The Callisto Protocol Review: Identity Crisis in Space
Ali Hasan December 19, 2022
The Callisto Protocol has drawn comparisons with Dead Space ever since its reveal in August and rightfully so, the game is led by the co-creator of the legendary trilogy, Glenn Schofield who reworks his original pitch for the first entry into this game. Developer Striking Distance has had a lot to prove with what is essentially a Dead Space game in everything but the title. Not only did The Callisto Protocol have to live up to the grandiose of the Dead Space trilogy but also improve and twist the formula in a way that makes it excel above its spiritual predecessor.
While it does turn in incredible visuals, a deep and gory combat system and manages to keep you on your feet with a sense of ever-present tension and horror, it tends to be flat in its execution, marred down by puzzling design choices and sometimes a more than needed reliance on Dead Space which makes it feel just another entry in that series. The Callisto Protocol isn’t a bad game by any stretch of the word but isn’t an excellent one either, it is a return to the classic survival horror games of the 2010s but it could have been so much more.
The Callisto Protocol Perfectly Nails The Survival Horror Atmosphere
The Callisto Protocol takes place in Black Iron prison on the moon of Callisto. The player assumes the role of Jacob Lee as he finds himself fighting against a mysterious plague that has turned the inhabitants of Black Iron into gruesome creatures known as biophages. From the onset the sense of dread and fear is palpable. Like Resident Evil 3, The Callisto Protocol keeps you on the edge of your seat with unexpected twists, turns, and enemy encounters. The game does an excellent job of capturing the uneasiness of the Dead Space games, one that has been missing from the gaming space for far too long.
Hearing biophages moving around the corridors or vents gets your adrenaline pumping as you peer around every corner and turn to make sure they don’t catch you off guard. This is further accentuated by the incredible use of 3D audio. The atmosphere has been nailed to a T, replicating Dead Space, but also modernizing it with newer technology. Every corridor has a distinct feel and taste and no two areas ever feel the same despite the game’s very linear structure and the fact that it mostly takes place in the prison. The game does an excellent job of building and progressing the atmosphere and environments throughout the roughly eight-hour-long campaign.
Puzzling Design Choices Severely Hold The Game Back
The Callisto Protocol does however rely a bit too much on cheap jump scares. While games like Resident Evil throw in a jump scare every now and then to keep you on your feet, the frequency at which they occur in the Callisto Protocol just borders on being annoying and repetitive. Pretty much every locker you open to loot will throw a small biophage at you as a jump scare. While it is genuinely scary the first time around, having it pop up again and again just lessens its impact the more you play.
This is also true for the death animations which were marketed to be the game’s biggest gimmick. Like the jump scares, they’re cool and gruesome at first but get annoying and tedious surprisingly fast. Seeing Jacob die the same way in what feels like an overly drawn-out death animation really killed the flow of the game for me. This is especially true for hard bosses or encounters where you die multiple times, with the game leveraging the power of newer hardware I wanted to get right back into the action after dying but instead I was forced to sit through long waiting times as I saw Jacob gruesomely die over and over again.
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The Over-Reliance on Dead Space Works Against The Game
Furthermore, The Callisto Protocol, like Dead Space features an integrated HUD, with Jacob’s health displayed along his neck and the ammo count on the guns showing up on the guns themselves. This is one area where I felt like they took the Dead Space inspiration way too far. The integrated HUD set-up works for Dead Space because it’s a slower-paced game and consequently your health is visible to you at all times.
In The Callisto Protocol, however, Jacob moves around so much, whether that’s through his melee attacks or dodges that it becomes almost impossible to keep tabs on your health at all times. This is especially cumbersome during boss fights because I had no idea how much health I had left at any given time which resulted in me having to sit through those tedious death animations over and over again.
The Callisto Protocol’s Narrative is Serviceable but Relies on Dated Mechanics to Deliver The Meat of The Story
The Callisto Protocol has all the ingredients for a great narrative with an interesting setting, a well-rounded cast of characters, and a central mystery, for the most part, it does present its story quite well, especially during the prologue and through much of its first act but slows down all the way towards the end until the final twist which to my surprise tied the game together very well. While I won’t be spoiling the game here, what’s on display is good, not excellent but serviceable. Most of the lore is delivered through audio logs littered throughout the game which add a nice bit of background to Black Iron and the characters but I would have liked a more robust approach here. Audio logs have seldom proven to be an interesting and engaging storytelling tool.
The game doesn’t have an exhaustive list of characters but the ones that are present are acted impeccably. Standout performances for me were Karen Fukuhara’s Dani Nakamura and Sam Witwer’s Captain Leon Ferris. The latter of which serves as a secondary protagonist. Sam Witwer’s performance is simply outstanding, he steals every scene he’s in, it would have been nice to see more of him. The game also features an incredible amount of detail whether that’s through the character models or the Black Iron itself, everything is supremely detailed and all of this is further accentuated through the implementation of ray-traced shadows which add a sense of believability to the entire presentation.
The Combat is Visceral and Satisfying…
The combat was another big selling point of this game, promising an experience close to what the original Dead Space had achieved back in 2008, despite this and a fairly strong foundation, it ended up being the one element that disappointed me the most. The Callisto Protocol’s combat starts out relatively simple and melee-focused which feels incredible.
Every swing of the weapon and how it connects and hits the limbs of the enemies feels crunchy, weighty, and oh-so-satisfying, there’s a real visceral and grounded feel to the combat as every enemy projects an accurate blood splatter that cakes Jacob in blood and grime as he makes his way through hoards and hordes of biophages. The first half of the game plays perfectly into the survival horror aspect of the game but falls apart in the second.
…But Very Inconsistent
As you progress through the story you unlock more powerful weapons including shotguns and railguns to go up against deadlier enemies, this shifts the focus towards a more action-oriented third-person shooter rather than the methodical survival horror that the game starts out as. New game mechanics can work but when they undermine what the first few hours of the game have set up, it feels very jarring and not at all enjoyable.
What starts out as a slow and precise approach to enemies quickly devolves into mindless shooting and dodging hoping that you’ll make it out alive. For example, the dodging mechanic is fairly straightforward; you push the right stick on the controller toward the direction where you want to dodge. This works when you have one or two enemies on screen as it is fairly easy to deduce their behavior when there isn’t a lot going on but when the game throws a number of high-powered enemies at you (later on in the game) it becomes a useless mechanic that just does not work because there is absolutely no way to accurately predict enemy movement when there are five or more on screen.
The Callisto Protocol is in a Constant Identity Crisis
The grip mechanic which allows the player to manipulate objects in the environment also becomes increasingly less useful the more you progress through the story, it works great at dispelling a small crowd when you’re running low on ammo but when it comes to bigger skirmishes it’s not useful at all. Jacob also takes an obscene amount of time switching his weapons, whenever you do decide you change your weapon mid-combat the drawn-out animation can cost you your life. This would have worked had the game remained as slow and methodical as it is during its opening hours but absolutely destroys the flow of combat during the latter half.
It often felt like the game was having an identity crisis. Does it want to be a survival horror title or an action-heavy Gears of War-Esque third-person shooter? The overall experience as far as combat is concerned just lacks cohesion and ends up being the game’s greatest pitfall and while the game does have Glenn Schofield and Dead Space’s fingerprints all over it, it almost felt like the team was too caught up in the idea of replicating that experience to deliver something that could have been so much better and different.
Verdict
The Callisto Protocol conjures up a beautifully grotesque atmosphere complete with great sound design and performances but is more often than not let down by its inconsistent gameplay, tedious mechanics, and puzzling design choices. The heavy inspiration from Dead Space ends up working against the game and holding it back from being a solid debut from Striking Distance Studios.
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