Halo: Campaign Evolved PC Looks Stunning - But Requires Further Optimisation

Halo: Campaign Evolved is an important milestone for developers Halo Studios and fans alike, offering a fully remastered version of the original Halo single-player experience using a new engine, Unreal Engine 5, for a wide range of systems. As John noted in our tech review, this is an impressive reimagining that manages to stay faithful to Bungie's version while providing significant modernisation steps.

We've already covered how the console versions compare, so now it's time to look at the PC version. How does it scale from mainstream to high-end hardware - and what optimised settings provide the best balance of performance and fidelity? Moreover, how does the PC version as a whole compare to the console releases, and what more could be done to improve it?

Let's start with CPU performance, which was a big worry for us going in based on the early previews. Unfortunately, even on capable mainstream hardware like the Zen 3 based AMD Ryzen 5 5600, the game struggles to lock to 60fps in demanding combat scenarios, frequently dipping into the 40s and 50s. That's surprising when the weaker Zen 2 CPU of the Xbox Series X is able to maintain that 60fps target much more consistently. The game also suffers from some traversal stutter that isn't found on console, a common UE5 bugbear that requires further attention in the PC release, though shader compilation stutter is thankfully much rarer.

The in-game settings menu also offers a relatively sparse array of options, with some frustrating omissions for common player tweakables like film grain and chromatic aberration. Thankfully, it is possible to make these changes outside of the game using programs like Ultra+ - which can also swap the default denoiser for Nvidia's more powerful (but less performant) Ray Reconstruction, as we'll get into in a minute.

In terms of graphical settings, there is still room to claw back performance through canny drops to most GPU-intensive effects. Global illumination quality, for example, yields a big eight-percent performance boost when dropped from ultra to high, with minimal visual impact. Similarly, lighting quality is best kept at low for a healthy performance gain, despite its propensity for temporal noise. If you're using DLSS, we'd instead suggest the high setting here instead; TSR users can stay on low as it better keeps boiling artefacts under control.

Reflections offer another good performance improvement opportunity, with the game using a mixture of hardware-accelerated Lumen and screen-space reflections; dropping the reflection quality setting means reflections aren't used on as many rougher surfaces. Dropping from ultra to high yields a 17 percent frame-rate improvement, while medium offers a look similar to Xbox Series X's quality mode while running negligibly faster.

Atmospheric quality, which governs fog, cloud and sky effects, is another easy performance win. Reducing the setting to low recovers performance by seven percent, with very little visual compromise, which is probably why it's used for the Series X version's performance mode. In contrast, geometric quality offers fewer performance gains on PC, and our recommendation is to stick with medium, as the console versions use bespoke configurations that don't always translate directly to PC presets.

For those bothered by the game’s default temporal noise and boiling artefacts, particularly around reflective surfaces, the aforementioned Ultra+ tool provides a powerful fix. By implementing ray reconstruction, players can achieve a significantly cleaner and more stable image. However, this comes with a heavy GPU cost - roughly a 25 per cent performance drop at native 4K - and it requires the reflections setting to be locked to ultra, otherwise the noise levels become unacceptable.

Ultimately, the goal of these adjustments is to provide a smoother, more consistent experience that rivals the console version without sacrificing too much visual fidelity. By applying our optimised settings, which focus on areas offering the best performance-to-visual ratio, players can see a substantial frame rate increase, eg moving from 56fps to 70fps (a 25 percent boost) in one scene on our Ryzen 5 5600 test system at 1440p with TSR set to 70 percent.

In summary, while Halo: Campaign Evolved is a fantastic achievement in terms of game design, the PC version requires further attention to reach its full potential. The presence of CPU bottlenecks, stuttering and questionable image quality out of the box is disappointing, especially given these issues were identified during the preview period. Hopefully, future updates will address these technical shortcomings, ensuring the PC release receives the level of polish that the remake itself so clearly deserves.