Note: The following review of The Callisto Protocol contains spoilers for the game and the original Dead Space.

The Callisto Protocol is a spiritual successor to the Dead Space video game series with Glen Schofield serving as the game’s director. When I first heard about this game back in the 2020 Game Award’s, I was very excited to see spiritual successor to Dead Space when the series was mostly laid and buried.

Two years later, it finally comes out and it gets a pretty middling reception with very low sales. I was still willing to give the game a chance and after finishing the game in 4 hours. As predictable as I sound right now, I found it to be very underwhelming and lackluster compared to Dead Space. I’ll be doing a lot of comparisons to this game with Dead Space. To be specific the original 2008 not the 2023 remake by Motive Studios. I can safely say you’re better off playing both the original and remake over this.

The game begins with you onto a mission as something akin to a space trucker but first you’re followed by a mysterious woman who’s looking for something in a town full of dead people. She encounters a weird small cube with an anime-chibi on it. I don’t know what significance this plays but we’ll find out.
After that you’re taken to the game’s main protagonist. Jacob Lee and his co-worker/best friend Max. While checking up on things you’re ship gets raided by an unknown agency; lead by the same woman in the flashback now known as Dani Nakamura. Max winds up getting killed in the raid where I was just like whatever. Not enough time to get to know him so yeah.
Your ship crashes onto Jupiter’s moon Callisto and taken prisoner by the warden Leon Ferris and a couple of tough and big robots. The story of the game can be best summarized as. Very lacking, I couldn’t give any two shits about Max or Dani throughout my playthrough as they felt underdeveloped and uninteresting. Dani is meant to be more of the mysterious woman type but she hardly has anything that interest me in the slightest aside from the times she tried to kill me.
I can’t say that the characters in the first Dead Space were the most captivating but what makes up for them is how helpful they are in giving you objectives and their environmental storytelling that carries it throughout the game. Which pulls me in thanks to the lore and mystery behind the Ishimura. After taken prisoner and branded. Jacob wakes up to a prison cell followed by chaos and seeing prisoners brutalized by the robots and prisoners killing security guards and themselves for survival. Jacob hooks up with a man named Eli and admittingly he was probably the only character that had more screen time compared to the rest.
In my playthrough I was expecting there to be some prisoners and security guards for me to fight but It was mostly just mutant monsters. I get that this is a horror game but a lot of the mutants you fight are a joke. Once you get the hang of it, it boils down to this, dodge, dodge, whack, whack, dodge, dodge, whack, whack, rinse and repeat. The monsters and their variants never change their fighting style and do the same thing over and over. There are a couple of ones that aren’t humanoids such as the one that crawls up onto you and blows up, one that has an annoying as shit sequence where you tap triangle to shank it to death, a small leech-like monster that just sucks your face and you kill it by pressing triangle and an invisible monster that shows up a few times and fucks off until the final act. You can also levitate enemies with a pull that allows you to toss enemies in spikes or shred them. Its satisfying at first but gets old later on as you’ll just be mashing dodge and melee.

The enemy variety is very lacking in terms of variety. What makes these encounters less intense is that at some point in a callback to Dead Space via a wall of text. Is that they grow tentacles and turn into a much stronger version of it but can also be circumvented by just doing the same thing. It gets so tiresome and when you shoot the tentacle before mutation it dies instantly. Stomping their bodies like in Dead Space gives you credits, ammo and health which is always nice but not enough credits for me to upgrade my weapons which I’ll get to in a sec.
I was kind of hoping to see more personality of this prison site. Such as prisoners killing security guards, forming gangs, taking advantage of the chaos and being about as dangerous as the monsters you fight. They can dodge your attacks, parry you and would even resort to guns and killing them would give stuff in return giving you ammo and junk to sell to give the prisoners personality and story to them.
The security guards could be the deadliest as they have access to things like security drones and robots to aid them. There’s even a point where you could hack the robots to turn against them on their masters. Fighting them one on one would be scary as they have better armor and more experienced in all the training they go through.
Plus, prisoners ganging up on you and the guard which would result in a very chaotic scenario and the monsters killing anyone indiscriminately giving you an advantage.
I’m stretching as wide as I can but I just got so tired of doing the same thing over and over again. Not to mention there is stealth in the game but is hardly ever implanted. There are a few sequences that are scripted requiring you to avoid the robots. Which I find waaaay more terrifying than the monsters you fight. They’re extremely underused and seem lack a dire need of some tense stealth sections that require less combat and more sneaking around trying to avoid getting instantly killed.

What I like about the necromorphs in Dead Space is how diverse they are in terms of size and design. The common slasher that utilizes the vents to flank you and one variant that’s tougher and spits acid. The lurkers with their tentacle projectile attacks and crawling up on walls. Infectors turn dead bodies into a stronger necromorph that takes less damage. Pregnants (no that’s literally their name) that mutilate their stomachs and small parasite creatures gang up on you, twitchers being more aggressive and faster. Divider’s, brutes, leapers and exploder’s and the hunter that encourage strategies for the player to be careful of. I mean shooting their limbs off does get easy. It’s their aggression and tactics is what makes them memorable and fun to fight.

Here I can’t stand to dodge and fight the same re-skin humanoid freak over and over. Another last thing to bring up before continuing is the blind enemies you fight in the game’s third act. If you get caught by them, you just do the same thing or stealthily kill them. They’re a massive joke and easily the worst enemy of the game. There are no repercussions of getting caught and its just a normal battle.

Now that we’re done. Let’s talk about horror, horror is subjective when it comes to video games. You’ll either find yourself uncomfortable or stressed out. Dead Space isn’t a super scary game either but it has a lot of atmosphere and the sense of isolation. The Callisto Protocol is mostly just scripted sequences where you crawl into vents or gaps and followed by a jumpscare to startle you. This gets old really quickly and it’s in every single section of the game. For a man who wants to make a scary video game. The build-up, sense of tension and dread is lacking.
There is a plethora of jumpscares and half the time it gives me a good laugh. I about lost my fucking shit at one that y’know the cliché where the character is face is turned around and the character tells them “hey, is something the matter?” and followed by a scare. It’s their alright.
Despite the negativity there are a few positives. The presentation in this game is incredible with great art direction, enemy designs and style that’s very appealing to look at. I’d like the mine section and some parts of the third act did good for me but not enough to make me change my opinion of it.
The combat may not be all that good. Exploration makes it worse. There are optional areas you can explore and it mostly boils down to fighting a few enemies and chest with some loot to sell at your store for upgrades. Much like in Dead Space, allows you to sell items for more credits (dubbed ‘Callisto Credits’) and improve your weapons. You’re going to be mostly relying on melee attacks and less on your guns often. Gun schematics can be found in the game ranging from shotguns, pistols and a machine gun. The weapon variety is pretty small but you’re going to be not using them a whole lot until the final boss which I’ll also get to.

The guns are mostly good for shooting the tentacles rather than killing them outright. I need to bring this up before I forget. The inventory management is GOD FUCKING AWFUL. You have so much shit in your inventory that you’ll wind up dropping some pieces of ammo or health to pick up a shiny thing for a ton of creds. Which makes me think why wasn’t there and upgrade the station to improve your inventory space? It’s so annoying. Not only that, but the loot you also get is akin to finding only one-dollar bill and an occasionally hundred-dollar bill. It’s a little unsatisfying, the stronger upgrades cost tons and tons of money and you won’t find much if you conserve.

The Callisto Protocol is a little lacking in bosses and difficulty. Given its repetitive combat and scares. We are now entering spoiler territory.
During the mine section of the game of the third act, you fight this conjoined two-headed boss that you fight four times in different sections of the game. This and the robots are probably the best enemies of the game. As it encourages you to use your guns more and use less melee. Why couldn’t they have more enemies like this is beyond me.
After a pretty engaging fight, you stop at a place called “MidTown” (perfectly sums up the game for me) and you fight the two headed-monster again. The prison warden Leon Farris makes another appearance as this mutated-albino Thanos-esque monster. Who I’ll admit could’ve been a tough fight. Once you realize that you have to dodge four or three hit combos followed by a few whacks. He becomes a joke.
We are now in the steps of finding a doctor named Mahler. As she is working on a cure for your friend/half-villain sidekick Dani after getting infected by that small parasite thing that face fucks you.

You escape the prison, fight your way through and that town with all those dead corpses was a cover-up to test out the virus and the small cube turns out to be Dani’s little sister.
You fight Leon one last time for a cure and he becomes a giant mutated creature who much like the two-headed monster can damage you hard if you don’t dodge. You use your guns, followed by an escape sequence. You sacrifice your life for her and followed by a message saying that there is hope to stop the virus and another jumpscare by Leon in another callback to Dead Space.

That’s the jest of it. The final boss was pretty easy if you know what you’re doing. The bosses in Dead Space were only two, if not counting the brutes or the hunter. The Leviathan and The Hivemind were faaaar more memorable compared to them.
Not only that all the plot twists with Kendra and the revealation of The Marker and your girlfriend was very shocking. Dead Space’s story may not be strong, it does its job well.

I don’t know if we’ll ever see a sequel to this game but I hope Glen and his crew can do better. The Callisto Protocol can be best described as “wasted potential” there is a meat to this game. The bone, however, is missing and needs an extra spice.

One more thing to add is that there’s something about this being connected to PUBG due to contractional obligations and it just became its own IP. Does anyone even give a shit about PUBG these? Eh, who cares.

Not the worst survival horror game I’ve played but it could’ve been so much worse.