: It was a rocky start playing it the first day. After nearly 8 hours playing
: the game, It crashed 26 times and the last three crashes caused a system
: reboot each time. I was worried it corrupted Windows somehow but it
: didn't.

: My first complete run through I noticed how quite the various mission were
: from the marines and grunts. There is very little combat dialogue from the
: marines and grunts. I wonder if a large portion of the marine and grunt
: combat dialogue was removed so they wouldn't have to pay the voice actors
: royalties? All of the original combat dialogue should be restored in the
: game because the encounters are too quiet and you lose the immersion and
: sense of combat. The Elites have only a handful of combat dialogue lines
: as well.

: The game plays more of less like the original did. I found all the skulls and
: terminals and completed all difficulties in the first three days, I have
: three achievements left to get and I will probably ignore the LASO
: achievement unless I feel adventurous. The Assault of the Control Room is
: my favorite mission in the original game, but in Campaign Evolved, it's my
: least favorite. I'm not fond of the redesign of the interior areas and it
: seems to be a much smaller map. I noticed when you get to the bottom on
: the snow field that there are far fewer enemies then the original game. I
: do like the redesigned Library mission, but most of Guilty Spark's normal
: dialogue has been cut as well.

: I really don't like the weapons sounds at all, they sound, for lack of a
: better description, rather glassy. Maybe in a future update they should
: add a new skull that restores the original weapons audio and all of the
: original combat dialogue.

: I'm very disappointed with the new Needler. The Needler is my favorite weapon
: in the original game. I would like to see the Needler restored to its
: original characteristics. I left out the Bonus Missions for now until I
: play them on harder difficulties.

: I like playing the new game. It does have some bugs and glitches that I hope
: will be addressed in future updates.

Haven't really noticed the difference in combat dialogue, but I think perhaps the rearrangement of the mission dialogue was overshadowing that (343GS doesn't have most of his normal dialogue cut, as far as I know, it's just a lot of it was shifted into the intro cutscene.)

At least on Xbox it's been stable and haven't run into any technical issues, except for one lock that forced a restart of the mission which I think might have been in CE too, Rockslider might know—the marines had turned hostile to me (I'm guessing they were getting taken out by explosions and blaming me) and so when I got to the final rockslide area, once I cleared out the dropships Echo 419 did not trigger.

I think a lot of it isn't worse, but different... I think the more simplified corridors or AOTCR and 343GS are probably an improvement, as is pruning a little of the repetitive sections, but I also felt like there was more room to be ambitious with those elements rather than just removing them. The Library is very different and I can appreciate the changes, though I wish it had kept at least some of the more cathedral-like, desolate passages because that mood was lost with the new version.

Ultimately I feel like for most casual fans and newbies, this is a solid introduction to the series and feels appropriately modern without throwing the CE goodness out with the bathwater. But while us hardcore fans were always going to be picky, I think there were plenty of unforced errors they could have figured out. Some I'm hoping are going to get patched or balanced (the excessive waypoints, which I was surprised to see even regular critic reviews pointed out as too handholdy) but the more systemic choices are really just going to have to wait and see if it's reflected in the (possible) Halo 2 Campaign Evolved, similarly to how Saber did a much better job the second whack around with H2A.

I think I'm mostly bummed from a fiction standpoint they didn't do more to integrate The Flood. Mobutu doesn't get named despite appearing in the Library, Alpha Base doesn't get mentioned (and what the other Marines were doing would have been more interesting missions than the prequel stuff. You could still have had Johnson, too!) and little touches like giving Zuka Zumamee his shade turret in The Maw would have been really nice.