The Callisto Protocol assessment

The Callisto Protocol begins like all good jail movies do: with a temper of insufferable doom. Workingman pilot Jacob Lee has crash-landed on the useless moon of Callisto, after his cargo ship is boarded by a infamous terrorist group. Another person has died a bizarrely ugly loss of life through the crash, and we’re given ample alternative to review this misfortune. Subsequent, Lee is arrested, and it is made clear that he has a life spent within the moon’s Black Iron jail to sit up for. However virtually instantly the jail falls afoul of some mysterious catastrophe that turns its inhabitants into crazed mutants. 

These occasions cascade effectively through the first half-hour, and what higher technique to set the tone of a relentlessly gory survival horror game than with a catastrophe, an injustice, after which the abrupt invasion of some strolling pus buckets? The Callisto Protocol just isn’t delicate about dropping us into a spot of utmost dread. Considerably counterintuitively, dread is surprisingly comfy for us, the gamers of this determinedly nasty horror game. The stakes are clear: Lee, performed with motion hero stoicity by Josh Duhamel, is in deep shit and should dig himself out of it. Maybe we’ll study a bit about that terrorist group. Inevitably, some subplots will creep in, and we’ll meet some characters who preserve us firm. However The Callisto Protocol wastes no time cementing the fear of its setting. Now we simply must stroll in a principally straight line for 15 hours and butcher our approach by it.

I am not joking once I say that The Callisto Protocol is a comforting videogame, albeit on the far finish of the identical axis occupied by, say, Dragon Quest. Familiarity is consolation, and The Callisto Protocol is a constant big-budget joyride. The indie horror scene has potent psychological discomfort lined (see Visage, Signalis), and can be the pure residence of grindhouse schlock (see Homicide Home, and numerous uncanny PS1 period throwbacks). The massive-budget horror game, within the Resident Evil sense, and most saliently within the Lifeless Area sense, is about roaming moody corridors and getting your shit frequently effed up.

Hallway horror

Boy, does The Callisto Protocol have creepy corridors. The opening hours have all the same old varieties lined: claustrophobic engine rooms with burst valves gushing, entry halls, upkeep rooms, aged metal, echoing vents, flickering holographic terminals, subterranean crawl areas filled with pustulent slimy progress. The center hours, and the late hours, have plenty of that stuff too, although some areas do sprawl a contact, and by the game’s finish there are some shocking deviations from the “grim darkish hall” format. Is that this Lifeless Area 4? Or the Lifeless Area 3 that many suppose ought to have been? Just about each.

These environments are the obvious source of the bizarre consolation I discussed, as a result of in its opening hours the texture of enjoying Callisto Protocol could be very a lot the texture of enjoying Lifeless Area. There’s the identical pristine, diegetic consumer interface, the identical lumbering, over-the-shoulder management of an emphatically beefy man, and the identical freedom to foot-stomp corpses into swimming pools of masticated pudding. The director of The Callisto Protocol is Glen Schofield, who directed the primary Lifeless Area, and he has recreated that game’s honed stability of “highly effective, but oh-so susceptible”.

I do not fault Schofield for returning to the method. I grew keen on the way in which Lee has the turning circle of a child’s toy tractor, and that irrespective of how feeble an enemy seems you’ll completely not achieve melee stunlocking them, forcing you to make use of the considerably unwieldy left and right dodge system. Why would not Lee go full-pelt beast mode like his foes? Why does he move with the burly grace of a slow-mo televised quick bowler? Why does he preserve placing his baton away, and why does he retrieve it so slowly? As a result of this can be a horror videogame, and for no higher cause than that. 

The Callisto Protocol takes a rhythmic method to hand-to-hand fight, however enjoying with a controller, over the course of 15 hours I by no means felt like I might successfully nail the timing of that ostensibly easy evasion system. Maybe I am simply unhealthy at it, however within the warmth of the second—and particularly when dealing with a couple of enemy—I typically resorted to panic-shooting. In terms of the precise bludgeoning although, it is satisfyingly vicious, particularly when damaged up with point-blank shotgun rounds. 

Gravity crush

Lee has a glowing green bar on the again of his head that signifies his health, and a blue one which signifies whether or not his “GRP” has overheated. The GRP is The Callisto Protocol’s reply to Management’s levitate, or Half-Life 2’s gravity gun, and it is nice enjoyable. In a game filled with spongey baddies, this weapon helps you to choose most of them up and toss them off platforms and into chasms, or extra steadily, into wall-mounted spikes. Boy, does this moon colony have an alarming quantity of wall-mounted spikes. Or, you may choose up close by explosives and toss them at your foes, which is much less enjoyable, however extra wise as a result of choosing up objects makes use of much less power than levitating mutants. 

This addition of a “delete enemy” button to survival horror is disorientating at first, however The Callisto Protocol progressively compensates for it. After receiving the GRP, I forgot I had it for some time. I continued to bash away at baddies with my baton. Discovering myself overwhelmed by one explicit encounter, I turned to the GRP and, sure: merely choosing the bastards up and tossing them to their deaths turned out to be much more expedient. As soon as I discovered to enter each fight state of affairs alert to environmental hazards to show into weapons, this method to fight clicked.

GRP power is finite, however just like the ammo reserves for Callisto’s 5 ranged weapons (all customary fare, with hard-hitting improve paths), I by no means discovered myself desperately wanting for assets on medium difficulty. I really turned to promoting ammunition and sometimes health in an effort to stage up my skills on the common 3D printer workstations. I centered on the GRP as quickly as I realised how helpful it was, although I finally felt like I ought to have invested extra into the common weapons too, as a result of the GRP is principally ineffective throughout a few of the extra torturous late-game fights. You will not fill all improve paths in a single playthrough although, so it is price investing early in your most popular methodology of death-doling.

Ludicrous gibs

Mutants may be carved up limb-by-limb, much less as a matter of tactical precision than as a technique to preserve the carnage recent, and your GRP can change into so highly effective that merely throwing them—not even at spikes—will make these limbs go flying. I did not discover any of the warted, veined, saliva-abundant baddies particularly scary, if solely as a result of I’ve performed plenty of horror video games with enemies similar to these, however there are a number of loathsome predators that have been the exception. It is not the looks of those extra fearsome mutants that is threatening, however how they move across the environments. There’s additionally the ever-lingering risk that for those who do not shoot the rising tentacles off a mutant they’re going to morph into one thing extra formidable.

Checkpoints are beneficiant sufficient that, exterior of some prickly areas, I hardly ever discovered myself repeating encounters till very late within the game, when the issue ramps up dramatically. I used to be often aggravated by checkpoint placements: typically I’d spend 5 minutes promoting loot and upgrading weapons on the workstations, solely to die shortly after, necessitating the transaction once more. 

I died loads within the second half, however a minimum of there was the disgusting novelty of a brand new loss of life scene. These naturally repeat themselves, with some saved for mid- to late-game, however there are plenty of them and most are astonishingly gross. I do not discover The Callisto Protocol’s extreme method to gore very attention-grabbing or stunning—simply gross, actually—however fortunately it would not lean on blood and guts on the expense of setting an totally grim environment. It does that properly. However once more, in a sordidly comforting, acquainted approach. 

This can be a rollercoaster videogame. It is riddled with cinematic videogame clichés. Sure, you may navigate a crumbling construction that can begin to collapse as you cross it. Sure, you may must energy on a generator by discovering three breakers which can be positioned in three harmful places. Yep, you may must survive a sure period of time locked in a claustrophobic house as baddies assault you. And naturally, there may be extra to what is going on on than the narrative précis supplied above suggests. In plenty of methods, The Callisto Protocol looks like a brand new, albeit well-qualified studio, singing to the group: “We will make the type of video games we all know you actually, really need.” And we, the group—most of us anyway—will sing again: “Sure, you may, carry on going.”

An enormous a part of me desires a blockbuster horror game to go off the rails a bit, in a approach lots of people hoped Hideo Kojima would with Silent Hills. However it’s arduous to fault The Callisto Protocol for nailing—or GRPing to a row of wall-mounted spikes—precisely what it units out to attain: partaking, linear sci-fi survival horror that spins a deepening dystopian yarn round dozens of anxious encounters. In different phrases, for the ample masochists amongst us: consolation meals for weirdos, or Wario Dragon Quest.