Game journalists getting filtered by the combat lol
This is what they were crunching for?
The Callisto Protocol is a man drowning. He’s been swept out by the tides deeper than he can swim, and now I feel compelled to go and be the one who drags him back to shore. I’m not looking forward to it as I swim out there. This always ends badly. I know he’ll kick, and flail, and panic, and drag me under with him. But something compels me. I dip beneath the waves, gliding on the current. Every kick is met only with more water, never ground; it’s been a while since either of us has been able to touch bottom. I get to the man. All of the dread that I felt swimming up to him — the growing pit in my stomach warning me that he’d kill us both — fades as I get a hold of him. He’s calm. He doesn’t fight. He wants to be rescued, and he's coherent enough to tell me as much. So much worry on my end, and for nothing. We’re both going home, and my doubts were unfounded. The two of us make our way back to the shallows, and my heart swells. Nobody’s gonna believe this. I get to be the one who brings back the guy that everyone thought couldn't be saved.
We make it from the depths to a point where the ocean reaches our shins, at which point the man panics and submerges my head in about two feet of water until we both die. I knew I should have let the fucker drown.
What we’re looking at here is a bad start that leads into a remarkably strong middle, hitting an impressive stride just in time to trip and break both legs three hours before the finish line. But that middle section is good. It’s really good. It’s so good that I was ready to come in here and lord a massively inflated score over the heads of all of the doubters who didn’t get it. Reality hits hard when it hits, though, and there’s no denying that The Callisto Protocol just runs out at the end. It runs out of ideas, it runs out of money, it runs out of employee morale — it runs dry and it runs empty until the engine shears itself in half.
This is pretty, but a game "being pretty" hasn't impressed me for fifteen years now. Everything since the early-mid 2010s has given me this shrug-your-shoulders feeling of "yeah, I guess it looks good" and spurred little in me beyond that. I know it's a tired truism to trot out — "art direction is more important that graphical fidelity!", as if we don't all know that already — but even games from that era that were trying to look as realistic as the latest titles don't read as being all that different to me today. Honestly, I think the face-scan mocap shit that's everywhere in AAA games these days looks kind of bad; they're all sitting deep in that uncanny valley where everyone's head looks like it's got a video of the actor's face wrapped around it. Even with (perhaps due to an overreliance upon) all of the tech in place, some of these animations look incredibly bad. Here's a shot of Josh Duhamel's character screaming in agony as he gets an implant stuffed in his neck that hurts so bad that he has a heart attack and dies. It's silly. This is not an expression of pain. He's making a YouTube thumbnail face. Fuck, the source of that image is a YouTube thumbnail.
So, yes, this is all very technically impressive, but in practice it's all just bloom and haze and fog and I can't fucking see any of it because someone turned all the lights off. None of this sparks joy. Everything is gray and bland and devoid of life. There's nothing that even remotely scratches at iconic Dead Space setpieces like the Church of Unitology or the cryopod rooms, because the art direction on display is kind of shit. It's a just-so approximation of enough of Dead Space's elements to provoke familiarity, but it's off in a way that betrays the fact that Visceral was a team made up of a lot more people than just Glen Schofield. He isn't Visceral, and this isn't a spiritual successor to Dead Space. It's a spiritual regression.
But as desperately as this wants to stay latched to the teat of Dead Space, it isn't open to those who want the game to be Dead Space. This is a melee-focused system based around dodging, combos, and environment kills; Dead Space is a shooter based around positioning, dismemberment, and, uh, also environment kills. You've gotta meet The Callisto Protocol on its own terms; playing it like Dead Space is a losing position. You should be doing this for everything you consume, by the way. Don't try and cram a work you don't like into a box that doesn't fit it. Play the game that they designed, not the one you wish they'd designed. It took a little readjusting over the course of the entire opening hour of The Callisto Protocol, but I eventually came to understand what it was going for, how it wanted to be played. And I liked it.
Actually, I really liked it.
Combat is simple, but raw enough to be really satisfying once you get the loops figured out. Each fight will take place either as a gauntlet of enemies that pour out one after the other, or as group battles where you'll be caught between three or four monsters at a time. It's a game of dodging, waiting out the combos, finding an opportunity to strike, and then going all-out until you're forced to stop. Weave around a three-hit combo, dole out one of your own that takes the arm off of a monster, get whipped around by another, block his strike, take his legs out, get shoved, pop one with the new space you've been given; it's a wonderful little system that isn't hard to come to grips with, but is punishing enough to mean that eating a bad hit or two will send you back to your last checkpoint. The added complexity comes in the form of your GRP (pronounced as "grip") and your guns, though you'll be rocking with the starting magnum for the vast majority of the game. The GRP can pick up enemies and hazards to toss them around, and your guns are your combo enders. You can also open with gunfire if you've got some distance on the monsters; they've gotta come to you, so you can filter a group down a chokepoint and take one of them out before you're forced to rely on the melee to take you the rest of the way. Combo-ender gunshots can sever limbs, decapitate enemies, force staggers to open up rushdown opportunities, and generally just act as a major force-multiplier to make sure a crowd of monsters is never unmanageable. If you're thinking that this sounds like it's not really a system primed for a horror game, you'd be right. The Callisto Protocol sucks dick at being a horror game. As an action game, though — much like big brother Dead Space — I thought it was great.
Eventually, you'll progress to a point in the narrative where hitting the monsters for long enough will make worms rupture from their body. These worms need to be shot within a fairly tight window of time, or else they'll cause the monster in question to undergo a transformation that makes them bigger, stronger, and faster. You really do not want to let the worms make the monsters evolve. In theory, this is an interesting escalation — you can't afford to drag fights out the way that you could earlier — but as we've seen throughout this write-up, theory is distinct from practice.
In practice, the worms will always erupt from the same place; the generic guys who smack you around will have them erupt from their guts, and the spitters will have them erupt from their heads. These are the primary enemy types that you'll be fighting against for the overwhelming majority of your playthrough, so combat encounters go from frenetic punch-ups where you're desperately trying to make the right call to something that's solved by a flowchart: three or four hits always followed by a gut shot or a head shot, rinse and repeat. There's basically no reason to ever open up by firing your gun now that enemies can heal by evolving, which leaves you the options to fling the enemies with your gravity glove and hurt them a little bit, or to swing at them with the baton. The baton expends no resources, is fast, is always guaranteed to connect, is a safe option, and will open up enemies for the instakill gut/head shot in no time at all. So many tools, and no reason to use any of them besides the fucking stick. Everything was useful only two hours prior, so being boxed in to what's obviously an optimal strategy to repeat on every single monster serves only to squander a system that was working just fine before.
Where things really fall apart, however, is in the third act. Jacob, our protagonist, falls down a gutter or some shit into an underground area where all of the enemies are blind. They've got super-hearing, but they can't see. Firing a shot or swinging at one with your baton may as well spare you the ceremony of kicking off a fight and just reload your checkpoint the second you press the button; you'll get swarmed by too many monsters to deal with, and they'll chew through every resource you have before they kill you. What you have to do instead is pull a page from Joel Thelastofus's book and crouch-walk around while shivving these clicker expys to death. Unlike in The Last of Us, however, the shiv that you get has infinite uses, meaning that you can very easily just crouch-walk around and kill everything without alerting a single enemy. This is optimal. They don't hear you shivving them, even as Jacob grunts and growls and the monsters gurgle and shriek, and there's no reason to sneak past them; they still drop ammo and money and health packs just the same as everything else. If you could just blast your way through this section, it'd be over in thirty minutes; instead, you have to play the most boring stealth section ever devised by human hands and it takes upwards of two and a half hours.
You get back to the regular action combat in time for the game to end, but the damage is more than done at that point. You fight the exact same boss four times in the span of an hour, and his pattern is literally just doing right-hand swings. You hold left on the control stick and auto-dodge everything while shooting him once per dodge. It's so boring. I knew while I was going through the ridiculously long stealth segment that they were padding for time, but repeating the same boss fight four fucking times really gives it away to anyone who wasn't paying attention that they were running on empty. I went from itching for more in the middle act to wishing it would just hurry up and end by the start of the finale.
Jacob gets to the escape pods, meets a zombie warden who's managed to keep his personality (generic asshole), and then the zombie warden does the Resident Evil boss thing where he talks about having superior genetics and then turns into a big meat monster with glowing orange eyeball weakpoints. I'll take the opportunity now to point out that this game was written by two people. The lead writer has never worked on anything else in his entire life. There were five times as many employees dedicated to the face scanning as there were on the writing team. Remember that the facescanning looks like shit, so adjust your expectations for the quality of the writing accordingly. Whatever. Nobody was ever playing this for the story. It's still a weird choice for a game like this, though; with everything being told to you through audio logs and exposition from characters who have a clue what's going on, you'd think you'd want more hands on deck. Then again, the only thing anyone ever seems to say is "Jacob, go to [the place], I'll explain later", so you probably don't need to put too much effort into putting that together.
But my mind keeps wandering back to the thought that the people at Striking Distance were working twelve hour days, seven days a week — and for what? What about The Callisto Protocol demanded such brutal hours for such a long stretch of development? I can't find anything in the time leading up to the game's release that would indicate what was sucking up so many resources; all I've come up with are some vague gestures towards "new lighting techniques" and "haptic feedback", all incidentals that barely add much of anything to a work that's remarkably standard. This cost $160 million to Dead Space 2's 60 million and it looks and plays worse.
There’s an excellent game within The Callisto Protocol, and one that I imagine would have been able to flourish if made under the banner of someone who actually had a clue. Literally all it takes to turn this from mediocre to great is a better manager. Talented people were overworked and underpaid to make something that broadly isn’t good, but shines in parts; had they been treated properly and overseen by a real leader instead of an MBA meathead who stepped down the second shit got hot, they would have made something that could actually eat Dead Space’s lunch. Instead, we got this, and it’s begging for Dead Space’s scraps.
Glen Schofield can go fuck himself.
The Callisto Protocol is a man drowning. He’s been swept out by the tides deeper than he can swim, and now I feel compelled to go and be the one who drags him back to shore. I’m not looking forward to it as I swim out there. This always ends badly. I know he’ll kick, and flail, and panic, and drag me under with him. But something compels me. I dip beneath the waves, gliding on the current. Every kick is met only with more water, never ground; it’s been a while since either of us has been able to touch bottom. I get to the man. All of the dread that I felt swimming up to him — the growing pit in my stomach warning me that he’d kill us both — fades as I get a hold of him. He’s calm. He doesn’t fight. He wants to be rescued, and he's coherent enough to tell me as much. So much worry on my end, and for nothing. We’re both going home, and my doubts were unfounded. The two of us make our way back to the shallows, and my heart swells. Nobody’s gonna believe this. I get to be the one who brings back the guy that everyone thought couldn't be saved.
We make it from the depths to a point where the ocean reaches our shins, at which point the man panics and submerges my head in about two feet of water until we both die. I knew I should have let the fucker drown.
What we’re looking at here is a bad start that leads into a remarkably strong middle, hitting an impressive stride just in time to trip and break both legs three hours before the finish line. But that middle section is good. It’s really good. It’s so good that I was ready to come in here and lord a massively inflated score over the heads of all of the doubters who didn’t get it. Reality hits hard when it hits, though, and there’s no denying that The Callisto Protocol just runs out at the end. It runs out of ideas, it runs out of money, it runs out of employee morale — it runs dry and it runs empty until the engine shears itself in half.
This is pretty, but a game "being pretty" hasn't impressed me for fifteen years now. Everything since the early-mid 2010s has given me this shrug-your-shoulders feeling of "yeah, I guess it looks good" and spurred little in me beyond that. I know it's a tired truism to trot out — "art direction is more important that graphical fidelity!", as if we don't all know that already — but even games from that era that were trying to look as realistic as the latest titles don't read as being all that different to me today. Honestly, I think the face-scan mocap shit that's everywhere in AAA games these days looks kind of bad; they're all sitting deep in that uncanny valley where everyone's head looks like it's got a video of the actor's face wrapped around it. Even with (perhaps due to an overreliance upon) all of the tech in place, some of these animations look incredibly bad. Here's a shot of Josh Duhamel's character screaming in agony as he gets an implant stuffed in his neck that hurts so bad that he has a heart attack and dies. It's silly. This is not an expression of pain. He's making a YouTube thumbnail face. Fuck, the source of that image is a YouTube thumbnail.
So, yes, this is all very technically impressive, but in practice it's all just bloom and haze and fog and I can't fucking see any of it because someone turned all the lights off. None of this sparks joy. Everything is gray and bland and devoid of life. There's nothing that even remotely scratches at iconic Dead Space setpieces like the Church of Unitology or the cryopod rooms, because the art direction on display is kind of shit. It's a just-so approximation of enough of Dead Space's elements to provoke familiarity, but it's off in a way that betrays the fact that Visceral was a team made up of a lot more people than just Glen Schofield. He isn't Visceral, and this isn't a spiritual successor to Dead Space. It's a spiritual regression.
But as desperately as this wants to stay latched to the teat of Dead Space, it isn't open to those who want the game to be Dead Space. This is a melee-focused system based around dodging, combos, and environment kills; Dead Space is a shooter based around positioning, dismemberment, and, uh, also environment kills. You've gotta meet The Callisto Protocol on its own terms; playing it like Dead Space is a losing position. You should be doing this for everything you consume, by the way. Don't try and cram a work you don't like into a box that doesn't fit it. Play the game that they designed, not the one you wish they'd designed. It took a little readjusting over the course of the entire opening hour of The Callisto Protocol, but I eventually came to understand what it was going for, how it wanted to be played. And I liked it.
Actually, I really liked it.
Combat is simple, but raw enough to be really satisfying once you get the loops figured out. Each fight will take place either as a gauntlet of enemies that pour out one after the other, or as group battles where you'll be caught between three or four monsters at a time. It's a game of dodging, waiting out the combos, finding an opportunity to strike, and then going all-out until you're forced to stop. Weave around a three-hit combo, dole out one of your own that takes the arm off of a monster, get whipped around by another, block his strike, take his legs out, get shoved, pop one with the new space you've been given; it's a wonderful little system that isn't hard to come to grips with, but is punishing enough to mean that eating a bad hit or two will send you back to your last checkpoint. The added complexity comes in the form of your GRP (pronounced as "grip") and your guns, though you'll be rocking with the starting magnum for the vast majority of the game. The GRP can pick up enemies and hazards to toss them around, and your guns are your combo enders. You can also open with gunfire if you've got some distance on the monsters; they've gotta come to you, so you can filter a group down a chokepoint and take one of them out before you're forced to rely on the melee to take you the rest of the way. Combo-ender gunshots can sever limbs, decapitate enemies, force staggers to open up rushdown opportunities, and generally just act as a major force-multiplier to make sure a crowd of monsters is never unmanageable. If you're thinking that this sounds like it's not really a system primed for a horror game, you'd be right. The Callisto Protocol sucks dick at being a horror game. As an action game, though — much like big brother Dead Space — I thought it was great.
Eventually, you'll progress to a point in the narrative where hitting the monsters for long enough will make worms rupture from their body. These worms need to be shot within a fairly tight window of time, or else they'll cause the monster in question to undergo a transformation that makes them bigger, stronger, and faster. You really do not want to let the worms make the monsters evolve. In theory, this is an interesting escalation — you can't afford to drag fights out the way that you could earlier — but as we've seen throughout this write-up, theory is distinct from practice.
In practice, the worms will always erupt from the same place; the generic guys who smack you around will have them erupt from their guts, and the spitters will have them erupt from their heads. These are the primary enemy types that you'll be fighting against for the overwhelming majority of your playthrough, so combat encounters go from frenetic punch-ups where you're desperately trying to make the right call to something that's solved by a flowchart: three or four hits always followed by a gut shot or a head shot, rinse and repeat. There's basically no reason to ever open up by firing your gun now that enemies can heal by evolving, which leaves you the options to fling the enemies with your gravity glove and hurt them a little bit, or to swing at them with the baton. The baton expends no resources, is fast, is always guaranteed to connect, is a safe option, and will open up enemies for the instakill gut/head shot in no time at all. So many tools, and no reason to use any of them besides the fucking stick. Everything was useful only two hours prior, so being boxed in to what's obviously an optimal strategy to repeat on every single monster serves only to squander a system that was working just fine before.
Where things really fall apart, however, is in the third act. Jacob, our protagonist, falls down a gutter or some shit into an underground area where all of the enemies are blind. They've got super-hearing, but they can't see. Firing a shot or swinging at one with your baton may as well spare you the ceremony of kicking off a fight and just reload your checkpoint the second you press the button; you'll get swarmed by too many monsters to deal with, and they'll chew through every resource you have before they kill you. What you have to do instead is pull a page from Joel Thelastofus's book and crouch-walk around while shivving these clicker expys to death. Unlike in The Last of Us, however, the shiv that you get has infinite uses, meaning that you can very easily just crouch-walk around and kill everything without alerting a single enemy. This is optimal. They don't hear you shivving them, even as Jacob grunts and growls and the monsters gurgle and shriek, and there's no reason to sneak past them; they still drop ammo and money and health packs just the same as everything else. If you could just blast your way through this section, it'd be over in thirty minutes; instead, you have to play the most boring stealth section ever devised by human hands and it takes upwards of two and a half hours.
You get back to the regular action combat in time for the game to end, but the damage is more than done at that point. You fight the exact same boss four times in the span of an hour, and his pattern is literally just doing right-hand swings. You hold left on the control stick and auto-dodge everything while shooting him once per dodge. It's so boring. I knew while I was going through the ridiculously long stealth segment that they were padding for time, but repeating the same boss fight four fucking times really gives it away to anyone who wasn't paying attention that they were running on empty. I went from itching for more in the middle act to wishing it would just hurry up and end by the start of the finale.
Jacob gets to the escape pods, meets a zombie warden who's managed to keep his personality (generic asshole), and then the zombie warden does the Resident Evil boss thing where he talks about having superior genetics and then turns into a big meat monster with glowing orange eyeball weakpoints. I'll take the opportunity now to point out that this game was written by two people. The lead writer has never worked on anything else in his entire life. There were five times as many employees dedicated to the face scanning as there were on the writing team. Remember that the facescanning looks like shit, so adjust your expectations for the quality of the writing accordingly. Whatever. Nobody was ever playing this for the story. It's still a weird choice for a game like this, though; with everything being told to you through audio logs and exposition from characters who have a clue what's going on, you'd think you'd want more hands on deck. Then again, the only thing anyone ever seems to say is "Jacob, go to [the place], I'll explain later", so you probably don't need to put too much effort into putting that together.
But my mind keeps wandering back to the thought that the people at Striking Distance were working twelve hour days, seven days a week — and for what? What about The Callisto Protocol demanded such brutal hours for such a long stretch of development? I can't find anything in the time leading up to the game's release that would indicate what was sucking up so many resources; all I've come up with are some vague gestures towards "new lighting techniques" and "haptic feedback", all incidentals that barely add much of anything to a work that's remarkably standard. This cost $160 million to Dead Space 2's 60 million and it looks and plays worse.
There’s an excellent game within The Callisto Protocol, and one that I imagine would have been able to flourish if made under the banner of someone who actually had a clue. Literally all it takes to turn this from mediocre to great is a better manager. Talented people were overworked and underpaid to make something that broadly isn’t good, but shines in parts; had they been treated properly and overseen by a real leader instead of an MBA meathead who stepped down the second shit got hot, they would have made something that could actually eat Dead Space’s lunch. Instead, we got this, and it’s begging for Dead Space’s scraps.
Glen Schofield can go fuck himself.
Oh my god this is one of the most dreadful experiences I've had in a while.
Callisto Protocol is practically 1/4th of a game. The visuals and music are stunning but it's hard to appreciate the few sequences that this game does well when it's in a technical state that makes Pokemon Scarlet and Violet piss itself.
But at least those games are genuinely good underneath. There is just absolutely nothing here.
The story leaves practically no impact as the characters do not have any sort of personality or stage presence that makes it work. The game also lacks any sort of themes to make its horror setting interesting, so it begs to ask what the point of exploring is.
Sorry, did I say explore? Oh yeah. You can't do that. The game is ultra linear, like, even by linear game standards. There are also no puzzles and VERY FEW bosses in the game.
Even more terminally is the fact that the combat in this game does not function like it should. Every fight is a borderline turn-based qte where you have to dodge all of the opponents attacks before hitting on your own. This results in the final boss and predicating mini bosses to be some of the most frustrating bosses I've played in a while. It's so fucking bad.
Between the shoddy performance, on-rails level design, disfunctional combat, and practically nonexistant story, this game somehow manages to both make me feel nothing and intense frustration and disappointment at the same time. I have no clue how you managed to do that, but here you are Callisto.
Callisto Protocol is practically 1/4th of a game. The visuals and music are stunning but it's hard to appreciate the few sequences that this game does well when it's in a technical state that makes Pokemon Scarlet and Violet piss itself.
But at least those games are genuinely good underneath. There is just absolutely nothing here.
The story leaves practically no impact as the characters do not have any sort of personality or stage presence that makes it work. The game also lacks any sort of themes to make its horror setting interesting, so it begs to ask what the point of exploring is.
Sorry, did I say explore? Oh yeah. You can't do that. The game is ultra linear, like, even by linear game standards. There are also no puzzles and VERY FEW bosses in the game.
Even more terminally is the fact that the combat in this game does not function like it should. Every fight is a borderline turn-based qte where you have to dodge all of the opponents attacks before hitting on your own. This results in the final boss and predicating mini bosses to be some of the most frustrating bosses I've played in a while. It's so fucking bad.
Between the shoddy performance, on-rails level design, disfunctional combat, and practically nonexistant story, this game somehow manages to both make me feel nothing and intense frustration and disappointment at the same time. I have no clue how you managed to do that, but here you are Callisto.
Many great games suffer from starting strong and sagging off towards the end. The Callisto Protocol, for better or worse, goes the opposite way, with an opening that is lacklustre to the point of off putting.
I quite like the notion of starting heavy on the melee but the combat is admittedly a little clunky, with the compulsory dodge mechanic not always entirely working. The main characters have rushed introductions and don’t feel particularly interesting.
It’s only when you simply spend time with your character Isaac, I mean Jacob, that you form some empathy; perhaps it’s just some kind of Stockholm syndrome. The game seems to become more favourable when it gives in to being the Dead Space spiritual successor it was hyped to be, as combat becomes infused with the all too familiar telekinesis and super-guns.
Despite some delightfully gooey new monsters, albeit not as inspired as DS’s Necromorphs, this is an action game for the most part. There are some big set-pieces, but for the most part you wander into each dingy part of the map and just fight monsters. The puzzles that are sort-of there in Dead Space are barely present here, limited merely to taking a fuse from one locked door to another one down the hall.
Whilst the game seems to struggle with an identity of its own, fans of its influences will get some fun out of demolishing the icky foes, particularly in the second half when your arsenal is upped significantly. Despite some hiccups with framerate and performance in early installs, now patched I believe, it’s also one of the most beautiful looking games on the new consoles, with nice dynamic lighting and mist-effects. I certainly look forward to these next-gen graphics being put to use in more psychological horror adventures to come.
I quite like the notion of starting heavy on the melee but the combat is admittedly a little clunky, with the compulsory dodge mechanic not always entirely working. The main characters have rushed introductions and don’t feel particularly interesting.
It’s only when you simply spend time with your character Isaac, I mean Jacob, that you form some empathy; perhaps it’s just some kind of Stockholm syndrome. The game seems to become more favourable when it gives in to being the Dead Space spiritual successor it was hyped to be, as combat becomes infused with the all too familiar telekinesis and super-guns.
Despite some delightfully gooey new monsters, albeit not as inspired as DS’s Necromorphs, this is an action game for the most part. There are some big set-pieces, but for the most part you wander into each dingy part of the map and just fight monsters. The puzzles that are sort-of there in Dead Space are barely present here, limited merely to taking a fuse from one locked door to another one down the hall.
Whilst the game seems to struggle with an identity of its own, fans of its influences will get some fun out of demolishing the icky foes, particularly in the second half when your arsenal is upped significantly. Despite some hiccups with framerate and performance in early installs, now patched I believe, it’s also one of the most beautiful looking games on the new consoles, with nice dynamic lighting and mist-effects. I certainly look forward to these next-gen graphics being put to use in more psychological horror adventures to come.
The Callisto Protocol is the most atmospheric game this year and the sounddesign is something else. Especially with Playstation's Pulse 3D Headset. This game is really immersive with a good headset. So I highly recommend to use one. There are so many different environmental sounds like biophage crawling through the vents, security units patroling the corridors. I was so damn paranoid and on the edge the whole time. You never know where the next danger lurks.
What was that noise that I just heard? Was that a biophage who could jump out of the vent right next to me at any second, maybe just a noise from facility or my imagination after all? I like the variety of the environments/levels. The visuals are also really great and the game looks absolutely stunning. The combat is okay I guess, at the beginning it's a little bit repetetive but when you get a few weapons it gets better. But it gets really difficult when you encouter more than two enemies. The Callisto Protocol does not invent much new, but it doesnt have to. It takes established pieces of game design, puts its own spin on things and creates a really great game out of it. The story is interesting enough to keep me interested and the characters Jacob Lee and Dani Nakamura are well written. Voice acting and the motion capturing are both really great and the performance by Karen Fukuhara in particular stood out to me. She cute and is such a talent actress. She was the only positive thing in Suicide Squad (2016), is one of my favorite characters of The Boys and now probably my favorite character in this game.
The only things I noticed negatively are the amount of times you have to crawl through vents or shimmy through a gap, it's insane how often you have to do that. The bosses, you encounter one boss I think 4 times without a change so it's the same bossfight over and over again. The other one 2 times. The second time it has a second form. But both of them look really basic. The creature design in general isn't really special.
The other thing is the save mechanic, it's the worst save mechanic which I have ever encountered in a video game and it's one of the biggest lies in the history of video games. All the way up there along side Todd Howard saying "sixteen times the detail". It only saves at checkpoints even when you save manually. So if you level up your weapons before a bossfight and then get your ass kicked you have to level up everything again. This wouldn't be a big problem normally but there are a few really tough sections and it gets really annoying after a while.
The performance is great and I never had any problems on my PS5.
Overall there are a few flaws but they are not a really big problem and it's all in all a great game. I would also call it an action game and not a horror game. I'm excited for the story DLC because of the Cliffhanger and I'm hoping for a sequel because I can see the potential.
What was that noise that I just heard? Was that a biophage who could jump out of the vent right next to me at any second, maybe just a noise from facility or my imagination after all? I like the variety of the environments/levels. The visuals are also really great and the game looks absolutely stunning. The combat is okay I guess, at the beginning it's a little bit repetetive but when you get a few weapons it gets better. But it gets really difficult when you encouter more than two enemies. The Callisto Protocol does not invent much new, but it doesnt have to. It takes established pieces of game design, puts its own spin on things and creates a really great game out of it. The story is interesting enough to keep me interested and the characters Jacob Lee and Dani Nakamura are well written. Voice acting and the motion capturing are both really great and the performance by Karen Fukuhara in particular stood out to me. She cute and is such a talent actress. She was the only positive thing in Suicide Squad (2016), is one of my favorite characters of The Boys and now probably my favorite character in this game.
The only things I noticed negatively are the amount of times you have to crawl through vents or shimmy through a gap, it's insane how often you have to do that. The bosses, you encounter one boss I think 4 times without a change so it's the same bossfight over and over again. The other one 2 times. The second time it has a second form. But both of them look really basic. The creature design in general isn't really special.
The other thing is the save mechanic, it's the worst save mechanic which I have ever encountered in a video game and it's one of the biggest lies in the history of video games. All the way up there along side Todd Howard saying "sixteen times the detail". It only saves at checkpoints even when you save manually. So if you level up your weapons before a bossfight and then get your ass kicked you have to level up everything again. This wouldn't be a big problem normally but there are a few really tough sections and it gets really annoying after a while.
The performance is great and I never had any problems on my PS5.
Overall there are a few flaws but they are not a really big problem and it's all in all a great game. I would also call it an action game and not a horror game. I'm excited for the story DLC because of the Cliffhanger and I'm hoping for a sequel because I can see the potential.
The Callisto Protocol: A video game designed to teach people the concept of “hurry up and wait”. It's very flashy with excellent textures and lighting effects, but it's a hollow and boring game experience barely worth it even while heavily discounted.
You're Jacob, a cargo transporter and maybe smuggler. You and your pal are hijacked by terrorists, so you give them a fat middle finger and crash your ship back on Callisto, a prison planet. Only you and Dani, the hijacking ringleader, survive and the two of you are immediately arrested and thrown into Black Iron Prison. Jacob wants out, but warden Duncan Cole may be up to some scientific buffoonery.
I feel like this game is in a rush to get wrapped up before I ever got a chance to get interested. You're rarely given any sense of scale for the prison and you see zero prison life; Jacob gets arrested and when he wakes up next, he's escaping. He was in prison for 30 minutes, apparently, talk about timing.
The scale of where the plot goes is just embarrassing. The Illuminati shows up when they absolutely did not need to and visually they look like they got off the set of “Squid Game”.
A lot of The Callisto Protocol is made up of time wasters like crawling through vents, shimmying through crevices, or climbing ladders. In areas where Jacob can walk, often something like grime or entrails will impede him so he cannot run. This game is comically paced to a point where I cannot help but suspect these are no longer “hidden” loading screens but rather padding to make the short game feel longer and more deserving of your money. In other games such as God of War (2018), when Kratos and Atreus are climbing a wall (time waster), they at least have a conversation to help with worldbuilding and deepen the relationship. Striking Distance Studios just puts Jacob in vent after vent with nobody to talk to. Seriously, why?
When you're not wasting time in vents, you're fighting very easy enemies with a repetitive melee system or guns that can hit weak points and kill them in one shot. The "exciting" stuff is pretty lame, too.
There are plenty of problems with this game, stuff like motion blur making me want to vomit, melee combat following a very boring pattern, needing to tediously stomp every corpse to get necessary supplies, environmental effects (like lights turning off or ceiling panels falling) replay when you leave a room and return, there's no map system, enemies can grab you and easily get a free hit in, the ending is locked behind paid DLC, you're rarely rewarded for going off the beaten path, and probably more I'm missing.
Good things? As previously mentioned, the graphics are insane. The game looks great, but since it looks SO good and plays SO bad, this just seems like poor time management or focus and a waste of manpower. The DLC mission does some hallucination stuff well. The stealth sections with Jacob killing blind enemies worked okay, though maybe it was too easy (the whole game was). They just lifted some stuff right out of Dead Space and what worked well there works kinda well, here.
It's only $20 for the “full” game right now (again, the ending is in paid DLC... outrageous) and I still don't think it's worth that. There won't be a Callisto Protocol 2 and that's a very good thing. I've read people saying this game is some kind of hidden gem that wasn't given a fair shot and that's a load of horse shit, it's just bad. I feel bad for Josh Duhamel, a sentence I never expected to say.
I do not recommend The Callisto Protocol. If it ever goes to $10 for the whole thing and you far-too-passionately LOVE Dead Space, sure. Otherwise, this can and should be avoided.
You're Jacob, a cargo transporter and maybe smuggler. You and your pal are hijacked by terrorists, so you give them a fat middle finger and crash your ship back on Callisto, a prison planet. Only you and Dani, the hijacking ringleader, survive and the two of you are immediately arrested and thrown into Black Iron Prison. Jacob wants out, but warden Duncan Cole may be up to some scientific buffoonery.
I feel like this game is in a rush to get wrapped up before I ever got a chance to get interested. You're rarely given any sense of scale for the prison and you see zero prison life; Jacob gets arrested and when he wakes up next, he's escaping. He was in prison for 30 minutes, apparently, talk about timing.
The scale of where the plot goes is just embarrassing. The Illuminati shows up when they absolutely did not need to and visually they look like they got off the set of “Squid Game”.
A lot of The Callisto Protocol is made up of time wasters like crawling through vents, shimmying through crevices, or climbing ladders. In areas where Jacob can walk, often something like grime or entrails will impede him so he cannot run. This game is comically paced to a point where I cannot help but suspect these are no longer “hidden” loading screens but rather padding to make the short game feel longer and more deserving of your money. In other games such as God of War (2018), when Kratos and Atreus are climbing a wall (time waster), they at least have a conversation to help with worldbuilding and deepen the relationship. Striking Distance Studios just puts Jacob in vent after vent with nobody to talk to. Seriously, why?
When you're not wasting time in vents, you're fighting very easy enemies with a repetitive melee system or guns that can hit weak points and kill them in one shot. The "exciting" stuff is pretty lame, too.
There are plenty of problems with this game, stuff like motion blur making me want to vomit, melee combat following a very boring pattern, needing to tediously stomp every corpse to get necessary supplies, environmental effects (like lights turning off or ceiling panels falling) replay when you leave a room and return, there's no map system, enemies can grab you and easily get a free hit in, the ending is locked behind paid DLC, you're rarely rewarded for going off the beaten path, and probably more I'm missing.
Good things? As previously mentioned, the graphics are insane. The game looks great, but since it looks SO good and plays SO bad, this just seems like poor time management or focus and a waste of manpower. The DLC mission does some hallucination stuff well. The stealth sections with Jacob killing blind enemies worked okay, though maybe it was too easy (the whole game was). They just lifted some stuff right out of Dead Space and what worked well there works kinda well, here.
It's only $20 for the “full” game right now (again, the ending is in paid DLC... outrageous) and I still don't think it's worth that. There won't be a Callisto Protocol 2 and that's a very good thing. I've read people saying this game is some kind of hidden gem that wasn't given a fair shot and that's a load of horse shit, it's just bad. I feel bad for Josh Duhamel, a sentence I never expected to say.
I do not recommend The Callisto Protocol. If it ever goes to $10 for the whole thing and you far-too-passionately LOVE Dead Space, sure. Otherwise, this can and should be avoided.
The Catpisso Poopoocall
This game has emotionally drained me the more I think about all the wasted ideas this game had. The most I’ll go into is just because you write a good idea out on paper does not mean it’s a fully fleshed out idea, there is a reason why concept art never represents the final product.
I honestly would love to just go off on this game but the idea of writing another 7+ paragraph long review for a game I’m depressingly ambivalent towards makes me wanna stress vomit.
I honestly would love to just go off on this game but the idea of writing another 7+ paragraph long review for a game I’m depressingly ambivalent towards makes me wanna stress vomit.
most of my problems in this game can be tied back to the shit combat. as a fan of survival horror, i have and will continue to be willing to overlook poor combat gameplay for stellar presentation, atmosphere, and mood building or when the fighting is easily avoided/not constant. unfortunately this did neither of those.
the melee combat here is so mindless when facing single enemies and then completely shits itself when any more become involved that it feels like it wasn't even tested. it plays like a mixture of Punch-Out! and Silent Hill: Homecoming from hell.
there were two or so chapters in the middle of the game where you were able to mostly stealth through areas, avoiding more melee fighting as a result. during this period i briefly wondered if i was too harsh on the early bits but then the combat came back with a vengeance in the end with a metric shit ton of it (topped off with the worst boss i've played since the last one in Quantum Break) to make me look like a clown.
it looks really good but that's almost it in terms of complimentary things i have to say. replay value is non-existent (not that i'd want to go back), there's not even an illusion of non-linearity, or anything of the sort i could try to find a silver lining with.
honestly would've rather played even Dead Space 3 again instead.
the melee combat here is so mindless when facing single enemies and then completely shits itself when any more become involved that it feels like it wasn't even tested. it plays like a mixture of Punch-Out! and Silent Hill: Homecoming from hell.
there were two or so chapters in the middle of the game where you were able to mostly stealth through areas, avoiding more melee fighting as a result. during this period i briefly wondered if i was too harsh on the early bits but then the combat came back with a vengeance in the end with a metric shit ton of it (topped off with the worst boss i've played since the last one in Quantum Break) to make me look like a clown.
it looks really good but that's almost it in terms of complimentary things i have to say. replay value is non-existent (not that i'd want to go back), there's not even an illusion of non-linearity, or anything of the sort i could try to find a silver lining with.
honestly would've rather played even Dead Space 3 again instead.
Callisto Protocol é provavelmente a experiência mais miserável que tive com um jogo AAA, deixa eu explicar:
Sinceramente eu não sabia exatamente o que esperar de Callisto Protocol, ele tem envolvimento do criador de Dead Space o trailer de anuncio dele era intrigante e isso era tudo que eu tinha de informação desse jogo até esse presente momento. Antes dele, eu tive vontade de jogar Dead Space e caso você queira saber o que eu achei, bem, mediocre, tenho meus motivos, comentei aqui no site também e ok, vamo virar essa pagina.
Mas fato é que enquanto eu jogava Dead Space eu me perguntava como transpor aquele jogo, para as convenções de hoje, o que seria Dead Space hoje? Eu inocente acreditei que essa miséria tecnológica seria um interessante ponto de partida pra sanar a minha duvida.
Mas e ai, e qual é o problema então? Tudo, desde as polemicas pelo crunch que ocorreu na produção, questões de filosofia de game design até o espancamento que foi pro currículo da Karen Fukuhara (Kimiko de The Boys) aparecer nesse jogo. Agora mais sobre o jogo, na primeira meia hora você já entende muito de como vai funcionar o loop de gameplay, é apresentada a mecânica de punch out da shopee, aonde você consegue desviar dos golpes melee dos inimigos apenas colocando o direcional para um dos lados antes de ser atingido, mas o que acontecer é que não importa o lado, você sempre desvia (isso quando o jogo não entende que você tá puxando o seu direcional com toda a força do mundo e ele simplesmente não desvia nem defende pois o jogo tá de lua), aqui também volta o desmembramento, claro né, estamos falando de um jogo inspirado nesse colosso da indústria não é mesmo? o problema é que ela não é uma grande coisa aqui, ela tá lá, mas pode não estar também, o jogo tem um grande foco em melee e vez ou outra tem muitos inimigos na tela, o jogo até tem habilidades que visam controle de área, mas elas só na funcionam porque O COMBATE NÃO PERMITE ISSO. Resumindo, muito das coisas que o jogo se propõem mecanicamente não funcionam, ou você pode simplesmente não usar.
Mas o que me deu mais desgosto é uma parada além disso, visto que, videogames estão na era da reprodutibilidade técnica, obras vão ser feitas reproduzindo tendências que deram certo num passado recente, e Callisto Protocol é um sintoma disso. Tendo uma linguagem audiovisual muito semelhante a de um exclusivo da Sony, o jogo tem o rosto pensa como Dead space, mas age como, sei lá, The Last of Us? God Of War? É apenas uma amalgama de referencias, vazias e sem alma, o jogo que Glen Schofield quer replicar não se aplica em nenhum nível as convenções de um jogo mais "cinematográfico".
Eu não sei o que Callisto Protocol queria ser, mas ele tá longe de ser um bom jogo, é uma afronta pro seu tempo, pra sua pessoa e pra indústria (essa ultima tem que se fuder mesmo) é um símbolo de tudo que há de errado com os videogames nos últimos 10 anos, é o tipo de jogo que se alguém me fala que só sai jogo ruim nos dias de hoje e me aponta ele, eu concordo, se me fala que os jogos não são divertidos e mencionam ele, eu confirmo, a pessoa passar a odiar videogames após ele, eu não vou estranhar.
De todo modo, foi horrível, pretendo falar mais detalhadamente no futuro, de forma mais estruturada em que eu não pareça um maluco, mas esse jogo mexeu comigo, eu to muito triste, mandem ajuda.
Sinceramente eu não sabia exatamente o que esperar de Callisto Protocol, ele tem envolvimento do criador de Dead Space o trailer de anuncio dele era intrigante e isso era tudo que eu tinha de informação desse jogo até esse presente momento. Antes dele, eu tive vontade de jogar Dead Space e caso você queira saber o que eu achei, bem, mediocre, tenho meus motivos, comentei aqui no site também e ok, vamo virar essa pagina.
Mas fato é que enquanto eu jogava Dead Space eu me perguntava como transpor aquele jogo, para as convenções de hoje, o que seria Dead Space hoje? Eu inocente acreditei que essa miséria tecnológica seria um interessante ponto de partida pra sanar a minha duvida.
Mas e ai, e qual é o problema então? Tudo, desde as polemicas pelo crunch que ocorreu na produção, questões de filosofia de game design até o espancamento que foi pro currículo da Karen Fukuhara (Kimiko de The Boys) aparecer nesse jogo. Agora mais sobre o jogo, na primeira meia hora você já entende muito de como vai funcionar o loop de gameplay, é apresentada a mecânica de punch out da shopee, aonde você consegue desviar dos golpes melee dos inimigos apenas colocando o direcional para um dos lados antes de ser atingido, mas o que acontecer é que não importa o lado, você sempre desvia (isso quando o jogo não entende que você tá puxando o seu direcional com toda a força do mundo e ele simplesmente não desvia nem defende pois o jogo tá de lua), aqui também volta o desmembramento, claro né, estamos falando de um jogo inspirado nesse colosso da indústria não é mesmo? o problema é que ela não é uma grande coisa aqui, ela tá lá, mas pode não estar também, o jogo tem um grande foco em melee e vez ou outra tem muitos inimigos na tela, o jogo até tem habilidades que visam controle de área, mas elas só na funcionam porque O COMBATE NÃO PERMITE ISSO. Resumindo, muito das coisas que o jogo se propõem mecanicamente não funcionam, ou você pode simplesmente não usar.
Mas o que me deu mais desgosto é uma parada além disso, visto que, videogames estão na era da reprodutibilidade técnica, obras vão ser feitas reproduzindo tendências que deram certo num passado recente, e Callisto Protocol é um sintoma disso. Tendo uma linguagem audiovisual muito semelhante a de um exclusivo da Sony, o jogo tem o rosto pensa como Dead space, mas age como, sei lá, The Last of Us? God Of War? É apenas uma amalgama de referencias, vazias e sem alma, o jogo que Glen Schofield quer replicar não se aplica em nenhum nível as convenções de um jogo mais "cinematográfico".
Eu não sei o que Callisto Protocol queria ser, mas ele tá longe de ser um bom jogo, é uma afronta pro seu tempo, pra sua pessoa e pra indústria (essa ultima tem que se fuder mesmo) é um símbolo de tudo que há de errado com os videogames nos últimos 10 anos, é o tipo de jogo que se alguém me fala que só sai jogo ruim nos dias de hoje e me aponta ele, eu concordo, se me fala que os jogos não são divertidos e mencionam ele, eu confirmo, a pessoa passar a odiar videogames após ele, eu não vou estranhar.
De todo modo, foi horrível, pretendo falar mais detalhadamente no futuro, de forma mais estruturada em que eu não pareça um maluco, mas esse jogo mexeu comigo, eu to muito triste, mandem ajuda.
Farted so hard the credits rolled
In hindsight, it's probably to Callisto Protocol's benefit that the Dead Space remake was released the month after it. It received relatively mixed reviews on release, with some saying it's a worthy spiritual successor from the same team as the original Dead Space, and others saying that it tries too hard to recapture that same magic but doesn't really hit the mark in the same way.
Visiting it for the first time now, nearly a year after it's release, with a slew of patches and DLC under its belt, my take on Callisto is that it's a game that looks and sounds great, but that's about it. It really does try too hard to recreate Dead Space without crafting very much of its own identity and fresh takes on the formula outside of 'its that game but set on a prison planet this time'.
To be fair, there's a much bigger focus on melee in Callisto than there ever was in the game that inspired it. Where before, melee was something Isaac did with his guns to clear some room for himself, in this game it's a full system with its own mechanics... kind of. I say kind of because there isn't much depth to it—there aren't any options for dealing with several enemies crowding around you, and the dodging has no timing window, requiring you to only move the stick to the side after every hit. It feels like a glorified quick-time event, which is something else that the game has too many of, speaking of which.
The gunplay is okay. There's no one weapon like the plasma cutter that leaves much of an impression and encourages you to upgrade it and see how far it can be taken. Instead, it's a fairly standard arsenal of weapons that do their jobs well enough. The highlight, however, much like in Dead Space before, is the gravity projector, which works much the same as Kinesis did and allows you to fling objects and enemies at enemies with reckless abandon. It can be fun, but its batteries do tend to fill up your inventory pretty quickly.
The story, setting, and characters are also there. As flippant as that sounds, that's really the best way to put it, since it's a fairly generic affair all around. Josh Duhamel does well with what he's given as his role as Jacob Lee, the everyman cargo-hauler. Karen Fukuhara is slightly more compelling as Dani, the leader of a terrorist group known as The Outer Way. They're an okay bunch. Sam Witwer chews the scenery as Captain Ferris, one of the lead villains, but he mostly just shows up for boss battles otherwise.
Again, it could be better, but Dead Space (original and remake) does it no favors. I'm aware I keep bringing it up, but it's true. It hits all the same narrative beats. Everyman is drawn into a sinister plot led by a mysterious cult that conducts experiments on unknowing participants for "the greater good of humanity." Pretty much the same story, to the point where it'll come down to a matter of preference whether you favor the original or this one.
The Callisto Protocol is an okay experience overall. To put it in more present-day terms, it's the definition of 'mid'. Not good enough to be good, but not bad enough to be bad. It has its moments, it looks and sounds really great, and it has some decent atmosphere and performances, but otherwise, if you don't have PS Plus, you're better off playing that other game I keep mentioning.
5/10
Visiting it for the first time now, nearly a year after it's release, with a slew of patches and DLC under its belt, my take on Callisto is that it's a game that looks and sounds great, but that's about it. It really does try too hard to recreate Dead Space without crafting very much of its own identity and fresh takes on the formula outside of 'its that game but set on a prison planet this time'.
To be fair, there's a much bigger focus on melee in Callisto than there ever was in the game that inspired it. Where before, melee was something Isaac did with his guns to clear some room for himself, in this game it's a full system with its own mechanics... kind of. I say kind of because there isn't much depth to it—there aren't any options for dealing with several enemies crowding around you, and the dodging has no timing window, requiring you to only move the stick to the side after every hit. It feels like a glorified quick-time event, which is something else that the game has too many of, speaking of which.
The gunplay is okay. There's no one weapon like the plasma cutter that leaves much of an impression and encourages you to upgrade it and see how far it can be taken. Instead, it's a fairly standard arsenal of weapons that do their jobs well enough. The highlight, however, much like in Dead Space before, is the gravity projector, which works much the same as Kinesis did and allows you to fling objects and enemies at enemies with reckless abandon. It can be fun, but its batteries do tend to fill up your inventory pretty quickly.
The story, setting, and characters are also there. As flippant as that sounds, that's really the best way to put it, since it's a fairly generic affair all around. Josh Duhamel does well with what he's given as his role as Jacob Lee, the everyman cargo-hauler. Karen Fukuhara is slightly more compelling as Dani, the leader of a terrorist group known as The Outer Way. They're an okay bunch. Sam Witwer chews the scenery as Captain Ferris, one of the lead villains, but he mostly just shows up for boss battles otherwise.
Again, it could be better, but Dead Space (original and remake) does it no favors. I'm aware I keep bringing it up, but it's true. It hits all the same narrative beats. Everyman is drawn into a sinister plot led by a mysterious cult that conducts experiments on unknowing participants for "the greater good of humanity." Pretty much the same story, to the point where it'll come down to a matter of preference whether you favor the original or this one.
The Callisto Protocol is an okay experience overall. To put it in more present-day terms, it's the definition of 'mid'. Not good enough to be good, but not bad enough to be bad. It has its moments, it looks and sounds really great, and it has some decent atmosphere and performances, but otherwise, if you don't have PS Plus, you're better off playing that other game I keep mentioning.
5/10
David Cronenberg's Punch-Out!!
I'm trying really hard to not be The Defense Force for this game, but I feel like its reception suffered from Dead Space fan expectations thinking we're getting a legally distinct reboot of what Dead Space was.
I love Dead Space (not 3). I've read the comics and even the fucking novels. I saw the wee nods from the trailers. The similarities. But I tempered my expectations when watching the dev diaries, because it was clear we were getting something different with melee at the forefront of combat. Something a bit more linear, and developed by a new studio working through the pandemic.
Again, I'm not trying to make excuses here, I've got plenty wee issues with the game. Just trying to find some perspective on a flawed thing that I had a good time with. I just worry that a chunk of the negative reaction is from a thing I see more and more now where people don't actually play/watch/read the thing, but just absorb the opinion of their favourite youtuber or whatever and turn that into The Truth they tell other people about the piece of media in question. I've definitely been guilty of it myself.
Jesus, look at the cope here.
I'll say that I hope they get a sequel because I'd like to see where the story/setting goes, and think taking a lot of the criticisms on board could really turn this into something great.
I'm trying really hard to not be The Defense Force for this game, but I feel like its reception suffered from Dead Space fan expectations thinking we're getting a legally distinct reboot of what Dead Space was.
I love Dead Space (not 3). I've read the comics and even the fucking novels. I saw the wee nods from the trailers. The similarities. But I tempered my expectations when watching the dev diaries, because it was clear we were getting something different with melee at the forefront of combat. Something a bit more linear, and developed by a new studio working through the pandemic.
Again, I'm not trying to make excuses here, I've got plenty wee issues with the game. Just trying to find some perspective on a flawed thing that I had a good time with. I just worry that a chunk of the negative reaction is from a thing I see more and more now where people don't actually play/watch/read the thing, but just absorb the opinion of their favourite youtuber or whatever and turn that into The Truth they tell other people about the piece of media in question. I've definitely been guilty of it myself.
Jesus, look at the cope here.
I'll say that I hope they get a sequel because I'd like to see where the story/setting goes, and think taking a lot of the criticisms on board could really turn this into something great.
The Callisto Protocol landed on PS Plus at the perfect time for me. I had just finished up some other games and I had been waiting for the price to drop on this because I wanted to try it for myself, despite the less than stellar response it received. So I jumped in straight away and even though it’s derivative and not a perfect game I still ended up having a pretty good time.
The Callisto Protocol was met with a mixed reception which I think was in big part to the wrong expectations. I think people were expecting a literal Dead Space clone, which this game is a ‘spiritual successor’ to, but it’s kind of a different experience. The Callisto Protocol is a very deliberate, focused, linear experience. It’s the type of game that is constantly trying to nudge you forward and doesn’t offer much in the way of exploration or backtracking. It’s also not a straight up third person shooter. It’s more intimate than that and focuses a more on melee than shooting. So if you haven’t played it yet I would recommend throwing your expectations out the window. Go into this open minded, let the game do what it wants to do and try to enjoy it for what it is.
It didn’t make the best first impression on me as I had to get through the agreements and a DLC advertisement before starting but that was quickly forgotten when I was hit with those impressive visuals. Wow, this game looks good. The characters, environments and attention to detail are some of the best I’ve seen. It’s also really graphic and gory. Sound is top notch too and the game works well. I only noticed a few small issues the whole game. (Occasionally a dead enemy limb would go nuts on the ground and a few times I broke some glass and there was no sound to go with it. Enemy and friendly AI aren’t too sharp as well). It is an impressive, polished game that pulls you into its world and atmosphere.
However, despite this it has a big issue, it’s just not scary. The jump scares just do not land. They wash over you while you barely manage to let out a ‘meh’ in response. It gets worse as the game goes on because they keep trying it and it changes from ‘meh’ to ‘this is annoying.’ There is no proper build up or creativity and the game isn’t creepy either. But I think there is something The Callisto Protocol can succeed really well at and that is making the player feel uncomfortable. This game is dirty and gross. The gore is detailed and in your face. The atmosphere is thick, heavy and oppressive. The camera is up close and so is the combat. The way you move feels heavy and deliberate. There are a lot of tight spaces. It’s claustrophobic, intimate and unpleasant. It is not a world you want to be in. Perfect for a horror game and was enjoyable in the worst/best way when playing in the dark without distraction.
So The Callisto Protocol looks and sounds really good and while it may fail at being scary or creepy it succeeds at creating discomfort. But how does it play? I would say it’s like a pizza that doesn’t quite have enough toppings. You walk or run slowly through linear areas, picking up items, stopping to upgrade your gear and sometimes wander into little extra side areas. You can hop over some waist high things, climb up in some spots, crawl through vents and squeeze through tight spots. It’s fine but get’s repetitive and needs variety. I think this game might actually be a bit too long. It feels like the developers were worried about it being too short and decided to pad it out. I don’t want to go in too far to avoid spoilers but there are many bits throughout the game that overstay their welcome. One section in particular is a later part that strongly encourages stealth and it just drags on, especially when the stealth in this game is very basic. I think the game could have been shortened and/or tightened and had some stuff replaced with puzzles (which this game doesn’t have). The other issue is too much lazy stuff we’ve seen a lot before, like – get the power back on, find the keycode, find a fuse, getting separated from the other characters, etc.
I’ve seen the combat be described as simple and just dodging left and right and mashing attack. I think you could play the game this way but you would be doing yourself a disservice and making things more frustrating (Dodging is too simple and should require more timing though). You are meant to be aiming for perfect dodges and you also have a block, counter hit and heavy attack on top of your basic short melee combo. Often after some melee hits you’ll get a chance to do some quick lock on shots with your guns too. Speaking of guns, that’s the other major part of combat. You shoot at enemies like a regular TPS and you can sneak in some shots up close in melee range too. So it becomes about juggling an enemy or small group of enemies by mixing these two killing methods and it’s pretty satisfying. Then on top of this you have a GRP (telekinesis) that can throw objects or enemies and of course there some conveniently placed, but repetitive, gory traps to send foes into. It reminded me a bit of MadWorld (Wii), which is never a bad thing. You also have a limited inventory space, ammo isn’t super common and your telekinesis requires time or an item to recharge. This means you’re forced to mix these three elements (guns, melee and telekinesis) together, with a little stealth thrown in, constantly for the best play experience and it’s not a bad recipe.
Overall I think the gameplay has an enjoyable, solid base and even some sauce and cheese, it just needed some quality toppings. The combat needs a little more strategy. The game needs more enemy variety and more weapon variety – both melee and guns. It should be more demanding when it comes to blocks and dodges. It is a good time, even with repetition setting in too early and some occasional frustration. I think if the developers build on this gameplay in a sequel we could have something special.
The last thing to discuss is the story and it’s just good enough, but nothing to write much about. I think it is typical sci-fi, horror stuff with pretty decent world building. This doesn’t bother me too much for two reasons. First is that it is carried by some really good performances and visuals. Second, this type of experience is also carried more by the atmosphere, moment to moment action and character interactions rather than some bigger narrative and/or deep lore. It’s fleshed out a bit through audio logs found throughout the game and there’s some good environmental story telling. The locations are very detailed and you get a good sense of what the spaces were like and how they were lived in, along with what recently took place there. The biggest sin this game commits as far as I can tell is that the ending is somewhat incomplete and left to the DLC.
The clearly talented developers at Striking Distance Studios didn’t deserve for The Callisto Protocol to be dunked on. I think it deserves a lukewarm to quite positive response, with high hopes for a sequel or follow up. I think if they can push a sequel in the right directions, maybe even make it a survival horror game, then there is the potential here for something exceptional. As The Callisto Protocol currently is, I think it’s a solid, but not top tier horror game and I think I’m going to grab a physical copy for my collection. I’d recommend it to almost all PS Plus subscribers and most big horror fans. For everyone else maybe wait for a bit of a price drop.
7.0/10
Just an extra note:
This review is based on a single normal playthrough but I liked it enough that I’m considering a second run. I haven’t played the other modes or DLC. Also I obviously just played the game more recently so it’s likely that it is in better shape now than it was at launch. I forgot a couple of points too - The bosses are underwhelming and it has a cool photo mode.
The Callisto Protocol was met with a mixed reception which I think was in big part to the wrong expectations. I think people were expecting a literal Dead Space clone, which this game is a ‘spiritual successor’ to, but it’s kind of a different experience. The Callisto Protocol is a very deliberate, focused, linear experience. It’s the type of game that is constantly trying to nudge you forward and doesn’t offer much in the way of exploration or backtracking. It’s also not a straight up third person shooter. It’s more intimate than that and focuses a more on melee than shooting. So if you haven’t played it yet I would recommend throwing your expectations out the window. Go into this open minded, let the game do what it wants to do and try to enjoy it for what it is.
It didn’t make the best first impression on me as I had to get through the agreements and a DLC advertisement before starting but that was quickly forgotten when I was hit with those impressive visuals. Wow, this game looks good. The characters, environments and attention to detail are some of the best I’ve seen. It’s also really graphic and gory. Sound is top notch too and the game works well. I only noticed a few small issues the whole game. (Occasionally a dead enemy limb would go nuts on the ground and a few times I broke some glass and there was no sound to go with it. Enemy and friendly AI aren’t too sharp as well). It is an impressive, polished game that pulls you into its world and atmosphere.
However, despite this it has a big issue, it’s just not scary. The jump scares just do not land. They wash over you while you barely manage to let out a ‘meh’ in response. It gets worse as the game goes on because they keep trying it and it changes from ‘meh’ to ‘this is annoying.’ There is no proper build up or creativity and the game isn’t creepy either. But I think there is something The Callisto Protocol can succeed really well at and that is making the player feel uncomfortable. This game is dirty and gross. The gore is detailed and in your face. The atmosphere is thick, heavy and oppressive. The camera is up close and so is the combat. The way you move feels heavy and deliberate. There are a lot of tight spaces. It’s claustrophobic, intimate and unpleasant. It is not a world you want to be in. Perfect for a horror game and was enjoyable in the worst/best way when playing in the dark without distraction.
So The Callisto Protocol looks and sounds really good and while it may fail at being scary or creepy it succeeds at creating discomfort. But how does it play? I would say it’s like a pizza that doesn’t quite have enough toppings. You walk or run slowly through linear areas, picking up items, stopping to upgrade your gear and sometimes wander into little extra side areas. You can hop over some waist high things, climb up in some spots, crawl through vents and squeeze through tight spots. It’s fine but get’s repetitive and needs variety. I think this game might actually be a bit too long. It feels like the developers were worried about it being too short and decided to pad it out. I don’t want to go in too far to avoid spoilers but there are many bits throughout the game that overstay their welcome. One section in particular is a later part that strongly encourages stealth and it just drags on, especially when the stealth in this game is very basic. I think the game could have been shortened and/or tightened and had some stuff replaced with puzzles (which this game doesn’t have). The other issue is too much lazy stuff we’ve seen a lot before, like – get the power back on, find the keycode, find a fuse, getting separated from the other characters, etc.
I’ve seen the combat be described as simple and just dodging left and right and mashing attack. I think you could play the game this way but you would be doing yourself a disservice and making things more frustrating (Dodging is too simple and should require more timing though). You are meant to be aiming for perfect dodges and you also have a block, counter hit and heavy attack on top of your basic short melee combo. Often after some melee hits you’ll get a chance to do some quick lock on shots with your guns too. Speaking of guns, that’s the other major part of combat. You shoot at enemies like a regular TPS and you can sneak in some shots up close in melee range too. So it becomes about juggling an enemy or small group of enemies by mixing these two killing methods and it’s pretty satisfying. Then on top of this you have a GRP (telekinesis) that can throw objects or enemies and of course there some conveniently placed, but repetitive, gory traps to send foes into. It reminded me a bit of MadWorld (Wii), which is never a bad thing. You also have a limited inventory space, ammo isn’t super common and your telekinesis requires time or an item to recharge. This means you’re forced to mix these three elements (guns, melee and telekinesis) together, with a little stealth thrown in, constantly for the best play experience and it’s not a bad recipe.
Overall I think the gameplay has an enjoyable, solid base and even some sauce and cheese, it just needed some quality toppings. The combat needs a little more strategy. The game needs more enemy variety and more weapon variety – both melee and guns. It should be more demanding when it comes to blocks and dodges. It is a good time, even with repetition setting in too early and some occasional frustration. I think if the developers build on this gameplay in a sequel we could have something special.
The last thing to discuss is the story and it’s just good enough, but nothing to write much about. I think it is typical sci-fi, horror stuff with pretty decent world building. This doesn’t bother me too much for two reasons. First is that it is carried by some really good performances and visuals. Second, this type of experience is also carried more by the atmosphere, moment to moment action and character interactions rather than some bigger narrative and/or deep lore. It’s fleshed out a bit through audio logs found throughout the game and there’s some good environmental story telling. The locations are very detailed and you get a good sense of what the spaces were like and how they were lived in, along with what recently took place there. The biggest sin this game commits as far as I can tell is that the ending is somewhat incomplete and left to the DLC.
The clearly talented developers at Striking Distance Studios didn’t deserve for The Callisto Protocol to be dunked on. I think it deserves a lukewarm to quite positive response, with high hopes for a sequel or follow up. I think if they can push a sequel in the right directions, maybe even make it a survival horror game, then there is the potential here for something exceptional. As The Callisto Protocol currently is, I think it’s a solid, but not top tier horror game and I think I’m going to grab a physical copy for my collection. I’d recommend it to almost all PS Plus subscribers and most big horror fans. For everyone else maybe wait for a bit of a price drop.
7.0/10
Just an extra note:
This review is based on a single normal playthrough but I liked it enough that I’m considering a second run. I haven’t played the other modes or DLC. Also I obviously just played the game more recently so it’s likely that it is in better shape now than it was at launch. I forgot a couple of points too - The bosses are underwhelming and it has a cool photo mode.
Qué inmenso desperdicio. Un sistema de combate mal concebido aplicado a un sistema de niveles insípido, secuencias de sigilo completamente superfluas y una historia y caracterización que parece abrazar más que nunca la idea de "Resident Evil in Space" de la que Dead Space nunca se terminó de librar. Jugar a esto me ha hecho replantearme seriamente si la trilogía original de Schofield fue tan buena como recordaba, o si me dejé llevar por los pitos y flautas del momento. Es aún peor jugar a esto en la versión localizada, porque tienes a actores de calidad doblando escenas que claramente no tenían permitido ver, con lo que el tono se pierde completamente.
En un mundo ideal, esto habría sido el equivalente a Condemned que Monolith diseñó tras el éxito de F.E.A.R. Tal y como se ve ahora, es poco más que una demo técnica vistosa, pero apenas estable, de un ejercicio de soberbia artística.
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What a waste. A poorly conceived combat system applied to bland level design, completely superfluous stealth sequences, and a story and characters that seems to embrace more than ever the "Resident Evil in Space" premise that Dead Space never quite got rid of. Playing this has made me seriously rethink whether Schofield's original trilogy was as good as I remembered, or if I got carried away by the whistles. It's even worse to play this localized, because you'll have quality actors dubbing scenes they clearly weren't allowed to see, so the tone gets completely lost.
In an ideal world, this would have been the Condemned equivalent that Monolith delivered after the success of F.E.A.R. As it stands now, it's little more than a flashy but barely stable technical demo of an act of artistic hubris.
En un mundo ideal, esto habría sido el equivalente a Condemned que Monolith diseñó tras el éxito de F.E.A.R. Tal y como se ve ahora, es poco más que una demo técnica vistosa, pero apenas estable, de un ejercicio de soberbia artística.
----------------------
What a waste. A poorly conceived combat system applied to bland level design, completely superfluous stealth sequences, and a story and characters that seems to embrace more than ever the "Resident Evil in Space" premise that Dead Space never quite got rid of. Playing this has made me seriously rethink whether Schofield's original trilogy was as good as I remembered, or if I got carried away by the whistles. It's even worse to play this localized, because you'll have quality actors dubbing scenes they clearly weren't allowed to see, so the tone gets completely lost.
In an ideal world, this would have been the Condemned equivalent that Monolith delivered after the success of F.E.A.R. As it stands now, it's little more than a flashy but barely stable technical demo of an act of artistic hubris.
É estranho, The Callisto Protocol não parece feito pelo criador de Dead Space, parece feito pelo filho tentando impressioná-lo.
Sim, ele nos deixa apreensivo, dá alguns sustos, MAS ELE NÃO DÁ MEDO.
Jogando 2h você prevê o final. Não tem plot twist, aquele momento empolgante, não tem nada. Os personagens são um desperdício de bons atores, especialmente Sam Witwer.
Quanto ao gameplay, o polêmico sistema de combate é quebrado e simplório demais. Funciona bem contra no máximo 2 inimigos, mais que isso a câmera se embanana com os inimigos nas costas, você vai morrer algumas vezes e sentir que a culpa não foi sua, felizmente o jogo facilita e sempre coloca armadilhas nos ambientes com vários inimigos, passar raiva depende da sua percepção ao redor.
Outra coisa irritante é a mecânica das animações (trocar de arma, pegar itens do chão, healing).
Parece frescura, mas atrapalham MUITO em situações específicas de combate, toda a jogabilidade em si é detalhista mas MUITO LENTA! RE5 ensinou que esse tipo de coisa não é nada funcional, SEMPRE o simples é melhor.
Pensei ser o diferentão que ia amar, parecia criado pra mim. Só queria um game simples com aquela vibe dark onde nos encontramos presos no inferno e é impossível escapar, mas descobrimos uma nave lá na pqp, e então temos aquele fio de esperança em meio ao caos... Nope
É um castelo de cartas. Diverte, mas quanto mais jogamos, mais problemático fica (edição deluxe deve ser o flop do ano).
Sim, ele nos deixa apreensivo, dá alguns sustos, MAS ELE NÃO DÁ MEDO.
Jogando 2h você prevê o final. Não tem plot twist, aquele momento empolgante, não tem nada. Os personagens são um desperdício de bons atores, especialmente Sam Witwer.
Quanto ao gameplay, o polêmico sistema de combate é quebrado e simplório demais. Funciona bem contra no máximo 2 inimigos, mais que isso a câmera se embanana com os inimigos nas costas, você vai morrer algumas vezes e sentir que a culpa não foi sua, felizmente o jogo facilita e sempre coloca armadilhas nos ambientes com vários inimigos, passar raiva depende da sua percepção ao redor.
Outra coisa irritante é a mecânica das animações (trocar de arma, pegar itens do chão, healing).
Parece frescura, mas atrapalham MUITO em situações específicas de combate, toda a jogabilidade em si é detalhista mas MUITO LENTA! RE5 ensinou que esse tipo de coisa não é nada funcional, SEMPRE o simples é melhor.
Pensei ser o diferentão que ia amar, parecia criado pra mim. Só queria um game simples com aquela vibe dark onde nos encontramos presos no inferno e é impossível escapar, mas descobrimos uma nave lá na pqp, e então temos aquele fio de esperança em meio ao caos... Nope
É um castelo de cartas. Diverte, mas quanto mais jogamos, mais problemático fica (edição deluxe deve ser o flop do ano).
Sadly it's not quite as good as it could've been but I think its still a very thrilling on the rails action horror and that's more than enough for me. Maybe turn auto dodge on in accessibility options however as the combat can be a bit unfair. Karen Fukuhara is cute, I hope this game gets the post launch support it deserves.
A decent enough horror experience. A sort of "spiritual successor" to Dead Space, you can really see some of the DNA from that franchise here, but unfortunately just not executed as well.
The story is pretty boilerplate, with bland characters and cliche plot threads. In the year of our Lord 2023, I didn't think we'd ever get another boring, shaved-head, gruff-voiced main character, plucked straight from 2008.
The combat is heavily melee-focused and meaty, but it does get old and repetitive quickly as there are about 5 or 6 enemy types in the entire game - most of which you don't even encounter that often.
The scares are also lacklustre and unimpactful, which is something you DON'T want in a horror game. There was never a single moment that gave me actual dread or made my heart race.
Overall though, I didn't hate the game by any means. It's just very lacklustre and I was kinda hoping for something more the entire time I was going through it. Thankfully, it's not too long, although it can feel padded out at times. It also looks very good, even on PS4, with some nice, claustrophobic area design.
The story is pretty boilerplate, with bland characters and cliche plot threads. In the year of our Lord 2023, I didn't think we'd ever get another boring, shaved-head, gruff-voiced main character, plucked straight from 2008.
The combat is heavily melee-focused and meaty, but it does get old and repetitive quickly as there are about 5 or 6 enemy types in the entire game - most of which you don't even encounter that often.
The scares are also lacklustre and unimpactful, which is something you DON'T want in a horror game. There was never a single moment that gave me actual dread or made my heart race.
Overall though, I didn't hate the game by any means. It's just very lacklustre and I was kinda hoping for something more the entire time I was going through it. Thankfully, it's not too long, although it can feel padded out at times. It also looks very good, even on PS4, with some nice, claustrophobic area design.
Enjoyed this quite a lot and the combat wasn't nearly as bad as many people made out, but the overuse of a certain bullet sponge enemy late in the game made for a really disappointing final chapter for me.
Hoping any future DLCs or installments build upon what's good (Karen Fukuhara) and fine tune some of the bad (stop spamming the same 3 jumpscares and reusing 1 enemy type that takes way too long to kill)
Thanks for reading, wishing y'all well. I haven't reviewed the last few completions for a few reasons, most painfully Octopath 2 I was hoping to platinum before reviewing but the super-mega-fuck-you secret boss is kicking my ass and I'm struggling to feel any desire to try it. Loved most of the game though.
May throw a few short words out for my main men Toad and Alan, we'll see. Advance Wars I'll review the double pack when I play 2. Hope to see you all there 🙏
Hoping any future DLCs or installments build upon what's good (Karen Fukuhara) and fine tune some of the bad (stop spamming the same 3 jumpscares and reusing 1 enemy type that takes way too long to kill)
Thanks for reading, wishing y'all well. I haven't reviewed the last few completions for a few reasons, most painfully Octopath 2 I was hoping to platinum before reviewing but the super-mega-fuck-you secret boss is kicking my ass and I'm struggling to feel any desire to try it. Loved most of the game though.
May throw a few short words out for my main men Toad and Alan, we'll see. Advance Wars I'll review the double pack when I play 2. Hope to see you all there 🙏
I absolutely love Dead Space and this was one of my most anticipated games this year. But I never expected it to surpass the OG. It doesn't of course but not going in with (kinda unrealistic expectations tbh) led to an experience I'm really happy for. New Game Plus is needed please
The Mickey Protocol
i can't wait for essays trying to tell me that dead space is actually worse than this
either way i thought it'd be worse? i mean it already had big shoes to fill and even though majority of what people said reigns true it's still pretty average aaa experience. i however was kinda getting sick from the camera movement during combat and already know how the rest of the game is gonna play out so yeah..
either way i thought it'd be worse? i mean it already had big shoes to fill and even though majority of what people said reigns true it's still pretty average aaa experience. i however was kinda getting sick from the camera movement during combat and already know how the rest of the game is gonna play out so yeah..
Things not as scary as The Callisto Protocol (according to director Glen Schofield):
- The Final Circle in PUBG
- The Ren & Stimpy Show: Buckaroo$!
- Dead Space
- The Strangers
Things scarier than The Callisto Protocol (according to director Glen Schofield):
- Privatized space travel
- Your mom using your full name
- The Final Circle in PUBG
- The Ren & Stimpy Show: Buckaroo$!
- Dead Space
- The Strangers
Things scarier than The Callisto Protocol (according to director Glen Schofield):
- Privatized space travel
- Your mom using your full name
This game's only upside is that it looks great on the PS5/a chunky PC. It has the same narrative problem as, well, Dead Space: it has about 10% of story to actually cover the game's time. So most of it is some contrived "oooh nooo, the cock thruster is broken, we need the lube to fix it. Damn, the lube machine broke too, we need to get the peepee enlarger". And the classic spending two minutes with a companion before the protagonist FALLS THROUGH THE FLOOR. AGAIN. FOR THE 10TH TIME. BOY WATCH YOUR FEEET.
The clunky melee combat you probably know about already, and maybe the VENTS. But I'm venting in here. Are they hidden loading screens? Probably, bc you climb through them for a minimum of 20 stretches. Take a tiktok break.
Should you play it? Idk, I'm not your mother.
The clunky melee combat you probably know about already, and maybe the VENTS. But I'm venting in here. Are they hidden loading screens? Probably, bc you climb through them for a minimum of 20 stretches. Take a tiktok break.
Should you play it? Idk, I'm not your mother.
love the way your guy's head is primed to explode the INSTANT u hit zero health. this really is dogshit — its like if someone whacked every one of the original dead space devs in the skull with a lead pipe and left them to remake the game.
Clearly derivative of Dead Space and predictable, but it’s pretty fun overall and the visuals are really impressive (honestly one of the best looking games on PS5 right now). I hope it gets a sequel since there’s definitely potential to improve
I see criticism about the combat but I mostly thought it was fine? The dodge is kinda jank, but easy enough since there’s no timing and you just have to move the stick in both directions. You can also pick up and throw enemies into wall spikes everywhere, so I rarely felt swarmed
I guess its main issues would be how linear and uninspired the prison felt compared to say the Ishimura, and there’s too much time spent climbing through crawl spaces or vents. It also notably drops in quality in its last few hours when they start reusing these awful boss fights
And then there’s way too many annoying enemies that grab you in QTEs, which you can’t dodge and will still take a piece of health off. And simple stuff like being able to listen to audio logs while outside the menu just wasn’t in this for some reason
I see criticism about the combat but I mostly thought it was fine? The dodge is kinda jank, but easy enough since there’s no timing and you just have to move the stick in both directions. You can also pick up and throw enemies into wall spikes everywhere, so I rarely felt swarmed
I guess its main issues would be how linear and uninspired the prison felt compared to say the Ishimura, and there’s too much time spent climbing through crawl spaces or vents. It also notably drops in quality in its last few hours when they start reusing these awful boss fights
And then there’s way too many annoying enemies that grab you in QTEs, which you can’t dodge and will still take a piece of health off. And simple stuff like being able to listen to audio logs while outside the menu just wasn’t in this for some reason
It's FINE, good even! But only when it wants to be.
First, technicals, I played switching between a Steam Deck and a PC running an RTX 4090 Ti, surprisingly I feel like I had a better time on deck, this game is not well optimised for PC, stuttering that I assumed was the deck not being able to run the game turned out to just be something present in the game, it's constant and random and any time you're not in combat the game will stutter and pause, it's a real issue. On deck with some quick settings tweaks the game runs between 30-60 frames really consistently. I was adamant about playing this on deck as I planned to use it as a litmus test for Deck's longevity, if it can run this new AAA title then it surely has at least a couple of years ahead of it. And the deck passed! What a score.
Now, the game, The Callisto Protocol wildly flies from unbearable to pretty great, and I can tell you where that occurs. The cutscenes in this game are borderline embarassing, with flat, empty characters who have no arcs, outside of the main character who has an arc in the final 20 minutes of the game that comes across as entirely hollow because it's based on something he did that he actually didn't do and the game doesn't address that. The script is a dull amalgam of the worst of resident evil and Dead Space 3, some of it genuinely being laughable even in the final moments. The story and characters of this game would not feel out of place in a resident evil light gun game or call of duty side-mode story, it's really underwhelming, especially considering the big selling point of this game was being a follow up to Dead Space 2, which has great, interesting characters, a storyful and meaty world, and a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. It does not help that this game really tries to ape that game, multiple times just taking scenes verbatim directly from it.
When you're not suffering through the story, though, this is actually alright! Albeit marred by some design issues. I actually like what they've done with the combat. Once I learned the timings on the dodge, proper times to block, when to use ranged and melee attacks and adjusted my perception of what the kinesis module (sorry, GRP module) is used for, it all really clicked. The problem is that it's entirely designed for one-on-one enemy encounters. The weapons all pack a punch, feel satisfying to use, as do all the combat mechanics, and the upgrades all feel meaningful and ask you to choose your playstyle a bit, but it can't avoid the overwhelming fact that the combat just isn't designed for the game it's in. When one on one you get just enough time to find a place to heal, switch weapons (takes longer than you think) or pick up items, but with more than one you don't get a moment, if you didn't have the right weapons already equipped and full health before an encounter you're already f*cked. And it doesn't help that this game is TOUGH. I played through on normal and it was brutal, frustratingly brutal, sometimes detracts-from-the-game hard.
It's strange, I'd actually recommend this, I'd you don't care about the story and for the love of god play on easy mode, but do wait for a sale, or better yet, just play Dead Space 2, one of the best games of all time.
I'm going to replay this at Christmas and see if I feel any different, here's hoping the season pass makes a difference.
First, technicals, I played switching between a Steam Deck and a PC running an RTX 4090 Ti, surprisingly I feel like I had a better time on deck, this game is not well optimised for PC, stuttering that I assumed was the deck not being able to run the game turned out to just be something present in the game, it's constant and random and any time you're not in combat the game will stutter and pause, it's a real issue. On deck with some quick settings tweaks the game runs between 30-60 frames really consistently. I was adamant about playing this on deck as I planned to use it as a litmus test for Deck's longevity, if it can run this new AAA title then it surely has at least a couple of years ahead of it. And the deck passed! What a score.
Now, the game, The Callisto Protocol wildly flies from unbearable to pretty great, and I can tell you where that occurs. The cutscenes in this game are borderline embarassing, with flat, empty characters who have no arcs, outside of the main character who has an arc in the final 20 minutes of the game that comes across as entirely hollow because it's based on something he did that he actually didn't do and the game doesn't address that. The script is a dull amalgam of the worst of resident evil and Dead Space 3, some of it genuinely being laughable even in the final moments. The story and characters of this game would not feel out of place in a resident evil light gun game or call of duty side-mode story, it's really underwhelming, especially considering the big selling point of this game was being a follow up to Dead Space 2, which has great, interesting characters, a storyful and meaty world, and a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. It does not help that this game really tries to ape that game, multiple times just taking scenes verbatim directly from it.
When you're not suffering through the story, though, this is actually alright! Albeit marred by some design issues. I actually like what they've done with the combat. Once I learned the timings on the dodge, proper times to block, when to use ranged and melee attacks and adjusted my perception of what the kinesis module (sorry, GRP module) is used for, it all really clicked. The problem is that it's entirely designed for one-on-one enemy encounters. The weapons all pack a punch, feel satisfying to use, as do all the combat mechanics, and the upgrades all feel meaningful and ask you to choose your playstyle a bit, but it can't avoid the overwhelming fact that the combat just isn't designed for the game it's in. When one on one you get just enough time to find a place to heal, switch weapons (takes longer than you think) or pick up items, but with more than one you don't get a moment, if you didn't have the right weapons already equipped and full health before an encounter you're already f*cked. And it doesn't help that this game is TOUGH. I played through on normal and it was brutal, frustratingly brutal, sometimes detracts-from-the-game hard.
It's strange, I'd actually recommend this, I'd you don't care about the story and for the love of god play on easy mode, but do wait for a sale, or better yet, just play Dead Space 2, one of the best games of all time.
I'm going to replay this at Christmas and see if I feel any different, here's hoping the season pass makes a difference.
"Way back when in '08
I was the dandy of Ishimura
Sweet things from Visceral
So young and willing
Moved down to Activision
Where the hell am I?"
Calipso Prostatecolon is definetely a videogame released in 2022. It has everything, like graphics and sounds and you can kill the zombie and the zombie is not called a zombie it's anecromorph necrophage biomorph biophage and you punch him and he dies and it's :)
Utterly generic endeavour into sci fi horror, more preocupied with being a big action movie that you can play rather than being a cool game like it's spiritual grand papy, Dead Space. Karen Fukuhara and Starkiller (you know who he is, the bald guy and also Deacon in Days Gone apparently?) are completely wasted on their roles in this one. Just hunks of meat running around on a boring if beautifully done enviroment. Dead Space at least gave you cool setpieces and hid the cinematics pretty well, not yanking the controller out of your hands to show you how Space Person Number 3 dies a horrible, painful death. If you know what happens in the plot of this thing I'm calling bullshit.
On the meaty side, the combat is pretty solid, although with almost no variety or customization to the tools you're given (besides your electric club, you get 2 shotguns, 2 pistols and an smg). Guns are whatever, but the melee in this one does feel like an evolution to the action horror formula, with some basic but fun combos that make you want to go apeshit on those little hoes, just don't expect a deep system like some people imply it has, it's just a brawler with some nice sound effects. The gravity gauntlet is also pretty fun, pretty well designed towards combat and can become hilarously broken if you know what you're upgrading.
On the bad side, it's extremely funny that the game decides to implement stealth, spending a lot of time showing you how a certain type of enemy behaves when your ability to make strawberry jam out of them is equal to the rest of the pitifully small rooster of enemies. Like really, there are at best 4-5 types of dudes in there, and by the end it ends up recycling the end game style of Dead Space of making the enemies a different color and beeffier . Also why the fuck are there so many wall spikes everywhere? Even in the fucking infirmary you have a giant wall full of spikes ready to be used on whoever decides to slightly inconvenience you.
Jesus, the Call of Duty mines really do break a man. This felt so vapid to play, with barely any ideas of its own to the point you can tell the developers running back and fort between a room with 50 screens playing a Dead Space playthrough and Ghosts of Mars on repeat. Ceterum autem censeo Activision esse delendam.
P.D: One interesting thing about this game is that like the Dead Space Monolyth, it resurrected it's main inspiration from the dead. We have yet to see if what comes out is a horrible necromorph or our sweet savior, Frankenhooker.
I was the dandy of Ishimura
Sweet things from Visceral
So young and willing
Moved down to Activision
Where the hell am I?"
Calipso Prostatecolon is definetely a videogame released in 2022. It has everything, like graphics and sounds and you can kill the zombie and the zombie is not called a zombie it's a
Utterly generic endeavour into sci fi horror, more preocupied with being a big action movie that you can play rather than being a cool game like it's spiritual grand papy, Dead Space. Karen Fukuhara and Starkiller (you know who he is, the bald guy and also Deacon in Days Gone apparently?) are completely wasted on their roles in this one. Just hunks of meat running around on a boring if beautifully done enviroment. Dead Space at least gave you cool setpieces and hid the cinematics pretty well, not yanking the controller out of your hands to show you how Space Person Number 3 dies a horrible, painful death. If you know what happens in the plot of this thing I'm calling bullshit.
On the meaty side, the combat is pretty solid, although with almost no variety or customization to the tools you're given (besides your electric club, you get 2 shotguns, 2 pistols and an smg). Guns are whatever, but the melee in this one does feel like an evolution to the action horror formula, with some basic but fun combos that make you want to go apeshit on those little hoes, just don't expect a deep system like some people imply it has, it's just a brawler with some nice sound effects. The gravity gauntlet is also pretty fun, pretty well designed towards combat and can become hilarously broken if you know what you're upgrading.
On the bad side, it's extremely funny that the game decides to implement stealth, spending a lot of time showing you how a certain type of enemy behaves when your ability to make strawberry jam out of them is equal to the rest of the pitifully small rooster of enemies. Like really, there are at best 4-5 types of dudes in there, and by the end it ends up recycling the end game style of Dead Space of making the enemies a different color and beeffier . Also why the fuck are there so many wall spikes everywhere? Even in the fucking infirmary you have a giant wall full of spikes ready to be used on whoever decides to slightly inconvenience you.
Jesus, the Call of Duty mines really do break a man. This felt so vapid to play, with barely any ideas of its own to the point you can tell the developers running back and fort between a room with 50 screens playing a Dead Space playthrough and Ghosts of Mars on repeat. Ceterum autem censeo Activision esse delendam.
P.D: One interesting thing about this game is that like the Dead Space Monolyth, it resurrected it's main inspiration from the dead. We have yet to see if what comes out is a horrible necromorph or our sweet savior, Frankenhooker.
Truly the definition of an Ok game
I don't believe these are the people behind Dead Space. The atmosphere is great the lighting is amazing and the performances are good for what little they had to work with. The combat is such a hit or miss either being clunky melee garbage or satisfying crunchy sequences, it goes back and forth way too often. This game is just a long series of hallways with little to no scares, there's nothing scary about walking down a hallway and rushing an ememy with a baton, how can a horror game try to be scary while also making all encounters so mindless and easy? You never have to run or plan just walk forward, doge and melee on loop and it can get you through the entire game. The bosses are awful, literally the most generic and mechanically void fights I've ever done in a game, they are literally basic enemies but the dodge melee loop goes on for 3 minutes. The story is just ok and that's the best word I can use to describe this game, it's ok. Buy on heavy sale.