The short version

  • Out now — launched July 28, 2026 on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC via Steam
  • The first Halo game ever released on a PlayStation console
  • Day one on Game Pass (Ultimate and PC Game Pass); otherwise $49.99 standard or $69.99 Premium Edition
  • Full Unreal Engine 5 remake of Combat Evolved’s campaign, developed by Halo Studios
  • Adds three new missions — Operation: Meteorite, a standalone operation set before the original game, playing as the Master Chief alongside Sgt. Johnson
  • 4-player online co-op with crossplay and shared progression; two-player split-screen on console only
  • No competitive multiplayer at all — campaign and co-op only
  • Critics: 84 on OpenCritic, 88% recommending it across roughly 60 reviews. On Metacritic it sits near 81 — the lowest-rated Halo ever, under Halo 3: ODST’s 83 and 16 points below the 2001 original’s 97
  • Steam players: Mostly Positive, 71% of 3,522 reviews at the time of writing
  • Premium Edition owners have had early access since July 23

Halo: Campaign Evolved is out. The Combat Evolved remake landed on July 28 across Xbox Series X|S, PC, and — for the first time in the series’ 25-year history — PlayStation 5. It also arrives carrying an odd distinction: the reviews are good, and they’re still the worst any Halo has ever gotten.

What’s actually new

The core of it is the 2001 campaign rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5 — new visuals, redone cinematics, modernized controls, and a wider selection of weapons, vehicles, and enemies than the original shipped with. Skulls are back as gameplay modifiers.

The Warthog under fire in an ice cavern, one of the remade Combat Evolved environments

The genuinely new content is Operation: Meteorite, three missions set before the events of the original, with the Chief fighting alongside Sgt. Johnson across new environments and against enemies that weren’t in the 2001 game. Co-op scales to four players online with crossplay and shared progression across all three platforms — a real upgrade over the original’s two-player split-screen, which is still here but only on console.

Cortana rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5, one of the remade cinematics

The multiplayer problem

Here’s the thing generating most of the argument: there is no competitive multiplayer. The name is doing honest work — this is Campaign Evolved, and Halo’s PvP, the thing that turned the original into a LAN-party institution, is simply not in the box.

Co-op is a real addition and it does not replace that. Reviewers have been fairly consistent that the package feels incomplete without it, and that the absence caps how long anyone will keep the game installed. PC players have a second complaint stacked on top: split-screen co-op is console-only, so the couch option Halo is famous for doesn’t exist on PC at all.

That’s most of the gap between “this is a good remake” and “this is the definitive version.”

How it reviewed

The numbers are better than the discourse suggests. 84 on OpenCritic with 88% of critics recommending it is a solidly good game, in the top tier of what most releases manage. Platform splits on Metacritic run roughly 86 on Xbox Series X, 80 on PS5, and 77 on PC, with the PC version taking the most criticism.

The Master Chief in a remade cutscene, weapon drawn

The “lowest-rated Halo ever” framing is accurate and also a little unfair — it’s a franchise whose first entry scored a 97, so the bar was never reachable. The more useful comparison is what reviewers actually complained about: the price relative to what’s included, the missing PvP, and PC performance. Steam users land in a similar place at 71% positive.

Why it matters

Two things here are bigger than one remake’s score. The first is that a Halo game is on PlayStation, which would have read as a joke five years ago and is now just Microsoft’s publishing strategy — the same strategy that put Campaign Evolved on Game Pass day one while charging $49.99 everywhere else.

The second is what the remake chose to leave out. Cutting PvP from the game that made Halo’s PvP famous is a statement about what Halo Studios thinks this product is for, and the reviews are the first real read on whether players agree. If your group’s Halo memories are four people on a couch yelling at each other, know going in that half of that is missing.

Sources: Halo: Campaign Evolved on Steam, OpenCritic — Halo: Campaign Evolved reviews are strong, but a series low, Xbox Wire — Halo: Campaign Evolved launches July 28, Halo Support — Co-op in Halo: Campaign Evolved, Screen Rant — Halo: Campaign Evolved multiplayer gets official update