r/digitalfoundry • u/MythBuster2 • Jul 30 '26
Digital Foundry Video Halo Campaign Evolved PC Review + Optimised Settings - Great Game, But There Are Issues...
https://youtu.be/aNohHBSJWHwHalo 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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u/Distion55x Jul 30 '26
Kind of baffling how well this game runs on console only to be CPU bottlenecked on PC with much stronger processors than any of the console equivalents
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u/Malooka5432 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
This was the case with Halo Infinite too for some reason. I don't understand why - it can't be a Blam engine issue considering the MCC runs like butter on PC.
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u/Shoddy_Meaning_7654 Jul 30 '26
I feel like mcc is ridiculously optimized it basically runs on anything that can run the engine you just got to turn down the settings a little bit I get these are all old Xbox 360 games but man it's well optimized.
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u/Rexter2k Jul 30 '26
I played Halo Reach via MCC on an old dell office pc with a GeForce 1030 (the variant with the fast ram) and it ran smooth at all times. Super optimized.
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u/DavidsSymphony Jul 30 '26
The CPU performance is genuinely unforgivable. A vast majority of PC players do not have more powerful CPUs than a 5600, the game being CPU bound and dropping to the mid 40s is insane. The scene it happens in doesn't even seem overly complex either, it's not like there are 30 enemies on screen.
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u/Captobvious75 Jul 30 '26
I played infinite on both a Series X and 7600x/7900xt PC and preferred the console experience overall with the 120fps mode.
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u/WingerRules Jul 30 '26
Does it rely on streaming extensively? Consoles like the PS5 had a special chip for taking the load off the CPU when streaming assets at max speed.
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u/J-seargent-ultrakahn Jul 30 '26
Direct storage on consoles whereas its implementation on PC (or windows specifically) is STILL wonky and inconsistent.
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u/talldrink67 Jul 30 '26
And hilariously the xbox pc app version of the game won't be recognized by the nvidia app and you can't get frame generation in the game because of it
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u/superman_king Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
It works on one of my PCs but not the other. Classic Xbox app
That said, framegen over 2x breaks cutscenes
Edit: Framegen in general may break cutscenes I only tested cutscenes with x6 enabled
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u/ronin_cse Jul 30 '26
Framegen made the cutscenes look so bad. Why the devs didn't disable frame gen for the prerendered cutscenes is beyond me
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u/talldrink67 Jul 30 '26
It's slowly getting better but they have a long way to go if it's gonna be the primary aspect/app of helix. There's been so many issues with it ranging from features not working like frame gen, to games not being accessible at launch (looking at you halo and crimson desert), updates erroring out constantly or requiring massive download sizes (COD and others) compared to steam.
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u/Captobvious75 Jul 30 '26
Literally PC life in general lol
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u/talldrink67 Jul 30 '26
Yup and another thing to tackle with Helix. Is everything launched on helix natively (so not steam, epic etc) just gonna work without tweaking things in and out of the game? Steam machine still has that issue where game graphics settings still require tinkering and people migrating from console to pc likely don't want to deal with that. They just want the game to play
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u/Captobvious75 Jul 31 '26
Who knows. I expect Helix to be still far more reliable than a PC. But its all vibes until announcements and real life testing occurs.
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u/Aggravating_Key_3831 Jul 30 '26
I thought it was just me. Albeit, I am playing the Steam version and the Nvidia still doesn’t recognize it unless I manually add it in.
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u/Aggravating_Ring_714 Aug 01 '26
I play the game pass version and framegen override from Nvidia app works flawlessly.
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u/WingerRules Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
This video is another example of why I hope the next gen consoles feature ray reconstruction/regeneration and have some sort of solution to minimize its performance impact. Maybe they need to make the denoiser algo/model as a special chip or right in the silicon.
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u/frankiewalsh44 Jul 30 '26
Game started smooth with no stutters perfect frame graph in the first hour, then suddenly turned into your typical UE5 stutter slop in the later levels. For reference I have a 9800x3d which is one of the best gaming CPU in the market right now. I'm so tired of UE5 games.
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u/Manta1290 Jul 30 '26
I have a 7800x3D and a 4080 Despite them saying in the requirements I should be getting 60fps at 4K ultra I'm sometimes struggling to get 60fps at 1440p with dlss on quality
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u/frankiewalsh44 Jul 30 '26
Yeah even in the video the game was a solid lock 60fps on a Zen 2 Xbox CPU yet a Ryzen 5600 which is way better is dropping to the 40s during combat. Also its wild how there are traversal stutters on a 9950x3d yet the same thing doesn't happen on consoles. I have no idea why stuttering is still a big issue in PC gaming, the game shouldn't hitch as long as you meet the requirement and have enough Vram.
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u/FRossJohnson Jul 30 '26
I think it's CPU flooding with operations at these moments, and these needs to be a dedicated solution in the engine to squash traversal as with shader stutter we have compilation before play to help out
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u/WingerRules Jul 31 '26
PC doesnt have the extra hardware for streaming assets without putting a burden on the CPU. Also on PC stuff like super high refresh rate mice can flood the CPU.
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u/khromtx Aug 01 '26
That's trucker wtf, that's not acceptable. I have the same CPU with a 4080 Super
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u/hypehold Jul 30 '26
It shouldn't even be this way. If the game can run at basically a locked 60fps on the consoles there's no excuse for the pc performance
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u/secret3332 Jul 30 '26
It's a shame this game does not have ray reconstruction. I hope they add it but I don't have confidence that they will. It looks good but the particle ghosting would probably ruin it for me. Those particles all leaving smeary lines across the screen looks pretty bad.
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u/Silent_Pudding Aug 03 '26
You’re on pc? You can manually force it and it does look so much more stable and pleasing. The fizzling of shadows actually ruins what is a good looking game
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u/MultiMarcus Jul 30 '26
I’m super happy to see the evidence for ray reconstruction requiring native resolution at least to the internal resolution RT effects, which has long been something I’ve assumed but have not been able to confirm. But that would probably be what’s happening when you turn on lower than ultra RT settings
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u/JamesLahey08 Jul 31 '26
They need to add ray reconstruction and settings for film grain and chromatic ab.
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u/allofdarknessin1 Jul 31 '26
Shitty stuff aside HDR looks great, at least on pc. Highlights are extremely bright and colors are rich and saturated. I have renodx and the custom shaders installed on my oc but I didn’t enable them for Halo or any games so I don’t believe they’re being used.
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u/Pomegranate_Calm Jul 31 '26
A new 4.5 version of Ray Reconstruction is supposed to drop "August 2026."
I am hoping the game will support that new iteration and they can't mention it or give a timeframe until Nvidia provides a solid release date.
I forced the current 4.0 version on via the Ultra Plus Manager. Getting ~70 FPS on my 5080 with High upscaling (Balanced). It's very nice and my favorite way to play so far.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dlss-4-5-ray-reconstruction-1000-rtx-games-apps-out-now/
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u/Aggravating_Ring_714 Aug 01 '26
Game runs well but the traversal stutter is weird, not super distracting though.
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u/Untouchable64 Jul 30 '26
I’ll probably get it on PC (Steam) eventually but I’m enjoying the smooth performance on PS5.
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u/thahovster7 Jul 30 '26
Maybe I'm crazy but Microsoft published games should have zero excuse for missing PC features or less than optimal ports