Et Tu, Master Chief: Halo Campaign Evolved Performance Betrays Parent Console

Released in 2001, Halo: Combat Evolved immediately changed the gaming industry forever, raising the bar incredibly high with graphics, gameplay, and storytelling as we had never seen before. The game was so successful, it played a pivotal role in helping establish the XBOX brand.

At that time, Halo became the primary talking point of any XBOX enthusiast looking to prove to PlayStation owners that XBOX was now the superior console, as you couldn't experience the magic of Master Chief without one.

This beloved game's remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved, launched earlier this month, becoming the first Halo game to launch on both XBOX and PlayStation, and while the base consoles on either side perform nearly identically, the PS5 Pro appears to have a distinct advantage.

Halo: Campaign Evolved Performs Best on PS5 Pro

Technology has come a long way in the 25 years since Halo: Combat Evolved was released, and now we get to see this massively influential classic in a brand-new light, with new missions, weapons, enemies, updated cinematics, and high-definition visuals that make the game look better than ever before.

The remake also includes 4-player online co-op, with full crossplay, cross-progression support, and optional gameplay modifiers known as "Skulls" that allow players to add a fresh twist to their experience.

Halo: Campaign Evolved is available now on XBOX Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PS5 Pro, and Windows PC. According to a console comparison from Digital Foundry's Oliver Mackenzie, the PS5 Pro takes the cake for best performance, while XBOX Series X|S and PlayStation 5 are seemingly equal: "The two consoles look more or less identical to each other. Image quality is also very similar, with near-identical patterns of aliasing and image clarity."

For both consoles, players can choose between performance mode, which focuses on keeping your framerate high and your gameplay looking silky smooth, or quality mode, which prioritizes resolution and visual fidelity, but runs at a lower framerate.

Per Mackenzie's console comparison, the PS5 Pro's performance mode appears to be the best all-around choice, "Pro in quality mode does lock a solid 30 FPS, which is what you'd expect given the outcomes on the other platforms. On Pro though, I really do feel like the quality mode is a bit vestigial, as you get virtually all the image quality and visual wins in the performance mode, which also has twice the frame rate."

Even when being overwhelmed by swarms of enemies, Mackenzie explains that PS5 Pro's performance mode was impressively smooth: "I struggled to drive it towards a frame rate dip even in heavy sequences. Small one-off drops do occur here, but I don't expect them to mar the experience for pro users."

The PS5 Pro's solid performance is important to note as there have been reports of aggravating frame rate drops on both the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. Dualshocker's own Ethan Krieger, who played the game on PS5, reported, "Once the bullets and bodies started flying in more intense sections, everything would begin to move as if it were a stop-motion film, with enemies, teammates, vehicles, explosions, and projectiles alike all very noticeably stuttering for a frankly unreasonable amount of time."

Recapturing the Magic of Master Chief

Although Halo: Campaign Evolved suffered from some performance and technical issues, it has undoubtedly tickled the nostalgia bone of many veteran gamers, and given the newer generations a chance to see what all the fuss was about.

In 2001, Halo: Combat Evolved's graphics were raising the bar for the entire industry, but it appears it was just waiting for better techonology to come along, as Oliver Mackenzie explains, "Halo and Unreal Engine just feel like a tight rendering match, as Halo's characteristic metals, plastics, and bright shiny aliens, absolutely love the per-pixel diffuse GI and reflection detail Lumen can provide. Halo's core visual design seems to push RT lighting in some really pleasurable directions in a manner similar to 2023's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora."