Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Thanks to Alienware for sponsoring our PC performance reviews. To learn more about the Alienware AREA-51 Gaming Desktop, check out: aw.gg/digitalfoundry

Halo Campaign Evolved is an exciting, expertly modernised rendition of a truly classic game - and we're generally happy with how it turned out on consoles. PC? It's a little more complicated - there's much to commend this release, but scalability is limited, important options are only available via mods and the CPU overhead is very, very high compared to the smoother results we've seen on less capable console hardware.

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00:00 Introduction
00:51 Sponsored by Alienware
02:26 The Settings Menu + Post-processing
03:07 The First Play Experience
03:25 CPU Performance Issues + Traversal Stutter
04:29 Optimised Settings Intro
04:36 Optimised Settings: Global Illumination Quality
05:06 Optimised Settings: Lighting Quality
06:43 Optimised Settings: Reflections
07:27 Optimised Settings: Atmospheric Quality
07:58 Optimised Settings: Geometric Quality
08:39 Ultra Plus Manager Introduction
09:04 Chromatic Aberration + Film Grain Toggles + The Result
09:18 Enabling Nvidia Ray Reconstruction + The Results
11:28 The Final Optimised Settings + Console-equivalent Settings
11:54 Optimised Settings: Performance Gains
12:17 Halo: Campaign Evolved Summary
14:05 And Now, The Conclusion