One of the most interesting aspects about the “horror” genre is an ability to see the evil and downright deadly aspect of many precious, enjoyable things – dolls, summer camps, and even space. Entertainment mediums have showcased the dangers of entering the final frontier beyond moving out of the Earth’s atmosphere including aliens, psychotic breakdowns, and failed terraforming.
Looking to invoke the terror that came with the initial “Dead Space” game two gaming generations ago, developer Striking Distance Studios didn’t hold back in its initial announcement of what its first game would provide to the gaming community without fully exposing the story beats and, most importantly, how it plays. After the reviews started pouring in, I felt pessimistic about how “The Callisto Protocol” could provide something I’d be praising as the year 2022 comes to an end and beyond; hoping my pessimism didn’t pay off in the end as I loaded up the game on the Playstation 5.
Did I Complete “The Callisto Protocol”?
Players take control of Jacob Lee – a cargo transporter wrongly imprisoned on a dead moon known as Callisto. When a horrific outbreak occurs in the prison, Lee fights, crawls & searches his way to potential freedom before getting massacred in more ways than Lara Croft in “Tomb Raider” (2013). In a very claustrophobic setting, “The Callisto Protocol” is a mostly linear experience with particular levels presenting optional paths for collectibles that are, thankfully, miniscule in number to keep the player mostly focused on the task at hand.
After a little over eleven hours, I finished the game on its version of normal difficulty (“Medium Security”) having attained all the collectibles. Another six hours passed as I tackled and conquered the game on “Maximum Security” – a difficulty setting where the enemies hit slightly harder, Jacob can barely take a strike, and the final boss proved less frustrating than the explosive crawlers being flooded onto the stage – to earn another platinum trophy.
What Makes “The Callisto Protocol” Unique?
After the first chapter that focuses on sneaking around, the player is introduced to what makes “The Callisto Protocol” so interesting and, a majority of the time, frustrating: the combat. “Protocol’s” gameplay is rooted in a rather simplistic, though inconsistent system of dodging and counter-striking. By holding the movement stick or button left or right, Jacob can dodge incoming strikes from enemies while holding in the down direction will allow Lee to block; though he does incur minor damage in regards to blocking.
Though the combat tutorial implies that the player must tap the movement control in the opposite direction of an impending strike, the truth is just holding left or right will work well enough until the game decides that the player hasn’t changed the dodge direction enough as Jacob will dodge in a delayed fashion and be struck.
“Perfect Dodge” is a blessing and a curse in terms of player reward. If the player taps the movement stick to dodge almost immediately before an enemy hits Jacob time will slow down as Lee leans out of the way. The player is incentivized to take advantage of the “Perfect Dodge” by executing a melee counterstrike. Unfortunately, most enemy striking animations have no varied indications whether or not a foe will use one, two or even a three strike combo.
So if a player “Perfect Dodges” the first swing of a two-hit attack, the enemy will armor through Jacob’s melee counterstrike and hit him; breaking the player’s intended counter combo while stunning Lee in the process for a follow-up attack. Another issue is the camera being too close without an automatic lock-on system that identifies a new enemy arrival, an adversary is too close off-screen, or one foe hasn’t actually died even though it started twitching like it was being electrocuted long after the last combo.
Jacob is gifted a small variety of weapons starting with the stun baton – an electrified melee object that, when upgraded, allows Lee to pull off more extensive combos, actually leg sweep enemies after a nicely-timed block, and make it easier to perform weak point-indicated “snap” gun shots that may or may not appear after a successful melee combo. Also provided to Jacob in a mandatory manner is a pistol and a not-surprisingly-damaging shotgun while other firearms are provided via schematics located throughout the game that, if found, can be uploaded to the kiosk meant for upgrades, purchasing ammo & health injectors (though health injectors are placed on the walls at various locales), and selling the few “junk” items the player may be able to store in Jacob’s understandably small inventory. “Callisto Credits” are the game’s only form of currency needed to purchase all of that stuff from the kiosk and, while dished out frequently, the amounts are small and forces the player to choose whether or not spending now or saving for later is the best choice.
Another weapon added to Jacob’s repertoire is the GRP glove – a weapon that uses energy-powered telekinesis to pull foes and items to Lee. The player can drop a stunned foe in front of them to bash them with the baton or throw them across the room into an environmental hazard like the wall of spikes oddly placed in an engine room. Depending on the enemy type, the GRP glove is ineffective without some costly upgrades or are not effected by telekinesis at all.
When it comes to the enemies themselves there’s something of a slow drip expansion over the course of the game’s first six of eight chapters. Beyond the initial, rather fast grunts are leg-less exploders perfectly used for projectiles via the GRP glove, long-range acid spitters that become melee focused if the player is able to decapitate them or bum rush them, blind adversaries perfect for the stealth sections where they are able to call more similar foes if alerted, and jump scare-oriented slugs & Freddy Krueger circa “Nightmare on Elm Street 3” worm creatures where the player will have to tap a particular button over and over again to avoid losing too much health. The game’s biggest problems in terms of enemy variation has to be the introduction of tentacles and the two-headed monstrosities.
Tentacles start appearing on almost every enemy two-thirds into the story after being struck several times. Shooting an adversary’s tentacles will cause an instant kill accented by the game’s stomp mechanic to not only ensure they aren’t revived via the tentacles, but also forcing out an item the game feels the player currently needs like ammo for whatever gun has been used the most recently and may be low on ammunition, “Credits”, or small health packs. If the player doesn’t destroy a tentacled enemy, that foe transforms into a superior version that swings faster, hits harder, and has more health than almost any other non-transformed monster. When two or more of these superior lifeforms come into being or, in the case of a horrific train ride, appear at a designated moment, they will break the usual method of enemies patiently waiting to attack after one another by hitting Jacob during an ally’s or Lee’s combo. Also there’s no variation in terms of the transformed versions no matter what the starting enemy type they were prior to the transformation.
The two-head creatures are initially introduced as a chapter-ending boss. After that, they are sprinkled in the subsequent chapters without improving the lacking difficulty or evolving them to make the next battles with these abominable creatures feel unique. Gigantic security bots sporting an imbedded machine gun rarely appear and are meant to be snuck around instead of confronted head-on. These robots have a terrible habit of going after Jacob when alerted by a monster and are a one-hit kill if the player can’t get out of their line of sight.
“The Callisto Protocol’s” biggest positive is the atmosphere. With stellar lighting, suffocation-inducing environments even when things open up in the latter chapters, and masterful sound design so the player can hear the moans of nearby enemies, destroyed electricals & roaring fires of a prison now under siege by the initially unexplained, there’s no denying the magnificence of “Protocol’s” graphical and audio design. The death scenes are not only grotesque, but also surprisingly varied depending on the situation or the enemies dishing out that last deadly strike.
On the opposite end of impressive is the story that proves simplistic with the game’s collectibles providing more character development & emotion than a majority of what comes from the main characters including Dani Nakamura (Karen Fukuhara) until the last two hours or so. But an average story can be forgiven if the ending is remarkable or enjoyable – something “The Callisto Protocol” cannot say it does well, either. With a season pass and promised story DLC set for the summer of 2023, “Protocol’s” story ends rather abruptly while alluding to the DLC giving an actual resolution to Jacob’s story rather than the seventy or more dollar game.
Technically, “The Callisto Protocol” is inconsistent with hard crashes at various times, frame rate drops, and graphical glitches both hilarious and damaging when an invisible enemy hits and kills a low health-having Jacob on the Playstation 5. These issues tie into the checkpoint system where a player may respawn directly before the player’s failed moment, right at the start of the battle the player just died during, or two to three minutes prior to the death scene where Jacob got his head stomped in.
The game doesn’t save automatically after, say, upgrading the baton or picking up a collectible; meaning the player has to do the upgrade or pick up the collectible all over again with the latter having an issue where a previously attained collectible can no longer be grabbed as the icon won’t appear after a checkpoint reload is utilized. Another huge issue with the checkpoint system is respawning with a portion of health and ammo removed instead of acting like an auto-save system as it is initially presented. There’s no ability to skip cutscenes as well.
“The Callisto Protocol” is one of the most polarizing experiences of 2022. The atmosphere and actual feeling of growing strength & progression when attaining new weapons & upgrades is absurdly rewarding. On the contrary is the rudimentary gameplay to complement the unremarkable story greatly damaged by an underwhelming conclusion and general technical issues.
Should You Play “The Callisto Protocol”?
Not in 2022. As of right now, “The Callisto Protocol” isn’t a complete package where the player can truly get a satisfying narrative experience with gameplay that manages to eventually become rewarding. The developers have worked to improve on the game’s technical issues via patches, but they’re still prevalent. Even if the game’s flaws seem minuscule compared to its positives including the unique atmosphere, majestic graphics, and stellar sound design, there’s no reason a person can’t wait until either new game-plus drops in February or, better yet, when the story DLC is made available that, hopefully gives the story a worthy conclusion. Patience is definitely a virtue in terms of enjoying “The Callisto Protocol” both now and definitely in the future especially after seeing Jacob get mutilated for the fiftieth time.
