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Halo Campaign Evolved is the next project coming out of Halo Studios. It is the ultimate Halo CE campaign remake. What the Ultimate Halo CE campaign remake. Let's [__] go, boys. an ActMan Halo video on Maine. I haven't done one of these since I talked about season two of the Halo TV series. Good god, it is great to be back in much better fashion this time. Welcome home all Halo fans. Today is a glorious day. We have so much to talk about. I am [__] hyped to talk about the CE remake. Not just because I put Halo 1 as like my number two game of all time. Just a few days ago, we had the 10-year anniversary of
Halo 5 and coincidentally the 10-year anniversary of my channel. That game kickstarted my career and what has turned into well the video you're currently watching. I'm sorry if I get a little nostalgic in this video, but it it feels like a lot of things are coming full circle and we are so close to hitting 2 million subscribers. How perfect would that be to hit 2 million off of a new Halo video? If you enjoy what I do here, please consider subscribing. It's one of the best ways to support the channel and it's totally free. It says something about the longevity of this franchise and how [__] amazing it is that the first game is still considered relevant 24 years later. It literally is a masterpiece. It's worthy of a remake.
RE4 is a masterpiece. That's worthy of a remake. Bingo. I am all in favor of giving Combat Evolved the same remake treatment that Dead Space and RE4 got. Why it tastes so good. I think I'll buy this game a second time. Combat Evolved is one of my favorite games of all time. I have beaten it more than any other video game I've ever played. So, I'm very protective of it. I mean, if you came into the bar and you said, "You know what? Halo 1 sucks," I'd choke you out, [__] However, my excitement is
stifled by some pretty big concerns I have. What is that? We are not going full doomer mode, but we also haven't reached Glaze City yet. I have yet to dive into I'll be giving you my thoughts on the good, the bad, and the potentially ugly. But first, this video is sponsored by Mint Mobile. I don't know about you, but I like it when I don't have to worry about my wireless connection. Whether I'm in hardcore gamer mode or I'm just browsing for new ship posts on my phone, nothing is more irritating than having a bad
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to know more, just click that link in the description or pinned comment and sign up for Mint Mobile today. Thank you, Mint Mobile, for sponsoring this video. And now for something completely different. Let's start with the good blood. I love blood in my super cool space alien shooter cuz the aliens are all different colors and when you shoot them, different color goop spills out and it gets splattered all over the place. The CE remake has to be rated M. If it's not for those reasons, I will be out. There is no PG-rated Alien movie and there never should be. Likewise, there should never have been a T-rated Halo game. And it's nice that it looks like we're
getting back on track. Seeing the Covenant bleed all over the place and have blood spraying everywhere from explosions, gunshots, uh it made Combat Evolved incredibly satisfying. And it also had the added benefit of making Halo not feel like plastic action figures battling on your carpet. We're shooting colorful aliens and I want to paint the walls with their blood. Also, look at the blood. I'm so glad that blood is back in the remake. Look at how Look, I painted. Do you guys like my mosaic? The Flood are all about body horror and morphing bodies into grotesque, horrific monstrosities. And you need to be willing to embrace a violence and gore in order to sell that, in order to sell the flood as something that should be feared. Another cool
thing was seeing Fauxhammer on screen. Some used to call her the invisible babe. I know for non-Halo fans, uh, Faux Hammer is like a glid type character, but honestly, like she was very underrated in Combat Evolved. I think the Halo CE remake has a lot of potential to show us parts of the game that we didn't get to see before. Stuff like this is an opportunity to expand on Bungie's original vision of Halo in a way that enhances the experience. Cutscenes and dialogue. As I said, Halo CE I feel like has one of the best stories in video game history. As someone who has more or less memorized the entire script of Combat Evolved and coincidentally remain divergent for 31
consecutive years, I love the idea of adding more script to the story. I love there is a ton of cut CE content that could and they should be restored. Nervy Destroyers made an entire series about it and there are so many incredible encounters Halo Studios could draw inspiration from and or recreate. But this is a very delicate balance because recreating the magic of the original script and its cinematics is not something that can be done just by opening a thesaurus and changing some words around. Jen Taylor's performance as Cortana in the remake feels like she's being directed to be more uppidity sassy with a tinge of overconfidence.
Interesting. I underestimated the Covenant's understanding of Halo's subsystems. Interesting. I underestimated the Covenant's understanding of Halo subsystems. Whereas in the original, you know, she was a strategic AI, a woman in charge who's calling the shots. And so I feel like there's a very specific vibe that she has with Combat Eva. There's no time. Get out of here. Find keys. Stop him before it's too late. If you're not replacing Master Chief and Cortana, you better not replace Sergeant Johnson. Bring David Skully back in here. Otherwise, I will be I will cry
myself to sleep with my copy of Halo Combat Evolved and my needler. And they've also announced they're going to have three brand new prequel missions, a potentially massive W. And one way to achieve that W would be to involve Johnson in the plot a lot more. Johnson's presence in two and three specifically added irreplaceable charm. Please don't shake the light bulb. I think even if the gameplay turns out to be unfaithful to Combat Evolved and worse than it, surely they can't make the story worse, too. I'm about to end this man's whole career. One thing I did also like is that Chief didn't talk at all during gameplay. This is a good sign that they understand uh the role that Master Chief played in the first game, which was he is a husk. He's a big green suit
of armor that you move around. I think the potential is huge with this CE remake and why just leave it as a campaign remake. I mean, leaving out multiplayer would have been like leaving out separate ways or the mercenaries arcade mode in RE4. Are you remaking half of it? Why not all? Can I have a full pizza? No, only half. I want Halo 1. I'm playing Halo 1. You know, unless they announce multiplayer somewhere down the line, this will be a fat L to take. But here's an idea. If you're not going to do multiplayer, you could replace it with other things. There's a Halo 1 mod where you get to play as an elite zealotic commander during the events of the game across Truth and Reconciliation, two betrayals.
You get to kill marines, take part in all these big battles from the Covenant perspective. Oh [__] look, it's Johnson. Look, it's Johnson in this Halo mod. I'm just saying people have been talking about the return of playable elites for a very long time. Campaign DLC, you didn't deliver that with Infinite. I'm just saying another thing I really loved were the cutscenes. Ignoring some of the performance issues, which hopefully can be ironed out, it reminded me of the Halo 2 Anniversary Blur cutscenes, which to this day is the best Halo has ever looked. And that [__] was made back in 2014. Anything that
replicates that style, that look, that feel, I am 100% down for so long as it retains the same vibe and atmosphere of Combat Evolved. I love how this looks and I think they're on the right track, but they're not using the right music here. In fact, I think they overlaid two songs on top of each other. All right, so now we're moving on to the negatives. Part of the reason Halo's art style, music, and atmosphere is so legendary, iconic, memorable. How the series created its identity is because we were given moments in the game to take all of that in. When I watch that gameplay reveal and I see the person playing it sprint through the levels, it almost signals to me like, hey, those
people that worked on the music, those people that worked on the art assets, the level design, the atmosphere, the fully art, uh, none of that [__] matters. None that none of that is worth slowing the game down for the player to take in. which I obviously there's a reason why some former Halo developers are not happy with the direction that the Combat Evolved the remake has gone in because you're essentially sprinting through this part that you are meant to take in and absorb. You're meant to absorb the moment. But by sprinting through it, you're like saying, "Okay, this isn't interesting. The work you did trying to build some kind of tone, emotion, or vibe in this part of the game, that doesn't matter. We want
the players to get through that as fast as possible. Why don't you There you go. I was going to say, why don't you uh speed things up here a little bit? Adding sprint to Halo Combat Evolved is the equivalent of fastforwarding through all of the tension and buildup scenes in a horror movie just to watch all the parts with the alien in it. Oh. Why watch this guy look around for some stupid cat? C. Can I get to the part where the alien's on screen? Cuz that's the best part.
Why don't you uh speed things up here a little bit? Everything before that and in between that doesn't matter. Sprint is the square peg being shoved in the round hole. It's the piece of the puzzle that just doesn't fit because it's from a different [__] puzzle. To quickly summarize, sprint does not need to be in this at all whatsoever. I have literally, as I played it, I saw zero benefit to it. As I watch somebody else play it, I see zero benefit to it. I see only negatives. I think Halo Studios is only adding sprint because it's been 18 years since the last Halo game without sprint and they don't know what else to do.
Some people just really don't want sprint in their Halo experience. So, uh, for those people saying just have a no sprint playlist, good news is that'll also be something you can disable if you want to. Literally impossible. The game is built around it. Removing it means nothing would work. And honestly, it's important for the game to play consistently across all game modes. It feels like sprint is a mechanic that the series has had to consistently make sacrifices and concessions in order to include just because the broader audience would think the game is too slow. Maybe the broader audience is
stupid, but we but people that like Halo 1 have good taste. In Halo, you never put your gun down. Maps were designed with movement and combat built into the same gameplay. Now, in Halo, you have the shooty part and the running around part. You see, they didn't add sprint to Halo. They put Sprint at the forefront of the entire experience. We're forced to build a game around it because it absolutely had to be in the game for some [__] reason. We will make some of the spaces larger. We also want to make sure we're authentic to the encounters themselves. So, it's a balancing act between that difficulty tuning and, you know, making
those encounters um the right size for the right space. It's like if a car company came out with this new car, the car wasn't made for the road it was driving on. It was obstructive. It took up multiple lanes. It was way too big. Just flat out didn't work. Now imagine rather than simply removing the car from the road system that it wasn't built for, they decided to change everything around it just so the new car could work. I just feel like there are so many problems you are going to introduce to the remake unnecessary problems if you keep sprint. making it a toggle is just a half-ass lazy non-committal way to say like, yeah, you can play this game with
or without sprint, but we're not going to really balance or build the game to accommodate either mechanic. So, it just it's a lazy copout. But main thing I want to just reiterate since it's such a loved topic across the community is uh there is an option to disable it if you don't want it. If you don't want it in your game, you don't have to have it. So, uh, it's all about just having choice. That's the problem right there. Again, you didn't just sit there and explain to me my sprint's good. All you did was tell me about how just not quite as bad as it used to be. There was nothing in there that said, "This makes the game inherently better." All I heard was a million things that had to change and be implemented for the sake of one mechanic
that didn't work. So, rather than accept the fact that it didn't work in Halo, they changed Halo. Now Halo isn't Halo anymore. That being said, some people might bring up that RE4 remake ditching the standard tank controls of the original in favor of being able to move and shoot. But the thing is, the enemies in RE4 had their movement buffed to accommodate that. Ironically, the enemies in the Halo CE remake have had their movement completely nerfed into the ground, and we will get to that later. But also, think about the flood. The flood is scary because they are essentially a tsunami of an infection. They're scary because they sprint towards you. They're they're mindless drones attacking every living thing in sight. To be able to
just turn around and sprint and outrun them. It defeats the entire purpose, the entire reason why the flood are such a great enemy to fight in the first game. They don't follow the conventional strategies that the Covenant employ. They are simply zerglings. They rush you. And so adding sprint could also [__] that up. It could [__] up so many other things. Get rid of it. Another thing, the sound effects were pretty bad. The guns did not sound all that great.
All I need to do to illustrate this is compare the sound effects for the Magnum now and what they sounded like in the original. Boom. There you go. I don't need to elaborate on this point. We can move on. Hit markers and bloom. Once again, these modern gaming mechanics seem to be creeping their way into an all-time classic from 2001. Halo established modern mechanics like the two weapon system. It doesn't need to adopt these other modern mechanics that Call of Duty popularized. Stop trying to do this.
This is a campaign remake. We don't need [__] hit markers. I feel like having hit markers is a lazy solution instead of programming visually interesting feedback and reactions from the aliens as you shoot them. When you shoot the elites, their shields don't glow. Their bodies don't glow. Is very weird and jarring. I suppose it's not a big deal if you can disable hit markers, but I'd rather the Covenant flail around glow and spurt blood when I shoot them as opposed to just seeing lines on my screen. Okay, this is actually really funny that I noticed this, but the reticle in this part is highlighted over the invisible elites, which if you don't know kind of nullifies the whole point
of active camo if the user interface reveals them to you. Anyways, the original Halo, your reticle only turn red once you shot them enough and they were revealed. You can literally see the person playing this forget that there's invisible elites in this room because he's sprinting through it, thinking this is a nothing burger worth skipping through. Why don't you uh speed things up here a little bit? And he only realizes there's enemies here because the reticle turns red. So, this is a surprise and encounter that is quite literally ruined on screen in this gameplay reveal. And I'm kind of
flabbergasted that like nobody thought to replay this section or the CE remake also felt like a quarter or a half of an asset flip. This part is very weird. Like I said, I've never had sex before. So, there's a lot of elements in the remake I immediately recognized were not from Halo CE and were pulled from later games. Effectively, a way to modernize a masterpiece in a classic that doesn't need to be modernized. It needs to be remade. Sprinting with a Magnum gave me visions of Halo 5 because I always thought it looked kind of dorky to ju just do like this [__] Like what is he running a marathon? I don't know. I
think it's way more badass for Chief to just be like I don't put my gun down for nothing. I saw what I thought looked like Halo 4 or five grunts. Grunts are supposed to look like this in Combat Evolved, not like this. Please don't reuse these old models. I hope they're placeholders. Don't reuse this [__] That's not Combat Evolved. You're remaking Combat Evolved. The 4Erunner art style also feels more like Halo 4, Halo 5, which I don't necessarily dislike in those games. It's just that this is the first Halo ring we went to, and it should look like it. It shouldn't look like Reququum. Installation 04 needs to appear as though these structures have been untouched by sentient life for thousands of years. There was a sort of liinal
spaces vibe to a lot of the levels. It made you feel like you were really exploring a man-made alien world. Something that tried to appear like it sprung from nature, but was weird and synthetic. The 4Runner structures in the remake look too sharp, polished, and clean. A prime example is this hatch that the pelican flies through at the end of the mission on Silent Cgrapher. Why is it if it's a hatch, why is it designed with this big ass triangle? It just seems completely impractical. Again, I have never had sex before, but I do know my Halo Combat Evolved details like no other [__] out there. A lot of Forerunner structures in the
remake, they look too sharp, too polished, too clean. They haven't been ravaged by the essence of time. What you're exploring on installation 04 are essentially it's an abandoned imitation of a real world. The weather patterns here seem natural, not artificial. I wonder if the ring's environment systems are malfunctioning. Look, I guess the point is that a CE remake needs to look like Combat Evolved and not Halo 4 and 5. I think I just think that goes without saying. The Dead Space remake looked like Dead Space. It didn't look like Dead Space 3. It looked like Dead Space 1. Hit markers also look like they're from Halo 5. The Hunter melee attacks I also recognized from H5.
The AI is broken in the remake as it currently stands. That needs to be fixed. That's that's like one of the biggest issues I witnessed. Uh the elites just stand there waiting for you to shoot them. making gameplay incredibly awkward. Like look at this. Why is this elite fist bumping? Is he trying to kill me or is he at a Metallica concert? I don't know. Why is he doing that? Elites in Combat Evolved didn't do dumb [__] like this. They were trying to kill you, you know? And they would do those like those big They would do those ducks. They would [__] barrel roll to avoid grenades and vehicles. They don't do that in the remake as far as I've seen. The gold zealot looking like it's ripped from Halo Infinite. Again, not a big fan of
that in CE. I hope these are all placeholders for the real models. The physics and chain explosions. Oh, one of the best parts of Combat Evolved is just how [__] goofy the physics and the chain reactions were. Jarvis, roll the clip. No other game has this. This is a massive strength that Combat Evolved had over all of the other Halo games released after it. You got to hone in on the things that make Combat Evolved so special and awesome. You know, these ridiculous chain reactions led to some pretty funny moments where you could launch yourself. I mean, it's the whole reason why the Sputnik Skull exists. It's just fun to blast [__] and watch it get launched 800
meters into the air. We need that now. Vehicles. The Warthog felt too smooth. In CE, the Warthog had a very specific weight to its controls. You would kind of have to plan. You would have to drift properly if you wanted to run over elites and grunts because they were they could dive out of the way. So, when you did line it up, it was satisfying as [__] to splatter elites and enemies with it. like the physics and explosions feeling very generic. The way the wartthog handled in the CE remake I felt was too easy, not enough grit, not enough weight. I'm also realizing a lot of stuff I love about CE now that it's been removed from the remake, at least for now. Again, a lot of these details
are nitpicks, but a thousand blocks stacked on top of each other builds a tower. It's in the little details where Bungie showed just how dedicated they were to their vision, how well they understood it. And if I understand why these elements make Halo CE feel so great to play, then Halo Studios needs to understand that as well. The Warthog sections were ridiculously easy. There was basically no challenge to them. Marines were way too accurate and lethal. And the biggest part, elites did not seem to dodge or jump out of the way from grenades or the Warthog. In CE, I think elites were designed with the perfect amount of agility and bulk. They
could get out of dodge really quick, but they could also stand their ground and they could take cover and they could hide. All of these things that made elites fun and interesting to fight. I really did not feel like were in the remake. It kind of just felt like they were just a chess piece locked in place firing three bullets at you. It felt like they weren't programmed to a avoid or react to the player's actions. I mean, look at this. The Covenant have no ability to avoid the Warthog. Like I was saying with RE4 remake, they buffed the movement of the Gennados. They nerfed the movement of the Covenant here and it with sprint and how well the Warthog
handles it. Totally [__] the gameplay. I mean, check out this doofus. The guy playing this just ran into him and he's not even looking at Chief. I don't know what the hell happened here, but you know, I'm seeing this vehicle jank and once again, it reminds me of a vehicle jank in Halo 5. And right here, you can see how these problems are compounded when the Warthog has such fast acceleration, such precise turning and handling, and the enemies are not programmed to react in time to dodge it. How utterly easy it becomes, especially with the super accurate marine. So, in some of these encounters with the Warthog, all Halo Studios has managed to do is completely trivialize the
challenge in these sections, ignoring the reasons why they were designed the way they were. And I know it sounds like I'm [__] on it a lot, but trust me folks, I do want this Combat Evolved remake to succeed. Talking about level design, again, I could do a whole video talking about level design in CE, but things like removing trees that block the path into the island, so you couldn't bring the warthog in there. That was intentional by the developers. You were not meant to bring the wartthog through there. Removing these trees and allowing the wartthog to be driven up ignores the intended gameplay experience the original team had when developing and creating this section. Yes, again, it's
a small detail, but ignoring this stuff consistently signals in my mind that maybe there's some people in charge of this remake that don't understand why the game was made a certain way, why parts of the level design exist as they do, why enemies had the ability to dodge vehicles and grenades. And if you don't understand what it is you're remaking, should you be remaking it? These are questions that Halo Studios is going to have to answer. These are the tough questions they're going to have to answer. I mean, the blueprint to a successful Halo game has actually been laid out by the developers across multiple Videos and interviews.
[__] there's some on my channel. You can watch those to understand what these guys were thinking when they made one of the greatest video games of all time. And my advice is listen to the experts. Listen to the guys who made this [__] you're remaking. If you don't if you just completely ignore their feedback and their input, then you don't even know what you're remaking and that poses a very huge problem. Don't try to fix what was never broken and expand on what was great. Replicate the success of the Dead Space and RE4 remake. By changing these aspects of the game, you are altering someone else's vision. And it's no wonder why some of
the former Halo developers like Jamie Grymer have had so much to say on Twitter regarding this remake. A lot of things he says I agree with. It makes me appreciate the CE level design even more than I previously had because there's a level of intentionality behind the design choices that I as a gamer and a player never thought about. But that is at its core what made Halo so special. And if there's one video I could point you to illustrate this better than any other, it's this Halo CE campaign commentary with Joe Stton, Jason Jones, and Marty O'Donnell. And in it, they are so critical of each other's work and that elevated their standards.
Little AI walk. Cue the custom animation. Why is there a stone here? He's got a big backpack. What? Why is there a stone there? There's not a stone there anymore. They wanted to impress each other. That was the culture of Bungie. That was the culture of Halo. Everyone working on that game wanted to make something better than what their coworker was working on. And that's the truth of it. That's what made Halo great. It was the people. If you don't understand the intention the people had, you won't understand why it was great.
Another issue I can't believe has been reintroduced into the series is ammo limitations. Plasma pistol in the original, it took five shots to drain 1% of the weapon's battery. Now it takes two shots to drain 1% of the battery. Why? What have you done other than made this weapon less fun to use? Because it runs out of ammo faster. You have only made the game less fun with this decision. Please don't do this. Uh, if you look at this clip, it takes 10% of the plasma rifle battery for the player to kill two grunts on normal difficulty. Please don't do this. Would it help if I said please?
Don't. Why don't don't ruin the game by making the weapons like Halo 4 where you're just constantly [__] throwing them away cuz they only pack like three bullets in them. The CE plasma pistol also did not drain energy when you charge the shot. Why add this? It makes the weapon more annoying to use. And holy [__] look at how fast that battery drains. Please stop. Stop ruining the weapons. The Magnum is supposed to have 132 rounds, not 96. Why are you Why? Huh? The assault rifle has 32 rounds. These are just really weird mistakes to be making. I do not I cannot understand the logic that's behind nerfing the ability to have fun shooting aliens in a game that revolutionized firstperson shooting. Why do you want to
make shooting aliens less fun by having the player run out of ammo more frequently? I've never understood that. In fact, this is such a major reason why I don't replay Halo 4 that much and why the game is simply not that fun is because your weapons run out of ammo after you kill two guys with them. It [__] sucks. And to see this problem reintroduced from 13 years ago is kind of baffling to me. I'll be honest. There's also no health packs. Once again, ignoring the intentional design behind the difficulty. Personally, CE has the perfect legendary difficulty in my opinion, large in part due to the extra buffer you get with that permanent health. You have a recharging shield and health that can
only be refilled uh if you find a health pack. So, it gave you this extra buffer that you could be more reckless, you could survive more shots, you could take more damage, and it made the gameplay much better because of it. This video has gone on long enough. Uh, I had a whole section talking about Halo coming to PlayStation and what that means, but let's jump straight to the conclusion. I know I was rather negative in this video, but like I said, this is a time to give constructive feedback and criticism on one of the greatest video games of all time, a remake of it. It has to live up to that. Otherwise, I'm gonna be a sad panda. In conclusion, there are definitely some warning signs,
some potentially lethal red flags, sprint sound effects. Hate to admit it, the art style, the AI. There's a lot of work to do on this remake in my opinion. Some of the broadstrokes are there and I see the tapestry and all the beauty that could be filled in. I just hope they make it there. And if I'm going to be honest, if the game continues in the direction that it's going, I will be supremely disappointed if it if they are not able to course correct some of these decisions. Ultimately, the original vision of Halo CE and those that created it. That needs to be respected and understood at all costs. Otherwise, all of the dominoes around this thing are
going to topple over and then we'll just be right back to thinking this is 343 Industries not understanding Halo for the fifth time, right? We don't we don't need to go back there. We don't need to be making mistakes and bringing back bad habits that we left in the past. This is supposed to be a fresh start for Halo. You rebranded the studios. Let's treat it like that. This is meant to come out in 2026. That could be a full year from now. Personally, I think they need to take their time, get this one right. I said that about Infinite, but if you need to give this the Sonic the Hedgehog rework treatment in order to get the aesthetics right and to get the feel right, I say do it. I
have very little faith in Microsoft as they manage their Xbox products. But, uh, we will we'll see. Fingers crossed. So, there's room for a bit of healthy skepticism, but also anticipation. And my timelines have been filled with people talking about Halo for better or for worse. But in all honesty, it's nice to see Halo in the spotlight being talked about because that means Halo still matters to people and it still matters to me. I mean, who knows if this YouTube thing would have taken off had it not been for Halo 5. Maybe I'd still be washing dishes. And Halo fans, speak up in the comments down below. Let me know your thoughts on a remake. What's your favorite thing about it? What's your least favorite thing
about it? Did you get a chance to play it at HCS? Did you meet me there? Let me know if you did. And I hope that the next time we see more of the CE remake, it's a lot more positive. All right, everyone. That's all I got for today. This is the ActMan signing out. Peace.
