‘Halo: Campaign Evolved’ review: experience Xbox’s first masterpiece anew

As skyscraper-sized warship Pillars Of Autumn pops out of sub-space like a supersonic choc ice, Captain Keyes calls action stations against fanatical enemy alliance The Covenant and our veteran hero Master Chief gets thawed out to take on the hell-hordes of Halo for a third time, you’ve got to be thankful for the endlessly rebootable nature of gaming. Core, franchise-launching classics (Resident Evil, Dark Souls, Tomb Raider and so on) worked for reasons that were most simple and pure in their initial form. Console upgrades continually offer them fresh new life. READ MORE: ‘Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced’ review: a treasure chest of sea-faring adventures Take Halo: Combat Evolved, the first-person sci-fi shooter which put the nascent Xbox on the map back in 2001 with its relentless assaults on gruff, religious alien orcs and their quipping gremlin sidekicks across a ring-shaped wonderweapon world. It has defined the console ever since. This new Campaign Evolved edition is the third version of the game, following a 10-year anniversary upgrade in 2011, and similarly plays to the strengths of its generation. But while the anniversary edition dragged the blocky original graphics ...