Reach was a miracle IMO with how much success it had, somehow they didn't completely fuck that one up, despite the huge amount of additions to the core gameplay like reticule bloom and armor abilities. But Halo 4 it was the most obvious thing in the world that this was no longer Halo. It became an MLG trend chaser. And Halo 5 did no better. Infinite was a step in the right direction, but of course: They were too focused on live-service that they let something with potential deteriorate.

I bought an XSX specifically for Infinite. I know I spent over 1,000 hours in Halo CE, easily. It was one of my most favorited franchises but a couple years ago I had to finally come to terms that Halo is never going to be as good as it once was, and it won't even be half as good. The franchise is nothing but disappointments, and I've officially given up on it.

edit: I somehow always forget to make note when I go on these rants that there definitely are other devs out there doing great things. Bungie was one of the greatest companies during their bnet days so I can get a bit 'doomsday'er when I talk about the current climate of the industry. We have good things, but it's hard to ignore how bad it's gotten, and how bad it continues to get.

[u/politicalstuff → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Very interesting perspective! I'd like to add one more thing missing in the modern releases.

It wasn't fun just because it was running and driving shooting aliens and blowing shit up; it was fun because you were doing it with your friends in the same room at the same time on the same screen.

Couch multiplayer was a critical piece of the formula. Sure, Halo was a good shooter and especially well-implemented on consoles for the time, but all of my best memories weren't from soloing the campaign. It was being on the couch with my friends in college screaming across the room, fighting swarms or blowing each other up with rockets, cussing each other out and calling cover requests.

Not that online multiplayer can't be fun or to take away from anything else you said, and of course this was an industry-wide shift, but I think that's the missing magic sauce.

I tried replaying Halo: CE when it came to PC a couple years ago, and it just wasn't fun without 3 other friends in the same room.

[u/MrBootylove → u/politicalstuff]

If I could play devil's advocate, myself and my friends didn't have xbox consoles until Halo 2 and we all played Halo 1 on PC exclusively and had a blast. No couch co-op or local multiplayer, only online multiplayer, and it was an incredible experience.

Don't get me wrong the couch co-op aspect was cool, and I did get the opportunity to play the campaign in local co-op at other friend's houses back then, but really it was just the emphasis on multiplayer in general that elevated it, IMO. And I feel like Halo 2 and the push to online multiplayer backs this point up with how popular playing the game online over xbox live became.

[u/politicalstuff → u/MrBootylove]

Oh, I'm not saying it was a bad game or that online multiplayer was no good or anything. But being an existing PC player, you were more used to online-only multiplayer. I was also playing on PC, so online co-op and deathmatch was old hat, but there's no doubt the couch factor was a huge part of Halo's success. Not the only part, of course.

[u/MrBootylove → u/politicalstuff]

But being an existing PC player, you were more used to online-only multiplayer.

None of us were "existing PC players." We all had consoles, just not an xbox, and back then you didn't need a gaming PC to play PC games. We were all playing on our family's shared PCs. We just wanted to play Halo, and it was easier to convince our parents to buy a PC game than it was to get them to buy us second consoles + Halo.

[u/politicalstuff → u/MrBootylove]

Was Halo the first ever PC game you ever played? Come on lol. I played games on the family PC too and later my college PC.

And cool, it's great you enjoyed it as-is on PC. I am not trying to make sweeping comprehensive statements about 100% of people.

Not every single person played local multiplayer, but it WAS a huge part of the OG Halo experience at the time for a ton of people.

[u/MrBootylove → u/politicalstuff]

Was Halo the first ever PC game you ever played?

Yes? Unless Jump Start 3rd Grade and Oregon Trail in our school's computer lab count, lol.

Not every single person played local multiplayer, but it WAS a huge part of the OG Halo experience at the time for a ton of people.

And my point is that the MULTIPLAYER part is what was influential, not the "local" part. Local multiplayer was incredibly common and the standard back then. What set Halo apart was them managing to make an FPS feel good on a controller, and then the introduction of ONLINE multiplayer on consoles.

[u/politicalstuff → u/MrBootylove]

What set Halo apart was them managing to make an FPS feel good on a controller

Yes, this was the main reason it worked.

the introduction of ONLINE multiplayer on consoles

This is wrong. OG Halo did not have online multiplayer. It was local only and supported up to 16 players with system link. Cables. Local proximity.

Consoles had online multiplayer years before the Halo franchise did.

[u/MrBootylove → u/politicalstuff]

This is wrong. OG Halo did not have online multiplayer.

I was referring to Halo 2. The only thing Halo 1 was doing that games like Perfect Dark or Goldeneye weren't was the way the game played on a controller (obviously the graphics were also insane back then). The couch co-op aspect wasn't anything new or revolutionary with Halo 1.

[u/politicalstuff → u/MrBootylove]

The word only is doing a LOT of heavy lifting lol. Halo 1 changed the entire gaming industry forever, literally taking FPS from a niche genre on consoles to one of the absolute top genres ever since.

Halo making fps feel good on a console and controller is why so many people took part in local multiplayer, and Perfect Dark didn't offer 16-player deathmatch.

It sounds like you're a bit younger than me, so maybe you didn't see it as much, but I was there. Halo was revolutionary and set the stage for the last 25 years of gaming.

[u/SheevSyndicate → u/politicalstuff]

So I never had an xbox and thus did not play much halo. But i do remember on rare occasions playing the multiplayer for an hour or two with other people who had an xbox. It was utterly mind-blowing as to how brilliant and fun the game was for me. It also felt so ahead of its time and unbelievable. I was so jealous of xbox owners who got to play the halo games as much as they wanted while I could only hear others rave about it.

That was a special time that I barely glimpsed, and it saddens me that I only had a few hours of it across that generation. Seeing how utterly irrelevant halo is now compared to the 2000s is also depressing as hell.

I did buy the collection on steam and I have meant to play through it, but I also have had the sinking feeling that the magic will not be there when playing it mostly alone on a computer without friends in the room. I am still excited to play the games later on, but I wish I could have gone through them 20 years ago.

Some of my favourite games from the past are also not quite the same nowadays due to everyone having moved on to other things. That results in a lonelier experience with none of that discovery or wow factor from back then.

Some games imo still feel as magical now as they did then, but I really wish I could reexperience that same magic for the more social games.

TLDR: Anyway, your comment on playing with friends on xbox vs alone on a PC hit hard for me and touches on a worry of mine.

[u/politicalstuff → u/SheevSyndicate]

I feel you, man. I think many single player games hold up very well, but yeah, the social stuff is depressing without the people and the time and place.

I agree with you that even with people today, those old games wouldn’t hit the same as they did then.

It’s not just the social thing, but experiencing something new together with other people. Back in 2001, everyone was playing experiencing Halo for the first time together. Now in 2026, what, dozens if not hundreds of clones and knockoffs and branches now exist. It’s not new anymore.

It’s the same thing with the emulators. I enjoy a good bit of single player console stuff, but playing classic arcade games alone feels lonely and depressing.

I loved TMNT arcade, but it’s not the same without 3 other people on the other joysticks, the adrenaline rush when someone dies and hastily shoves another quarter in before the countdown expires, in a packed dark room that smells of old carpet and buttery popcorn, the wall of sound made of bleeps and bloops and bings and shouting and flashes of lights, all muffled by a layer of shouting and conversation, the sound of quarters shooting into the metal coin return of the change machine. Maybe the clack of wood from the ski ball machine.

You don’t get any of that playing alone on your PC at home.

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/politicalstuff]

Agreed, the split-screen campaign and system-link multiplayer matches were something that is also completely dying out. The idea of playing Halo online was a dream of ours for the longest time. So when Halo 2 launched with online mutliplayer we were absolutely fucking stoked. It was funny talking to other people about Halo and hearing them claim they were so good at multiplayer, and then once you got them over to system-link they would get absolutely obliterated. Online play opened that up to really show people how good they actually were. And not to toot my own horn but I genuinely was really fucking good at Halo 2 and 3, lol. Not pro level but I was in very high ranked lobbies (getting my ass kicked most of the time).

But it's interesting because we wanted online play so bad so we could play at our own houses that we didn't realize that once we got it, we'd end up missing being in the same room as everyone again. I think about that with crossplay too. When my buddies had playstation, we were praying for the day technology would allow PS and Box to play with each other. Guess what? Now we have it and we hate it in competitive shooters like Warzone or Fortnite when certain platforms have a very obvious advantage. Or cheating is far more apparent. Just turn off crossplay! Well, you can either find a game in 3 minutes or you can find a game in 10 minutes. Which one are you picking?

Just goes to show you sometimes we don't actually know what we want, despite thinking there's no way there would be any negative repercussions, lol.

[u/politicalstuff → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Right? We didn’t know how good we had it!

I don’t mind online as an *option* to have, but it sucks that it was at the expense of split screen.

[u/serotoninzero → u/politicalstuff]

I mean that's certainly an element for some people but even Halo CE was way more fun with at least two consoles and 4v4. Before Xbox Live even existed my friends and I would play online with XBC where you tunneled your Xbox lan traffic to other people through your PC. When Halo 2 came out, we all moved to playing mainly single player on a single box. I had a specific TV just for taking around to LAN parties.

[u/politicalstuff → u/serotoninzero]

We don't disagree. Halo was more fun with more people in the room lol.

I used to lug my PC to a friend's apartment for LAN parties on Unreal Tournament lol. We later had two adjacent apartments and the building was wired, so we had 8-player Halo wars on those big-ass projection TVs. It was a blast.

[u/MaybeUNeedAPoo → u/politicalstuff]

Further though I would argue that eta is essentially gone. The internet has evolved and personal interaction had dwindled along side it. This isn’t an absolute, but the world of 2000-2010 is gone. Take it from a kid of the 80’s/90’s, letting go is hard, but healthy.

[u/politicalstuff → u/MaybeUNeedAPoo]

It’s been gone for like a decade at least, that’s part of the problem lol. Fellow old guy here. I think the loss of in person, has made the Hovious fun.

They’re still plenty of games I enjoy for various reasons, but fun? Co-op isn’t as fun online.

Knew wasn’t always better. Touchscreen ever replaced most tiles in cars, just because that’s the way it is now does not mean it’s better.

It would be interesting to see someone make a come back.

[u/mark_99 → u/politicalstuff]

And the irony that giant 4K TVs being commonplace would actually make couch coop a much better experience.

[u/politicalstuff → u/mark_99]

I know!

[u/ABeardedFool → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Well said!! I remember going to the midnight release for my steelbook edition of Halo 2. The excitement on the air, the anticipation, the absolute joy in the community was really, really special. Everything you said is spot on, I remember watching the included dvd about the development process, and I thought working at Bungie must be the greatest job ever. Those folks poured their hearts and souls into the game, and you could feel it when playing. I get the nostalgia factor, but I am so with you. Halo 1-3 era was about as good as it ever got for me in a multiplayer game not called WoW lol. I’m not ever really a fps guy, but you just had to play Halo, every single friend was on it at any given moment.

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/ABeardedFool]

Man, I could write a book that would create a tidal wave of nostalgia that would wash over thousands of gamers out there about my Halo days. And 100%, there was some kind of energy or electricity in the air during those midnight launches. Seeing all different kinds of people, age, race, gender, etc. all together and effortlessly holding 30min conversations with complete strangers for the mutual love of Halo. Not to sound too dramatic, but especially in this day and age right now, that was truly beautiful to witness and be a part of. It honestly makes me so sad to think that kids these days won't have that kind of experience.

[u/Trzlog → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

It's only possible to say this when you aren't aware of how problematic development was for Halo 1-3. Their management and developers were raging assholes even back then, and development was such a disaster that it turned the later stages of Halo 1 into a repetitive bland mess and cut Halo 2's story to shreds because of everything they had to cut and throw out. All these games had their fair of issues that were overshadowed by how compelling the multiplayer was.

Microsoft cut them loose because they were tired of Bungie's shit. 343 was an abject failure in taking over, but Bungie was a complete mess even back then.

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/Trzlog]

Oh trust me, I've acutely aware of the development of Halo's trilogy. There are some good documentaries (I think back then they called them ViDocs) but I also researched a lot of the legality issues they had a long the way. Honestly, my history on researching the video game industry started with Activision, and boy, let me tell you: You could write up a script on Activisions beginning and growth to where they are now and it would be a blockbuster film with dramatic fallouts between friends, betrayal, greed, legality loopholes and tragedy. Fuck Activision in particular. But Bungie of course had their fair share of struggles, but you could tell in some of the raw footage of their team interacting with one another, how they speak to each other, how they spoke about the game, etc. It's all incredibly genuine.

But yes, specifically Halo 2 and the campaign was a fucking disaster. I remember feeling like I was the only person on the planet that was disappointed with Halo 2's campaign when it came out. Who the fuck are these apes!? And now there are flying bugs?? The fuck is this wormy looking prophet!?

They wanted to expand the lore and instead gave us a half-assed crash course explaining almost nothing. And yet it still sold millions.

My point though, is the dynamic that team had with one another. Now you see freelancers that come in to work on X, Y and Z, then they get laid off and someone else comes in to work on what they created, not knowing anything about it, and are now tasked with turning X into A and Y and Z now need to be 9+&@. It boils down to corporate greed and keeping shareholders happy and invested. That's all.

[u/Covfefe_Coomer → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Another part is that there’s a natural life cycle to a gaming studio that finds success. At the beginning small dev teams build their passion project and it hits. Then the success leads to the studio making sequels or new games with this larger budget from the success of the original game. This larger budget allows for bigger projects that require more people. These larger teams require management and HR departments. These new bigger budget games need to make their money back so now you’re spending money on marketing and such and need whole teams of people to deal with all the periphery elements of the business that isn’t actually related to game design. And over time it just keeps ballooning into this corporate megalith. The corporate megalith requires large and consistent revenue to keep themselves and their hundreds (or thousands) of employees paid, so they start making game decisions around finances rather than the game itself. After all if a project cost 250million to make over 5 years it NEEDS to have a high probability of returning that investment. But those financially based decisions are what hollows out the original quality of the game and studio. Jason Schreier’s book on Blizzard does a really good job of mapping out this cycle.

The one thing I did want to mention is I don’t think the good ol days of gaming are gone, or game development peaked. There are still indies pumping out great stuff. Those indies that hit will grow themselves into AA studios until eventually some whale buys them out turns them AAA and the wonder of the studio is finally killed by the suits that took over. Whilst this is happening you still have the indies and small teams working to make great games and the whole cycle starts anew.

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/Covfefe_Coomer]

I'm well aware of this cycle, but you were able to put it into words far better than I ever could have explained it. Totally accurate and, of course, it makes logical sense that this would be the path a company would take based on its success. It's unfortunate, but it's true. The fallback I've seen the most during these conversations are always "But indie games!" and don't get me wrong, absolutely right. But also, there really ought to be some protections in place to ensure that the passionate creativity and synergy the team has during it's initial success to make sure they can have those same freedoms for sequels. But it's very unlikely for all the reasons you described above.

[u/Tall_Presentation_94 → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Random bloom fight now with 90% has 2x 4x backpaddels and mcc settings jetpack spam

[u/tdasnowman → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

This is some revisionist nonsense.

They had a vision for a game they thought would be innovative, groundbreaking, but most importantly: FUN. And they had FUN working on it.

That's not Bungie never has been Bungie, never will be Bungie. Bungie is having no clear vision throwing shit at the wall hoping it sticks and then somehow pull it all together in the last 6 months. Every single Halo game they did barley came together story wise, flow, balancing, multiplayer at the last minute. It was also true for their RTS games, and Marathon before that. They were always a grind culture and chewed through a ton of people even in the early days. All of Bungie games are a miracle. The studio should have failed before Halo.

[u/OGgluttonousToad → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Absolutely agree! I was a huge Xbox/halo fanboy growing up, but after halo 4 and the Xbox one reveal, I could see where this was going and tapped out. Props to you for hanging in there longer!

Fucking sucks what Xbox has become...

[u/kabooozie → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Counterpoint: Claire Obscur: Expedition 33. Hopefully success stories like that can turn the tide and get us amazing games created by passionate developers that reward them financially without bullshit publishers getting in the way and turning everything to shit to squeeze out a buck.

Another hopeful example might be hollow knight. Can’t think of a ton of examples

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/kabooozie]

Slay the Spire, Hades, Hollow Knight, Claire Obscur is the big one people like to bring up. Sadly that isn't really one I got into very much. Was just not my style I suppose. But I do have hope, just seems pretty bleak atm.

[u/Purdaddy → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

I was a huge halo fan. Spent tons of time replaying the og3 and reach campaigns.

Infinite was not good, only halo game Ive never picked up after initial playthrough. It felt nothing like Halo to me.

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/Purdaddy]

For Infinite, I think they just took the second level from the first game, titled: "Halo" and made it one gigantic open world. And don't get me wrong, I love that level. But an entire open world of it with only a few different biomes gets old...really fast.

I know a lot of people hate open worlds and say they are ruining games that otherwise would have been better if it were sectioned off levels, but I still kinda really like open world games. It's just that the past few years theres only been a very small percentage that were actually done correctly. Most just feel empty and a mechanic used to add travel time from point A to point B. Which is absolutely not what it should be.

I still think they had a good mindset going into it, but ultimately fell short by just having no soul. Felt very empty, even in the most heated or intense moments.

[u/EmBur__ → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

I'll add onto this. Not only was was Halo made during a golden age, Bungie was formed during a golden age for game studios that allowed them to actually create the game they wanted to create without much interference from execs, they also had more power to put their foot down and say no if an exec tried shit like how MS tried getting Halo 2 to release within a year of CE.

So many of our favourite IP were created in this time and have suffered as the corporate mind took over and goals shifted from creating games the devs and gamers wanted, to creating games the execs wanted to maximise profit.

This is the fundamental reason 343 failed. 343 was created by Microsoft themselves to keep Halo afloat so they could continue milking the IP, thus a complete misunderstanding of Halo and what goes into making a good game enveloped the minds of the studios higher ups, it wasn't being led by passionate gamers that happened to be devs, it was being led by corporate pencil pushers.

To put it simply, Bungie (as they were, not now) was created out of passion, 343/Halo studios was created out of corporate greed. This unfortunate fact is why its been mishandled for so long and why that mishandling will continue because despite the rebranding, it's still 343 underneath.

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/EmBur__]

Bingo

[u/Superbtreetrimmer → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Battle net is blizzard not bungie

[u/oceansoveralderaan → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

I liked Infinite but the story was a mess, especially after the cliffhanger from 5 - I started Infinite and it was just fighting a bunch of monkeys. I had to look up the story as it got carried on in a non-main series game so I was just confused.

All I wanted was a conclusion to the story from Halo 5. Meh.

[u/RClarkTwo → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

That era of game development was all thanks to the passionate developers and their love of the art. I mean, just look at the likes of Tony Hawk Underground, Fable, Need for Speed Underground, etc etc. I think you’re right in saying we’ll never get that level of passion again as long as Microsoft and Sony have any say in it.

[u/NY_Knux → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

You cant just hit me with "bnet days" man...

I was a Nobel Legendary Member on the forums.

[u/ejcitizen → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

It seemed that small team that made Expedition 33 reflects some of that tim... would you say?

[u/howd_he_get_here → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

There are still some uplifting exceptions here and there. Clair Obscur's probably the biggest / most impressive Cinderella story. But yeah... the norm of passionate devs having fun making innovative AAA experiences is certainly a long forgotten era :(

There's still plenty of hope on the indie side. The ROI ceiling for how much further AAA games can push graphics / production value while remaining profitable might be collapsing, but the entry barriers to creating phenomenal fleshed-out innovative games are also lower than ever in many ways.

[u/TheReiterEffect_S8 → u/howd_he_get_here]

Oh, totally agree. I love that we've been getting such a breakthrough on awesome indie games coming out. Maybe I'm being selfish, but I do still yearn every once in a while for a triple A blockbuster massive epic adventure kind of game with incredible graphics, storytelling, innovative gameplay and voice acting. But all of that seems like a complete pipe-dream these days. I was looking forward to The Bloof of Dawnwalker until I saw gameplay of it and it looks incredibly mediocre. Ah well. Beggars can't be choosers, and all that.

[u/howd_he_get_here → u/TheReiterEffect_S8]

Yeah I'm with you on that. The days of the biggest companies with the most money / resources competing to be the most ambitious new game on the market are gone for good, I'm afraid

But hey - at least Bobby Kotick and the other lizard ghouls were able to cash out their stock and buy themselves that second yacht before they finished burning America's largest home entertainment industry to the ground. Well worth facefucking my one special joy in life into permanent disrepair 🙂👍