The Callisto Protocol is the ideological heir to Dead Space from, in fact, the creator of Dead Space, Glenn Scofield. From the first shows, the game on the network for some reason began to be terribly hyped, compared with the progenitor. But not with the one that came out in 2008, but with its nostalgic copy from time-clouded memories. As a result, The Callisto Protocol turned out to be the successor of the real Dead Space – with approximately the same problems and at the same level of quality.
The Callisto Protocol takes place in the Tinplate Space Prison
It is located on Jupiter’s moon Callisto. The conditions of detention in the “Tin” – really tin. With tormentors and murky medical interventions on the bodies of prisoners. The protagonist, space-faring Jacob, ends up behind bars by accident, but he doesn’t really have time to enjoy the prison romance. Within hours of his arrival on Callisto, something terrible happens. As a result, everything is on fire, prisoners and staff are torn apart, and mutant zombies run along the corridors.
At first, the goal is simple – to dump away. But over time, it becomes clear that before escaping, it would be nice to figure out what is happening here at all, otherwise there is no point in “escaping”. As in the original Dead Space, the plot in Callisto is minimal. The scenario is somehow revealed only through mockingly short audio diaries (some of just a few seconds long) scattered throughout the prison. Only at the end the picture develops, the universe of the game is overgrown with lore and a reserve for the continuation of the banquet. I will not spoil, but the scenario turns will make you remember Dead Space again.
Is it possible in the end to criticize the game for the almost complete lack of a plot? And how! Especially in the context of the fact that the developers probably spent a lot of money to attract Josh Duhamel and Karen Fukuhara to the main roles and make Unreal Engine 4 produce photorealistic faces with live animation. What’s the point? But with the plot and in the original Dead Space, everything was the same. For most of the game, Isaac Clarke was silently smearing Necromorph heads with iron shit, and the entire cart with the Church of Unitology floated up only at the very end. And fighting horror is, frankly, forgivable.
The Callisto Protocol scares the same methods as Dead Space – and they do not work
Here we also wander along the shabby corridors spattered with blood and shit, frightened by the rustles and jumping monsters. Or rather, we should be afraid, but something does not work out. The big question is why?
Perhaps the classic screamers, howling creatures from around the corner and flashing light bulbs have simply become obsolete, or even never really worked. Or the fact is that I remember the same Dead Space well, and the scarecrows are too familiar. Or maybe it’s all about the design.
The original Dead Space did not frighten me either, but it was still uncomfortable in it. And largely thanks to the design of the environment. The Ishimura was designed so crudely and utilitarianly that it must have looked horror in its best days without the guts on the walls. What was happening visually resembled the movie Event Horizon, high-tech, but some kind of dirty and hopeless sci-fi. On the other hand, of course, Necromorphs. Mangled, broken human bodies crawling in the dark, eager to cut off your legs with some kind of sharp growths – this is a powerful plus for the “Fuck it” atmosphere.
And The Callisto Protocol is a generic in this regard. The game looks amazing, the variety and detail of the locations is ok, but it doesn’t have its own striking visual style. This is already an average modern sci-fi, in some places it generally gives off “Mass Effect”. And the monsters, although sometimes cosplaying Necromorphs, still lose to them in disgust and do not cause shock. In this regard, the game is closer to Resident Evil than to Dead Space. However, with the exception of non-working scarecrows, this is not a big problem. Because in the case of The Callisto Protocol, the insipidity of the design is redeemed by the excellent work with the light, the most gorgeous sound (it’s almost ASMR) and a really powerful graphics, which is not ashamed to be called the “current generation”.
The Callisto Protocol is a dumb but fun game
In this regard, she does not lose to Dead Space, although it does not have its own powerful celling mechanics like shooting limbs off monsters with a laser cutter. Here we smack into the meat from a rough rumbling weapon and furiously hit it first with a crowbar, and then with a futuristic police baton. At the same time, blood flows in liters, and the limbs still scatter in all directions. The game also borrowed from Dead Space the ability to stomp on defeated enemies so that loot pours out of them. And it’s damn nice! Because it is tactilely juicy and is perceived as a powerful victory gesture. It is impossible to resist and not trample the defeated boss into the minced meat.
But there is an ambiguous moment in the combat system. The Callisto Protocol has been focusing on close combat for a long time, and therefore it has a dodge system that not everyone liked. Even before the enemy attacks, you need to hold to the right or left and the character is guaranteed to dodge. If you dodge to the left, but the monster does a combo and swings again, now you need to press to the right – and so on. There are also ideal dodges, counterattacks and blocks, but you can live without them – the essence is so elementary.
Some players did not like the simplicity of this mechanic – you don’t even need to guess the direction of the enemy’s attack! But for fast-paced combat horror, such simplifications are quite suitable for themselves – this is a linear single-player game about fun, not a salt-like. Others noted that such a dodge system does not work in battles with crowds of enemies – Jacob can only dodge from one enemy, while others can easily scratch his back at this moment. This is partly true, but not entirely.
The adoption of The Callisto Protocol combat system has three stages
At first, enemies rarely move in groups, battles are mostly one-on-one. At this point, the combat system seems just weird. Yes, there is a feeling that everything is somehow too simple. However, it is very pleasant to hit zombie heads with all the dope with anything in The Callisto Protocol, it becomes clear right away. The game sells its bloody fury successfully.
Then the enemies start to gop-stop Jacob in groups, and he only has a baton and a frail, unpumped pistol. If you drop the game at this moment, then you can remain with the opinion that it is shit, and the combat system in it is broken. But it doesn’t last that long – literally an hour.
And then Jacob gets hold of a shotgun and a kinetic module, and that’s when The Callisto Protocol is revealed. If you combine the entire arsenal of the hero, then there are no problems in battles with crowds: you grab someone with telekinesis and throw them on spikes, you shoot someone with an explosive gas cylinder, you shoot someone’s leg, and you hit someone on the head with a club – effectively and funny! Close combat becomes part of the “big” combat mechanics and ceases to be its basis.
However, this does not mean that there are no problems at all.
In close combat, the camera is fixed on the enemy and does not want to come off him until you finish him off – dodges also work only against him. In fact, having entered into close combat, you completely lose the ability to somehow control the crowd – by itself, in mass battles, this annoys and interferes. Well, when you try to escape from the herd of mutants, it becomes obvious that the attacks of the enemies are too much magnetic to the hero. This makes some battles stifling. But there is still much more fun in the game, so the impressions are not blurred much.
However, in the second part (if there is one, the results of the first one are still modest) there is definitely something to be improved. And it’s not just about crowd control – it would be nice to add at least some kind of gameplay setting. There is not exactly one interesting situation in the game. Just arenas with zombies. If there are a lot of zombies, there will definitely be spikes, cutters and abysses to throw them there. That’s all fantasy. By the tenth hour of passage, it begins to tire a little.
Well, it would be nice to see normal optimization next time. Now the problems with stutters and frame drops on PC and Xbox are no longer so serious (after a couple of patches weighing tens of gigabytes), but they are still far from ideal.
The Callisto Protocol feels like a game from the Xbox 360 era. It’s a brutal bloody action game – not very long, not burdened with any breakthrough ideas and completely linear.
In fact, with all the cons of The Callisto Protocol, it really pulls for the title of messiah of singles in 2022, because that’s exactly what they don’t really do anymore. Is that the season pass spoils the picture a bit. Well, there is a certain irony in the fact that the messiah is a stupid, but beautiful action movie for seven out of ten, we live in such times.
Unseen: Five great (and nasty) scenes from Dead Space 2