When this remake was announced and it being on put on Playstation no less I was like, "you could've just ported the Master Chief Collection instead". A remake like this does sound redundant on paper since the original Halo CE is often cited as an old shooter especially on consoles that still holds up today. With that said, while the existence of this game is rather questionable, playing it in the moment is "fine" at least for the for the first half of the game. It's not as nearly as much of a souless remake as the Metal Gear Solid Delta is. There's some interesting cutscene changes and some fun bonus missions here.
The best way of describing "Campaign Evolved" is that what if you had "Combat Evolved" but with the gamefeel of the 343's Halos and modern additions like sprinting, vehicle jacking and Halo 2's regen health. You also have the quest markers be there at all times rather than having them pop up at random points instead.Story is much of the same but there is newly recorded voice acting and some cutscene changes. For one Miranda Keyes gets established early on as opposed to coming out of nowhere like in Halo 2. There is one hilarious cutscene change of two Hunters getting crushed by a Covenant ship at the end of the Truth and Reconcilation. Fohammer's model is actually shown and a really cool one of Chief fighting off Covenant before boarding the ship to get off Halo at the end of the game among others.
It's much of the same as a whole so it's basically just an excuse plot where it has slightly more going on than games like old Doom and Duke Nukem. It can be summed up like this: Covenant find Pillar of Autumn, Chief and Cortana crashland on Halo, find Captain Keyes, they find 343 Guilty Spark, there's a the flood, Halo is a doomsday weapon meant to kill them, blow up the Autumn and get off. It's as simple as I described similar to the vein as the original Star Wars before being retractively called a New Hope. There's not much in the way of interesting characterization and themeatic richness to be found here. It's as simple as I described it.
It's "fine" in the moment but it can be very simplistic and barebones compared to the multimedia franchise and expanded universe the series ultimately ended up spawning. The fact that much of the story was in a tie in novel would no doubt get scruntized if Halo was a brand new IP released today. World building without needing supplementary material was something even A New Hope had. There's no fun, destable or interesting villain here either.
Halo is an FPS after all and you came here for gameplay and for the first half of the game is quite good. Aspects of the game compared FPS of yester year is how streamlined everything is. No need to collect ammo since you just need to pick up weapons already on the ground or off dead enemies. Health management? No longer needed since your health regens so no need to worry about health pick ups.
Enemies are a lot smarter by comparison to those games where Covenant Elites will flank, move out of the way or will try to come up and ambush you if there shield isn't depleted. There's also the shield and flesh system where bullets drain flesh and plasma drains shields.
Vehicle sections are here too to break up the pace all though it's awkward to see the controls changed here since it now controls like a vehicle in anyother game
The environments are a mixed bag on the positive side, they are a lot bigger compared to the corridors and round circles and squares of shooters prior to this but at the same time so much of the design is copy and pasted which can lead to samey areas and bloated maps. You can tell that the devs of this remake are aware of this so they added nav points at all times now.
Some aspects I appreciate more now like how during the one section with no gun, it's there so the player can get used to controlling the camera. The first level is also meant to train you for the larger maps like Halo and also with higher enemy count and stronger enemies like in Truth and Reconcilation.
Assault on Control room is going through the same triagular areas 3 times and from then on the campaign gets weaker.
The 2nd half of the game is still very weak. If you didn't like the first half the game, then stop at 343 Guilty Spark because after the Library it's just the first half in reverse. You fight the Flood and all they are is that they swarm you and that's it. You point, you shoot, get hit, regen health, reload and then throw grenade every once and a while.
There are people who boil down FPS and shooters to "point and shoot". That's what these Flood sections are. They are very dull. The addition of sprint means that these sections are over faster and you could run past them on lower difficulties. The inconsistent checkpoint system is still very annoying but that is a Halo staple at this point.
I did enjoy the extra campaign missions but they have more environment variety than the 2nd half of the game and there's no Flood battles.
Overall, questionable remake but still fun in the moment for the 1st half.
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