I’ve always been a big fan of Dead Space, so having a new game of that ilk in The Callisto Protocol was always going to be appealing. From the minds that brought us Dead Space, it’s occupying the same space as other fantastic spiritual successors like The Evil Within, Bayonetta, and even Lost Odyssey. After playing The Callisto Protocol, it’s clear that the Dead Space DNA has been left intact, but much like the new Biophage threat, it’s mutated into something entirely different.
The Callisto Protocol sees you taking on the role of Jacob Lee, a freight transporter pilot running jobs for the United Jupiter Company. His latest assignment is simple but lucrative – move some unlabelled but volatile cargo between Jupiter’s moons – Europa and Callisto. His ship is ambushed by a terrorist group, leading to a crash and subsequent imprisonment in a facility built on Callisto. Of course, while imprisoned, Jacob is broken out of his cell during an outbreak of an unknown pathogen and realises that he has to escape.
What follows is a story that is ironically only surprising in that there are almost no surprises. The Callisto Protocol wears its influences on its sleeve, no doubt, but it feels like a real missed opportunity to play with and subvert players’ expectations with how the game plays out. Instead, The Callisto Protocol delivers a sci-fi story shamelessly derived from the stories that inspired it – think Alien meets Dead Space – with little artistic flair to truly establish it as its own. That being said, The Callisto Protocol does feel more grounded than Dead Space, so anyone who found the gigantic space-faring bio-recombinant necromorphs obnoxious will find solace in the simplicity of The Callisto Protocol.
So as you’d expect, the game plays similarly to Dead Space. It’s a largely linear, narrative-driven thriller that sees Jacob working his way through Callisto’s facilities in an attempt to escape. But even though it’s clearly inspired by Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol does a few things that you’d never see in a Dead Space game in an attempt to carve out its own niche. It does this in a few ways – from telling a more grounded story and handling combat and encounter design.
The Callisto Protocol’s combat isn’t about dismembering but instead more about heavy hitting. With more of a focus on melee, you’ll spend much more time up close and personal with your enemies. With such an increased focus on melee, it also means that you’re given a whole bunch of manoeuvres to evade and block attacks from incoming enemies. This is done by holding the stick to the left or the right of an enemy as they attack or holding it back to block. While the game insists that there is no timing requirement, there were times when a successful dodge still led to me taking damage. It’s a cool system in practice and one that feels so good when you pull it off correctly, but one that could have been more consistent.
This dovetails rather awkwardly with the fact that while the combat has some great weight and is relentlessly satisfying, things start to fall apart when you’re being attacked by more than one enemy. Jacob can’t dodge more than one attack at a time, and you’re given few options to take on multiple enemies simultaneously. A heavy melee strike can hit multiple enemies, but it’s so slow to wind up that it is impractical in the middle of a pile-on.
If you’re not reading between the lines enough, I’ll say it. The Callisto Protocol is a challenging game. For the most part, it’s challenging in that you have to manage your resources effectively when engaging in battles with your enemies. In some aspects, and this is the minority of my experience, it’s challenging to the point where it can become frustrating. The combat system falling apart when faced with more than one enemy and attacks that kill in one hit are bound to frustrate players. As a massive fan of horror games, these kinds of challenges are ones I’m accustomed to (and perhaps even welcome), but for some players, it will be more frustrating than fulfilling. Accessibility options will no doubt remedy some of these frustrations – including auto-dodge and lock-on aiming, but Callisto can be a challenging game.
The weaponry you’re outfitted with is relatively modest, offering players variations on the typical pistol, shotgun, and assault rifle. None of the weapons ever really have a purposeful use – you can easily finish the game with the gun you’re given at the start – and it feels like a missed opportunity to have such simple weaponry.
That said, the combat does a fairly good job of forcing you to mix it up between weaponry, melee, and your telekinetic power (called GRP). There wasn’t a single time in the game when I relied on one more than the other. Pummelling an enemy in melee highlights an area on the enemy, which deals better damage if you shoot at that point quickly after dealing damage. It’s a simple system that never gets old. Throw in the ability to grab and throw enemies onto traps such as spikes, fans, or rotating blades with your GRP, and you’ve got a pretty strong combat system that The Callisto Protocol builds itself on.
It’s a shame that the enemy variety is so low. The new threat is called the Biophage, and there are only about six or seven enemies that you’ll encounter throughout the game. Perhaps even more disappointing is that about half of these enemies behave the same, merely looking slightly different. Games like Resident Evil 7: biohazard did so much with so little, so it can work, but the lack of enemy variety in The Callisto Protocol did mean that encounter design towards the end of the game did get a bit repetitious.
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Once again, some creative flourishes do their best to keep things interesting here. The second act encourages you to play stealthily due to the design of the enemies there, feeling more akin to the encounters found in games like The Last Of Us. Similarly, leaving enemies damaged but not dead for too long will see them mutate, but all this ever amounts to is literally turning them into bullet sponges who deal more damage. These are both great ideas, in concept, but I’d love to have seen different mutations that altered the flow of battle in other ways rather than just having to spend more ammo on them.
I previously referred to Callisto Protocol as a thriller, which was a deliberate distinction that I made. If I had to decide how scary a game like The Callisto Protocol is, I’d liken it closer to games like Dead Space 3 or Resident Evil 4. It’s a tense experience constantly throwing things at you, but it never quite reaches the lofty heights of terror similar to games like the first two Dead Spaces or even something like Resident Evil 7. The Callisto Protocol is a loud game, constantly throwing music and loud stingers at you to the point where it doesn’t give you the space to even build tension. Such a loudness takes away from the scares, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a tense experience.
As alluded to earlier, there aren’t any corners cut either. Your first run will easily take you upwards of fifteen hours to complete. My first run took almost twenty as I was taking my time to explore everything and defeat some of the more challenging encounters on the hardest difficulty. The game gives you some “optional” paths that further flesh out the story and rewards you with extra loot, but you can see everything the game offers in a single playthrough. There are no unlockables, unfortunately, and the new game plus mode is coming later too. So while the game is lacking in the replayability department, I never felt short-changed by the experience The Callisto Protocol provided “out of the box”.
When you start thinking about Callisto’s presentation, things get a bit more complicated. This is the first game in which I struggled to choose which mode to play in. One thing is sure, however, and that’s the fact that the production values are through the roof. Every cutscene has been well directed to the point where it would stand alongside games like Dead Space or even the recent God of War games – mimicking the “continuous cut” style that those games employ.
It is harder to deduce whether you’ll want to play this game in its performance or resolution modes. The 60fps option is fantastic, and post-patch works wonderfully. But it comes at the cost of reduced lighting effects, which is a pretty big trade-off in a game as atmospheric as this. Regardless of your choice, The Callisto Protocol is a great-looking game. The characters are well-detailed, the locales are beautifully realised, and the atmosphere is absolutely on point.
Although it might seem like I’ve been overly critical of The Callisto Protocol, it’s still one of the most enjoyable horror experiences I’ve had this year. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel in any tangible way but still offers up an engaging and enthralling experience from beginning to end, even if it’s devoid of surprises. It’s a cliché to say, but I’ll do it anyway – essentially, The Callisto Protocol feels greater than the sum of its parts – and I think any self-respecting horror or even action game fan owes it to themselves to check it out.
THE XBOX SERIES X VERSION WAS PLAYED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. A DIGITAL COPY OF THE GAME WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER.
