Edit: I beat it. It was overall ok. I didn't expect the game to be a For Honor style space brawler that isn't scary in the slightest once you realize that you're a fairly strong fighter that can beat the shit out of every enemy once you learn the workings of the dodge mechanics.

Compared to Dead Space, Callisto is more spectacle than substantive. The one thing I can knock it for is having rather shallow melee combat for a game that wants you to do it alooooooooot. I don't mind the focus on melee to differentiate itself from Dead Space, but combined with the linear exploration, barebones story and shorter game length really make it hard for me to recommend this game for full price.

Despite it's flaws, I think the Callisto Protocol will be seen as a benchmark of production quality the games industry is capable of in 2022. The models look great, the environments look highly detailed and interesting. The goddamn lighting team needs a raise, and then another raise after that for how good the lighting is. The effects will often leave you in awe -- and are so goddamn good that when you see the occasional bad fire effect, it's really jarring.

Watch someone play it until it's half it's current price or inevitably available on a subscription service. It's worth playing, but not paying. Looking forward to hopefully way more in the future if the game is successful.

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.

Unfortunately, this game was just an underwhelming disappointment across the board. I did have certain expectations since some of the staff came from the Dead Space trilogy, but I guess along the way the devs forgot what made that series so interesting. Dead Space wasn't always scary, but the series did have some of the more interesting weapons in the genre, as well as an attention to detail for sound, lore, UI, locations, & enemy encounters

Callisto on the other has next to no tension, non-immersive menus, and the story, monsters, combat/weapons, level design are all either bland, forgettable, or annoying

I really did try to like this title, but I just couldn't ignore the lack of quality...

Pre-ordered (which got me the Day 1 edition, as if that mattered) for the heck of it and played it for a couple of hours today. Fantastic cinematography, graphics, and lighting if only it wouldn't have the dreaded microstuttering that plagues UE games. Surprisingly pedestrian compared to its Dead Space progenitors with many details copied over, right down to the costume and gun designs. The combat system is almost DOA - if it weren't so viscerally fun I would have stopped playing almost immediately because it only really works when you're fighting 1 or 2 enemies at the most or otherwise spamming gravity manipulation until it runs out.

Overall a mixed bag that did live up to the hype in some ways, but I already returned it. Perhaps I'll buy it again when it goes on sale (and has had a few more patches).

The Callisto Protocol se ha comparado hasta la saciedad con Dead Space desde el momento de su anuncio. Es algo completamente comprensible; supervivencia en el espacio, una infección que afecta a seres humanos y los transforma en auténticas monstruosidades, Glen Schofield en la dirección... No son pocas las similitudes y aun así, por lo menos para mí, es un título con identidad propia.

No estamos ante un videojuego perfecto, es obvio, ningún videojuego lo es, al menos para mí. Pero si es una obviedad que The Callisto protocol dista mucho de ser una mala experiencia. Tiene una puesta en escena espectacular, es lo más avanzado gráficamente hablando que hay en la industria. Apunta a una variedad en el combate intercalando combate a melé junto con armas a distancia que es una gozada. Y por último, una historia sobre lo macabro que puede ser la idea de forzar la evolución humana.

"¿Dead Space o The Callisto Protocol?" Te preguntarán algunos. Yo elijo disfrutar de los dos. Estoy convencido de que con el tiempo se reivindicará y lo sumaremos a la lista junto con muchos otros videojuegos como The Order 1886 o Days Gone entre otros.

This game is pretty much the textbook definition of "Mid".

On the positive side, It looks great, has a cool setting, has detailed gore physics and feels great to play with the dualsense. But unfortunately that's about it, as the story is a nothing-sandwich of undercooked cliches and the combat has a brain dead auto-dodge mechanic that makes solo fights too easy but then makes group fights a clunky mess. The "stealth" is also embarrassingly easy with some Dollar Tree clickers that feel impossible to ever get caught by. And then to top it off, the game has an utterly flaccid atmosphere that doesn't illicit a sense of fear at any point during the campaign. Not an exaggeration, this game has around 50 jumpscares and not a single one even got me to flinch, and most of them made me laugh. It's a shame this feels so stale because the art/animation team really deserved a better game and the devs should have just leaned into the action more instead of trying to be SpookyTM. Thankfully since this game goes absolutely nowhere narratively, it should be very easy to give things a 2nd attempt in a sequel, and I hope they do. All they need to do is completely redesign the combat, spend more than 30 seconds constructing the plot and then just give up on horror because clearly that's not the genre for them.

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

Definitely hoped for better.
Unfortunately, this game continues the legacy of games that get released clearly unfinished. The game is generally enjoyable, though not really scary beyond a jump scare here and there, it's all ruined by the performance issues. The game stutters pretty much whenever anything happens and it makes it impossible to actually be immersed. Even when lowering pretty much every setting in a massive way it didn't fix the issues.
It's a shame, while this game isn't groundbreaking it could have been a good time had it didn't suffer from these issues.

PC optimization kinda sucks dunkey balls but game itself is good in first 2 hours, will update after finishing it.

UPDATE: I don't know what to say about this game... I don't think it is bad because of few great elements, but everything else just doesn't work. Level design and enemy placements are just terrible and they are the biggest sin of this game.

Again, I don't know what to say, It is just like a headache, don't buy it at full price tag , wait for a big patch and a huge sale (%75 and more is good).

playing on Series X, performance mode and easy.

currently 2 hours in.

why easy difficulty? well, saw many comments about hard difficulty and flawed combat design. On Easy, the combat is fine imo and the gore is the focus.

Graphics are stellar even on performance mode and fidelity modus is bugged/flawed anyway on series x because of missing ray tracing.

combat is fine imo, attacks feel heavy and the gore is heavy. for me it is fun.

looking forward to play more.

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.

second best game of the year hands down. incredible music, visuals, and combat. incredibly challenging and rewarding. the weightiness and creativity of the combat system is a lovely breath of fresh air for the survival horror genre. performance is incredibly exaggerated, it runs just fine with limited hitching. that being said shame on Krafton for their use of Denuvo and their consumer unfriendly ToS. story’s alright, but we all know that’s not why you’re playing it. definitely recommend this game.

Callisto Protocol was one of my most anticipated games of the year and it sadly didn't scratch the survival Horror itch I was hoping it would.

The games atmosphere is great showing off the horrid Black Iron facility as you move about, the game jumps from fully enticing to mediocre almost in a room by room basis.
The combat is sometimes a clunky mess and other times a frantic brawl of melee strikes and dodges stringing together blows and shots to stun lock enemies till they die.

This is where my main complaint comes from with specific upgrades to your melee weapon, Jacob can infinitely lock down almost EVERY enemy in the game. After a few hours I had so much ammo and health injectors stocked up (Played on Maximum Security) the game lost all tension. Another random issue I had was that the tutorial for combat gave me the wrong idea for dodging. I spent the first half of the game trying to dodge like I was playing Fight Night, timing dodges left and right based on what arm was being thrown at me. Only to find out on the 5th chapter I just had to hold left or right.

While it may sound like I'm just dunking on this game for being clunky and easy to abuse there's genuine moments with Callisto where I was in love with its sci fi setting and lore building and characters. I really hope Striking Distance build upon this with a sequel and fine tune the combat.


Not quite what I imagined the spiritual successor to Dead Space to play like but, I still enjoyed my time with it. Looking forward to where the series goes from here.

The Callisto protocol or I would call it
Why didn't you DOOOOOOOOOOGGGGEEEE!!!?

The Callisto Protocol is a Survival horror game and spiritual succesor of the dead space series. You plays as the character named Jacob who was unfairly arrested and now is trying to escape the prison.

The first positive of the game is the graphics. I did enjoy the style of the game. exploring the prison and getting out into a snow covered planet was amazing. I heard the Pc version had a lot of issues at launch. I got the ps5 version so I didn't have a lot of problems but some minor pop ups of random things.

Unfortunately that's the only thing positive I can give. The gameplay is kind of hit or miss with the game wants you to use melee against the monsters. (Sadly, they didn't give the monsters a name) you'll be doing that much in the game, and you'll need to doge their attacks and attack back. It's going to take a lot of practice to see which way the monsters going to hit but it feels though i just got lucky when dodging them. You're going to need to master this for the mini bosses that one hit kills you on harder difficulty.

But my major gripe with the game is healing and reloading. When you need to heal Jacob crouches down and injects the medicine inside him (I called it heal mode) when he is doing that, he's open to all attacks which leads to unfair deaths or attacks. why couldn't it be like dead space and just press one button and your healed? And the guns take too long to reload and to change weapons. The enemies love to get close and when you're attacking them just to see your out of bullets the monster evolves and it's tearing you apart.

I'm kind of disappointed of how it turned out. I can forgive the gameplay and the weak storyline but when I saw the trailers, I thought this game would be scary and sadly it wasn't scary and left me frustrated most of the time. If they didn't compare this game to dead space, I would be a lot easier on it. wait for a price drop for this game or watch youtube playthroughs of it.

Beaten on Maximum Security. This is VERY much a 'mixed' review, but I think someone who hasn't played Dead Space before would enjoy it more than I did.

I'm a huge fan of the Dead Space series, apart from... well, the obvious one. So I was pretty excited about this game. Was it worth it? ...Kind of. Largely, as much as I maybe shouldn't, I'm going to be comparing this game to Dead Space 1 and 2 generally.

Much of my problems come from the fact that I find the game to be a bit of a regression from Dead Space 2, and the game's primary combat loop being unsatisfying to both use and master, and the horror elements being only 'okay'.

This might be a bit of a hot take, but I've always been on the opinion that Dead Space 2 absolutely windmill dunks on Dead Space 1, from horror to gameplay to atmosphere. And the reason for that is because I've always viewed the IP as something more closer to splatter films than I do your typical horror might be. The games have always... not been very subtle. They don't build tension for very long before blaring trumpets and noise at you. Not that the series can't, indeed the abandoned tram in the later chapters of 2 proves it can, but it often is contrasted with limbs and fervor.

Dead Space's horror, has, largely, been about the 'frenzy' form. A confusion of sounds and stimulus and worry of 'what the hell is going to come next'. The pants-shitting moments, as they were, in the original games are when you hear an AI go "lockdown in process." or something similar, as you know the next few minutes of your life are going to involve alot of things trying to eat you. The game's are 'scary', but they aren't about a continual build of tension. This is largely why I think Dead Space 2 is better, with its huge enemy variety (shoutouts to the raptor encounters especially) and better contrast. It leans into the chaos (even if, yes, the iron man stunts are a bit silly, im not gonna pretend they arent) and contrasts it better with nightmare visions, quiet terror. Where as Dead Space 1 likes to >think< its building up tension, but pays it off way too fast and way too often. It has a heightened sense of 'general' tension for most of the game, but there's clear safe rooms, and it often dispels it's own attempts at scaring the player by overplaying its hand.

Now, I've talked a whole damn lot and have only really talked about dead space. What does any of this have to do with Callisto Protocol, beyond the obvious 'the dead space guys made it.' Well, because for all intents and purposes, this game is Dead Space 1.5. It's got that industrial, nostromo-alien feel to it for the vast majority of the game, a lot of the 'they're in the walls/vents/what have you' atmosphere to it, and it has much more of an emphasis on general tension than specific scares. Even the way Jacob is constantly looking over his shoulder reminds me of how Isaac would look in space 1.

And this certainly isn't a bad thing; Black Iron keeps the series speciality of being very well thought out and practical. You can see how the prison functions, even during its destruction. And I think it nails its atmosphere better than Dead Space 1 ever did. The problem is that not only do I feel like it took a step back from Dead Space 2, which meshed its horror elements much better and made them something that made sense for the splatter film type goreshow the games rightfully are, it kept the problems of the original dead space 1.

An example. Early in the game, you are crawling through a small squeeze while you come face to face with a webbed up, infected corpse. You get a pretty good close look at it. The eye of the corpse shoots open to follow Jacob as hes leaving the squeeze. This is a pretty creepy moment, but ruined by the extremely loud blaring of noise and orchestra that happens right when the eye opens. The Dead Space devs struggle to hold it in their pants for longer than a few minutes before needing to shout over the clifftops at that something scary is approaching. It's only when they go after long, singular chapters of quiet that it works. This 'general' tension thats supposed to linger over the whole game never works, because dead space is by its core, a loud splatter film.

So what about the gameplay? A mixed bag. Gone are the inventive and unique armory of Dead Space 1, of mining equipment turned arsenal, or the high powered sci-fi military equipment of 2. Instead we have the most basic, unimaginative weapons possible. Pistol, shotgun, assault rifle. Woopie.

The biggest question mark with the gameplay, however, is the melee system. Essentially the game locks you into a soft QTE with every enemy you face. Everything is dodged by holding a directional button. No timing element. This makes avoiding attacks >extremely< easy when it comes to 1 enemy, barely even a threat. When another enemy gets involved, one of two things happens; the other enemy will sit, and wait its turn like a good little Not!Necromorph, or they will try and hit you during this soft QTE. If they do, and you've already pressed the attack button, then oops, you're getting hit with no input, because once you press the attack button nothing on gods earth is stopping you from finishing it. This leads to the gameplay, especially in the first few hours, to be tedious. Things will only ever hit you if you've accidentally committed to something without seeing an attack or out of vision, because its impossible to fail otherwise. Rarely does damage you receive feel like a mistake as much as it does your little brother taking your controller out of your hands in the middle of a QTE.

Also, sadly, gone is the system of upgrading. Power nodes are gone, instead you inject money directly into the gun to make it stronger. It's not a terrible idea, but I found power nodes to be much more satisfying as a reward for exploration and tinkering around where you maybe shouldn't be. The monetary rewards you get in this game... never feel like enough up until the third act, where it suddenly showers you in it right before the final boss.

So... overall, do I recommend this? I don't know. I can't really help but feel disappointed as someone who likes dead space 1 and adores dead space 2, this game feels like a lot of missed opportunity. But we don't get much survival horror, especially not at this production quality. And while the game is clunky at times and derivative in a bad way in others, it's also artistically sound, with a strong atmosphere and great, haunting area to explore. Maybe that's all you need. I suspect it will be for most people.

(I literally just copied my steam review lol)