Developer: Striking Distance Studios
Publisher: Krafton
Available On: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S
Reviewed on PS5
If you ask fans of the horror genre what some of their favorite video games are, the three you’re most likely to hear are Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Dead Space. While Resident Evil has maintained popularity since its first installment in the ’90s, both Silent Hill and Dead Space disappeared around the end of the 360/PS3 generation, leaving them without new entries for over a decade. However, the past few months have seen that change considerably. Silent Hill had a showcase revealing multiple upcoming games and a movie, while Dead Space saw an incredibly polished remake of the first game released to universal acclaim. At the same time, Glen Schofield (the co-creator of the Dead Space franchise) and his new studio, Striking Distance Studios, release a brand new IP in the form of The Callisto Protocol. I admittedly haven’t played Dead Space, so I can’t give you detailed information on how this game compares, but if you’re a like-minded horror fan then this is a game you’ll want to pick up and play through, although that recommendation does come with a few caveats.
While Schofield’s involvement has been a huge marketing point for this game, I didn’t find prior experience with his work to be necessary for enjoying or understanding it. Yes, it’s an entirely new universe with unrelated characters, locations, and events, but going into it there was a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to appreciate what Schofield and his team were going for without having experienced Dead Space, the game they were trying to invoke. Thankfully, that feeling was squashed quickly and I found myself engaged with multiple aspects of the game able to appreciate it on its own terms. That being said, playing through The Callisto Protocol has now made me interested in playing Dead Space, and I’ll most likely review it in the not-too-distant future. But we aren’t here to talk about Dead Space, so let’s get to what we are here for.
The Callisto Protocol is a third-person sci-fi/horror game with an emphasis on melee combat and exploration. To start things off, while the story makes a good first impression, it’s ultimately one of the weaker parts of the game. You play as a space pilot named Jacob Lee (voiced by and modeled after Josh Duhamel) who has his ship breached by a terrorist organization known as Outer Way. While “help” arrives shortly after crashing down on the prison moon of Callisto, it turns out your potential saviors can’t be trusted. Despite your innocence, you’re dragged from the wreck of your ship and forced to become an inmate at Black Iron Prison, a remote complex where the staff has decided to use the prisoners as test subjects for an array of mysterious experiments. Your arrival coincides with a deadly outbreak that begins to mutate prisoners and staff alike, and it’s up to you to seek out an explanation and escape the confines of Black Iron. Unfortunately, while the opening hour or two are gripping, the majority of the game devolves into a series of cliches and predictable twists and turns, nosediving faster than Jacob’s ship in the prologue.
In an attempt to get the worst parts of the game out of the way first, let’s continue on to the characters, most of which leave a lot to be desired. I’ve been a fan of Josh Duhamel as an actor for years, but it doesn’t feel like he was given enough to work with here. Jacob is just kind of on autopilot for the majority of the story, making his way from point A to point B as he meets new allies and fights through the mutated individuals in the prison. While there are some attempts in the later chapters of the game to give him a little more emotion and personality, I spent the majority of the game feeling absolutely nothing toward him. The small handful of villains in the game are equally hard to feel anything for, coming off as over-the-top cartoon characters with their cheesy dialogue and motivations, occasionally leaving me to question the intended tone of the game. Fortunately, you make an uneasy alliance with the woman responsible for crashing your ship, Dani Nakamura (played by and modeled after Karen Fukuhara) and she actually delivers an interesting performance with nuance and character development. As someone who loves story and characters, I was really let down by how much The Callisto Protocol dropped the ball, and if they ever make a sequel then I really hope they spend a little more time fleshing these parts out.
Thankfully, while the story and characters don’t have much of a lasting impact, the setting is phenomenal. Although largely a linear experience, you get to explore a large chunk of Black Iron Prison. The walls and floors are covered in blood and discarded limbs, there’s a sense of structural neglect due to corrosion and rust, and an incredible lighting system makes every rundown corner of the prison feel terrifying and realistic. While some areas are larger and feature a few different paths to explore (often leading to collectibles or health/ammo pickups), you’re mostly led from one area to the next by slender corridors, colored lights, and carefully placed focal points that make it clear where to go next. That being said, there are no waypoints or maps to be found, which might be a turnoff for those looking for a little more guidance. Personally, I never felt like any of the areas got too big or confusing to navigate, and I honestly found this more linear approach a nice change of pace from the modern focus on huge open worlds.
Although there’s a much larger focus on combat, the back half of the game introduces stealth sections into the exploration areas. As some who greatly enjoys stealth games, I found these segments to be hit or miss. There’s an enemy type you encounter that’s blind and reacts to sound, so you have to quietly sneak past them or creep up behind them for a stealth kill. However, they seem to be hard of hearing, because you can actually make a decent amount of noise before they begin to notice you. In fact, you can take one out that’s right next to another and not alert either of them, allowing you to essentially chain stealth kills quickly. I think these parts were supposed to be tense and play into the horror vibes, but I just found them silly and laughed at how easy it was to eliminate a whole room of creepy-looking enemies with zero issues.
However, the best part of the game is its combat, and as much as I adore it, I also think it eliminates some of the tension of the horror genre/setting it’s going for. This might just be a weird personal belief, but I find horror games considerably less scary when you’re given ample tools to fight back against whatever is trying to kill you, which is exactly what this game does. Don’t get me wrong, I love the combat system of this game, but it feels like it’s designed to make you a powerful force of nature and obliterate everything in your path, which removed a lot of terror and tension from the encounters for me. Your main weapon of choice is a stun baton, which you swing by pulling the right trigger. It requires you to get in close to the mutated enemies, but it also deals solid damage and isn’t limited by anything like weapon degradation or battery charge, so you’re free to go to town with it. There’s a really fun dodge mechanic where you push the left thumbstick to the left or right to dodge incoming attacks (alternating directions for multiple hits) or down to pull your weapon up and block an attack, and while it takes a little bit of getting used to, it feels awesome once you master it and makes melee combat incredibly addicting.
While this is largely a melee-based combat system, there are a handful of firearms to unlock. A pistol, shotgun, and eventually an assault rifle round out your long-range options, but that doesn’t mean you can just sit back and unload on everything. Ammo isn’t exactly scarce, but you have a small inventory to manage and can’t always carry a lot of it with you. Instead, your guns are best used as a follow-up to a melee combo. Landing 4-5 melee strikes on an enemy in a row activates a brief window where you can pull out your gun and instantly lock on to them for a devastating close-range shot, which is especially useful when certain enemies are about to mutate even further and become more powerful, which is made noticeable by a sudden protruding of tentacles. In some situations, targeting specific limbs on your enemies can be extremely helpful, such as blowing off the leg of one enemy in a crowd of multiple to thin their ranks. Regardless of whether you use melee or firearms, you can stomp on the corpse of a fallen enemy to break it and receive a small reward, such as a few extra bullets, some health, or Callisto Credits which can be used to upgrade your weapons to increase their damage and handling stats. It is worth noting that Credits are super stingy and it’s impossible to fully upgrade everything in one playthrough, so you’ll have to do a New Game+ run if you want to max out your arsenal.
Lastly, there’s the GRP (pronounced “grip”) that allows you to pick up items and enemies and then chuck them at high speed. The GRP is the most powerful tool at your disposal, allowing you to kill virtually any enemy instantly by picking them up and impaling them on spike walls, throwing them into industrial fans, or dropping them off high platforms. It’s limited by battery power, so you can’t continuously use it, but it can absolutely turn the tide of battle. It very slowly recharges over time, but you can also find spare batteries either hidden around the prison or given as a very rare reward when stomping on a fallen enemy. With the melee, firearms, and GRP all working in harmony, the combat in this game feels incredibly badass and fun, although I do think the tools you’re given make it so you feel powerful enough that the enemies no longer feel that scary.
Fans of collectibles should know that their handling here is not great. The major collectibles in the game are your typical audio logs, unlocking insightful background and clarity on the world of the game. These are hidden all over the prison and typically require you to explore every area, sneak past certain enemies, or fight your way through others to obtain them. Unfortunately, the tracking for them is extremely confusing and frustrating. You can keep track of your logs in a menu screen showing the face of a person and the number of their logs you’ve found, but what the game doesn’t tell you is that the number displayed is for the entire game, not just that chapter that they’re listed on. For example, the page for Chapter 2 shows a character and says 0/4 Logs. I found two of them, which brought the tracking up to 2/4, and as much as I scoured that chapter I just couldn’t find the last two. As it turns out, they’re not unlocked until much later in the game in an entirely different chapter/section, so while I did eventually find them and the entry updated to 4/4, the way it’s listed in the menu makes it seem like you missed two of them in Chapter 2. This gets really frustrating as it leaves you wondering if you’ve actually missed something or if it’s just the poor tracking, and to make matters worse there’s no chapter select, so if you want to get them all you have to do it in one playthrough.
While this was ultimately come down to personal preference, like many current-gen games there are two visual modes to choose from. You can choose to prioritize visuals at native 4K at 30 FPS, or performance with a boost to 60 FPS at an upscaled 4K resolution. I always prefer the performance mode when given the option, especially when it’s a game with more action-heavy combat like this. From my experience with the performance mode, it didn’t always stay at 60 FPS, occasionally dipping a bit during more intense moments. Mind you, these dips were minor and only happened a few times, so it’s not like they make the game unplayable. It’s up to you to decide what you want to prioritize, but even with the occasional hiccups I strongly recommend the performance mode.
Lastly, there were a few notable technical issues. Subtitles seem to get stuck frequently and were always a line or two behind during cutscenes, and the audio for the dialogue often seemed too quiet, even when I maxed the corresponding slider in the audio settings. As previously mentioned, the framerate does dip occasionally, but it’s very minor and not consistent enough to be a hassle. While I have no idea if it’s been addressed yet, I have heard from multiple people that the PC version of the game is not great, resulting in several bugs, glitches, and performance issues, so if you’re interested in playing this game, you might want to consider playing it on a console.
FINAL VERDICT
The Callisto Protocol is a bloody good time, even if it’s an unbalanced package. The story and characters feel cliched and uninteresting, but the world it presents and the way you’re able to interact with it are wonderful. Black Iron Prison oozes with atmosphere and sits among the best-looking games of the current generation, largely due to its fantastic lighting system that adds a terrifying sense of realism. However, the real star of the show is the engaging melee combat and how it combines with gunplay and the GRP to create one of the most fun combat systems in recent memory. Bashing mutated enemies, blowing their legs off, picking them up, and launching them into hazards with the GRP results in a satisfying combat loop that makes it hard to put down the controller. There are a few technical issues, but they’re minor enough to overlook. Ultimately, this is a solid first title from Striking Distance Studios, and I’m glad to see how they improve for their next title.
– Zack Burrows
Sight-In Games 