Callisto Protocol

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first with this review, it is not Dead Space. There’s something lacking in the Callisto Protocol which moves it far away from the spiritual successor it was intended to be. Can I put my finger on it? I’m not sure. Something throughout the game felt off, which made me look at it in a very different light. I’m going to put a big SPOILER WARNING here, as I will be addressing the story, especially the ending of the game. So with that out of the way, let’s jump right in.

Let’s start with the story… It’s not great. You’re a smuggler (I guess, it’s not really explained) and end up crash landing on a Prison planet that you were delivering these items to (I think? Again, super hard to follow!). You get apprehended and taken prisoner within the complex, which spontaneously happens to become ground zero of an outbreak of some sort. The rest of your story is about escaping from this prison, and you meet a few people along the way. These characters you don’t really see much or interact with much other than some really annoying dialogue coming through the controller. Therefore it’s really hard to get invested in these characters and what they add to the story.

The story doesn’t really hit any twists and turns until very late in the game, and then the twists are with characters you don’t have any investment in, so they don’t have the impact that I think they were going for. I’m gonna jump to the ending of this now, because this was the biggest bugbear I had with this game, and I’m hoping you’ll see why! Turn back now, before I post full, end game spoilers!

Okay here we go… So the big bad throughout the whole game turns out to be the Prison Warden, who was performing experiments to “get to the next stage of human evolution”. Sounds just like it’s ripped straight out of another survival horror right? The final boss battle is against his Alpha who has merged better than others with the infection and you need to take his DNA to make a cure for your companion who became infected. Upon defeat, well again in a very similar style to another Survival Horror, a self-destruct sequence is activated. Here it nose dives off a cliff and just crash lands. There’s only one escape pod off the Prison Planet, oh no! So our “hero” pushes his companion off into the escape pod to expose the company behind the prison and its experiments. This is where the game SHOULD end, but it doesn’t. We then find ourselves in a mid-credits scene in which your character is fighting off a horde of infected and a voice comes across your communication device saying they might know another way off the planet. SHOCK. The Alpha you defeated suddenly appears in a jumpscare attempt and… End. That’s it. True ending not to be unlocked. That was it. Could it come in the form of a true ending DLC? Could it be a sequel tease? Either way, it shouldn’t have happened cause neither of those are good options.

Now that’s out of the way, combat. It’s good, but nothing spectacular. You have a good variation of guns (once you find out how to unlock the new ones. This may have just been a me thing though!), but one thing this game does have, is a melee attack. That is one thing Dead Space didn’t have in its original iteration (or the recent remake!) which was a welcome introduction. Melee combat was incredibly effective and what I used most, however the problem with melee combat is the lock-on system that it uses. It’s not easy to navigate with lock-on, not that you have a choice of when you lock on! When you go to attack an enemy, the camera comes slightly closer to the action, focusing on only one enemy which doesn’t help in a number of the sections. This makes it quite clunky, despite being able to take down most of the enemies efficiently.

The game is also quite linear, which makes it feel quite long when the story and its content isn’t up to top-par. There is a sense of minor exploration, but again this is where the game stumbles slightly. There’s no incentive to. You might find some ammo, but most of the important collectable’s (weapon schematics) are on the main route. Plus, the worst bit about it is, NO navigation! There’s no minimap, there’s no guidance so if you take a wrong turn, you could find yourself right back where you started. This really didn’t make me even want to stray from the path. It’s a shame really as the environments, whilst not the most varied, are absolutely gorgeous graphically.

In conclusion, this game is good to waste time on, a bit of brain dead gaming for a few hours. However, in an attempt to be a spiritual successor to Dead Space, it lost itself in what could have been a really interesting game if it had a bit more polish and expanded storyline.