Back when I was in undergrad and majoring in advertising for some stupid reason, I played ‘Dead Space’ and had a weird time with it. I, for another stupid reason, didn’t pick up on the need to fight enemies by attacking limbs, despite the many obvious “hints” dropped on me. Notably the words “CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS” written in blood right next to the first weapon you acquire. Whether the two reasons are related is for you to decide and me to ignore. Needless to say, I went through the first ‘Dead Space’ scoring headshots like a massive hard-ass, and being confused about why that did not secure a kill, believing it to be the result of bad game design. This was a certified DUMB moment for me.

So when I discovered there was a spiritual successor to the game I so defiantly refused to play properly, I was mildly interested in the prospect of correcting some perceived wrongdoing of my past self. Once it was offered for free on PSN, I became moderately interested in it. After playing ‘The Callisto Protocol’ for about two hours, I lost that interest and am currently unsure if ‘Dead Space’ would have been good regardless of how I played. Fortunately, there’s an easier metric to distinguish this, as the remake of ‘Dead Space’, aka ‘Dead Space’, released shortly after this did. It was boring as fuck, so I guess I got my answer.

In my short time with ‘The Callisto Protocol', one thing became very clear to me. That is, it's difficulty in removing itself from ‘Dead Space'. The melee combat is introduced with some of the deepest fascination with violence I’ve witnessed, opting to showcase the excess blood splatter resulting from your blunt weaponry smashing into the game’s enemies, with chunks of meat tearing from their bodies with each swing of your baton. One enemy encounter will frost your character with blood like icing on a cake. This is not only highly reminiscent of the aforementioned franchise’s grotesque sensibilities, but a heavy reminder of how ‘Dead Space’ marketed itself back in the late aughts and early 10s. ‘Dead Space 2’ was presented as a game your mom will hate, given the voracity of violence committed unto both the player and your enemies. Whether or not your mom actually hates it, one thing we can all agree on is it being a very “seventh generation video game marketing strategy” marketing strategy. One of my favorite interactions ever was as a teenager in a Wal-Mart video game aisle with my brother, as we were approached by a child and told how cool ‘Assassin’s Creed II’ was because you could stab two people at the same time, which was "badass”. I wonder if this child remembers the interaction and cringes, because I always remember it and laugh at him.

My point, I guess, is the gore present in the ‘Dead Space’ games was notably a product of it's time, and I don’t feel it’s why the games were as big as they were, even if that is how advertisers saw the games. And to the children who did put stock into that violence, well, they are grown now, and have hopefully matured enough to stop considering Ubisoft games as “badass”. The gore in ‘The Callisto Protocol’ is incredibly silly, and merely reminded me of when video games were more interested in how many limbs could be uniquely animated to fly off a body, as opposed to engaging gameplay. Yes, this is me shitting on ‘Dead Space’, and no I am not sorry, nor am I done. It isn’t a very good game and it never was.

This got way off rails, my bad. Anyway, I didn’t play ‘The Callisto Protocol’ long enough to see if it eventually managed to find it’s own identity. The awful melee combat and even worse gunplay kept me from doing that. As-is, it’s just the same sci-fi horror with aggressively uninspired aesthetic design and a complete inability to actually be scary, all of which was done in a better way, fifteen years ago, by a mediocre video game. 2/6