The Callisto Protocol is finally here - the closest thing we’ve got to Dead Space 4.
I was looking forward to the Callisto Protocol based off the talent behind it, more than the
trailers and marketing. The marketing made it look fine, but it was one of those games I assumed I
would really get into once it was out. December came around quick and I’m still in Ragnarok mode
so I figured I would wait until Christmas to play Callisto. And then I saw some of the reviews.
I couldn’t believe how bad it sounded. This is so backwards but when I watched the Skill
Up review where he detailed how tedious it was, I wanted to play it more. Nay, I had to play it
immediately. I was overcome with curiosity - could the spiritual successor to Dead Space be that bad?
I picked up a copy at CEX and I actually got rekt by the staff. They tried to talk me out
of buying it - no joke. The guy putting the disc in was just shaking his head at
me. Little did I know that funny exchange would be the most entertaining part of my
Callisto Protocol journey, because MY GOD… it really is as bad as everybody is saying.
This is a tedious, cheap, unfair, and most importantly joyless experience,
wrapped up in some truly jaw dropping visuals and facial animations. I can see people making
the argument that its unfair to compare it to Dead Space, but that’s nigh impossible to do
when almost every idea in this game feels like a reaction to the development choices
made for that series. In fact, the focus on melee combat and speaking characters feels
like a conscious decision to differentiate it from Dead Space rather than something the
developers were passionate about doing. You feel like you’d rather be playing Dead Space,
and it feels like the developers would rather be making it. It’s an utterly miserable experience.
I think the two biggest things that kill the experience are the pacing and the combat.
Every Dead Space game chucks some weapons and gear at you really early on and before you know
it you’re clearing out rooms of infestations and freely exploring interesting environments.
Everything in the Callisto Protocol feels very stop-start - you’ll fight like two enemies
before having to crawl through another vent or squeeze through a gap. You’ll be squeezing
through tight spaces again and again and again - to the point where it never feels like the
level gets going. You’re drip fed new gear and upgrades so sporadically that you don’t feel
compelled to upgrade your equipment. I would be relieved to upgrade things but it would
usually be to make the game play smoother - like buying an upgrade that would allow your baton to
break an enemy’s block - my first thought was yay! At least I can hit them a bit quicker.
The combat is what utterly breaks any semblance of fun you could squeeze out of this game,
and it’s where I truly came to understand why everyone was hating on it. Even Dead Space 3,
has a decent helping of action and I enjoyed playing it,
so I kept thinking - people are being harsh on it but I’m sure I’ll have some fun blasting
monsters away. But no! Even fighting infected zombies is boring in this game.
To fight enemies you have to move the left stick either left or right at which point you will
automatically dodge an enemy’s attack. This is the entire foundation for fighting; you let an
enemy get uncomfortably close to you - you hold the stick in either direction and wait for them
to attack - you hit them back - you repeat this. You have to do it again and again and again. You
make like two mistakes and a single enemy will rip away almost all of your health, but you have to
stand there and hit them about a million times to take them down. There’s barely any variety
to the combat, and no incentive to use your heavy attack or block. There’s no indication of how many
swings a monster will throw at you - sometimes you’ll dodge a two-piece combo thinking you’ll
be ready for a counter attack and instead you’ll end up taking a huge amount of damage. Projectile
enemies can kill you whilst your dealing with someone else - everytime you die it feels cheap
and unearned and it doesn’t incentivise you to try again. The monsters aren’t scary, just annoying.
It’s not satisfying to swing your baton at all - you feel like you’re barely even denting these
things and there’s no satisfying feedback. How satisfying it is to deal melee damage is
crucial to the fun - I never tire of smacking an enemy in God of War or Jedi Fallen Order,
and it seems strange to put so much emphasis on melee combat without giving it any kind of depth.
I can see what they were going for with the slipping system but I don’t really want to
box monsters - I want to load up on weaponry and shoot them to bits before they get close to me. I
think somewhere in development they should have axed the combat system entirely and just given
us a very uninspired parry button - at least that would have made it more fun and more fair.
Dead Space was so fun because the necromorphs were intimidating, but also satisfying to
kill. Delimbing them felt tactical and you were constantly facing new enemy types that forced
you to switch up your tactics. These very generic zombies don’t hold a candle to them,
and you barely even get to shoot them up. It’s next to useless to aim and fire at enemies and
you might as well save all your ammo for the special attacks you pull off after
a combo. Good luck knowing whether or not you have a bullet ready before setting it
up or else you’ll open yourself up to taking another huge amount of damage.
Another thing it’s really lacking is any kind of waypoint for your objective. Dead Space would
allow you to click in the right stick and it would literally show you which way to go - admittedly
maybe that was too much of a hand hold, but it meant you never got confused about what was an
extra room and what was part of the story. In this game is you’ll find yourself presented
with two doors, and you’ll have to explore one whilst pondering if it’s the objective route,
before turning back around to go down the other door and weigh up the two. After all,
you don’t want to miss rooms with items. This makes what is already
a very linear experience incredibly tedious. In Dead Space finding audio logs were really
satisfying and added texture to the world as you were playing. Here, you have to
stop and physically stand around to listen to audio logs, sucking all the joy out of them.
I could pretty much list off any design choice, gameplay mechanic or example of pacing in the Dead
Space series and say this game does it worse. It’s maddening how unenjoyable it is to play this game,
and it’s simply insane that something from 2008 holds up infinitely better.
Callisto cripples you with scarce resources and confusing geography. Dead Space chucks
tons of resources at you and never leaves you pondering what to explore
next. Callisto bores you to tears with its combat, but you can never get enough of
dismembering a necro. Dead Space gives you arresting armour sets, stasis, telekinesis,
a wide assortment of weapons and plenty of opportunities to use them. Callisto never
wants you to do anything fun if it can make you engage in a walking cutscene instead.
I wanted to like this game so damn much because in principle I wanted
to support artists who were screwed over by EA; I wanted to support it because it
was built on the foundation of being a new experience rather than a remake. I wanted
to be able to say that this was the game you should purchase if you want more Dead Space.
The developers of the Dead Space remake have clearly put a lot of time and effort into
polishing the experience, but it’s so sad to me that the best we can get is a straight up remake
to the first installment from 14 years ago. I don’t think there’s much benefit to remaking
games from the PS3-360 era, they still play really well and use gaming conventions that are still in
use. Dead Space isn’t some outdated PS2 third person shooter with awkward lock on aim - it
plays like how you would expect a new release to play. Even with some new elements thrown in,
the fact that this remake is something you’ve already experienced is inescapable. It will
sell far better than Callisto Protocol and it will be far superior in terms of its gameplay.
And what’s next? More Dead Space remakes - more half hearted spiritual successors
that can’t replicate the success? The franchise is in the toilet creatively,
with no hope in sight. It breaks my heart that one of my favourite horror games has gone this
way. I don’t much want to play a new Dead Space 1, and I certainly don’t want to play any more
of this stinker, but that’s the only choices I have aside from not getting anything at all.
I miss the jump from Dead Space 1 to 2; many people prefer the first game, granted,
but it was an exciting sequel because it made changes. We got a version of Isaac who was a fully
fledged character, with new armour and weapons and a different pace to the level design. The first
featured lots of backtracking but Dead Space 2 was a linear thrillride. Sure, not all of it worked
but it was fuelled by innovation and a passion to keep building on what came before. Now,
the games coming out in honour of that universe are merely trying to recapture the same magic.
I know that lots of you are really excited to play the Dead Space remake, even those of
you that rinsed the old games, and I’m aware that many of you don’t share my concerns. Remakes that
polish up the originals are popular, but I find it really hard to get excited for them. Why can’t
more franchises be like God of War? The fourth game was a true sequel, a true god of war 4,
but it was also a reboot at the same time. It had the gumption to reinvent the gameplay of the
series and try something different and it was all the better for it. Now we have 5 mainline games
in the god of war series that represent two vastly different styles but they’re all awesome. I don’t
care to play a slightly better looking, slightly tweaked remake of the first game as much as I
would love to see where Kratos goes next. I wish the same could be done for my boy Isaac Clarke…
I’m really sad that I couldn’t squeeze any fun out of the Callisto Protocol - in terms
of pure gameplay satisfaction I think it’s one of the most broken things I’ve
ever played. I sincerely hope Striking Distance can redeem themselves with a
truly great new horror IP that can live up to the dizzying highs of the Dead Space games.