As you face Biophages one on one, you’ll get a taste of what the combat is like: brutal, short and always upfront. Related: The best Callisto Protocol deals on PS5, PS4, Xbox and PCįor the game's opening few hours, Jacob is equipped with melee weapons including a shiv and eventually a stun baton which will stay with you throughout your journey. In no time, the prison goes into lockdown due to an outbreak which leaves you able to escape and sends you tumbling down the rabbit hole to uncover the truth of what’s going on. While being rescued, the prison warden decides you need to be locked away and hauls you off to a cell, not before having a chip brutally inserted into your neck, which – while handy for checking on Jacob's health – is quite the gory experience. You play as Jacob Lee, a pilot tasked with delivering cargo to Black Iron Prison when your ship is boarded by terrorists and crash-lands. But unfortunately, clunky combat, pacing issues within the story and an over-reliance on the same jump scares result in a somewhat disappointing experience. To create a true spiritual successor, one needs humility to adequately respect the spirit of the original, otherwise what you’re making is just derivative, a superficial imitation at best.The Callisto Protocol can be seen as a spiritual successor to Dead Space, looking to pick up where the series left off mechanically and expand upon the sub-genre it created.įrom the start, it’s clear the game has some great art design and graphics behind it, oozing with sci-fi horror aesthetic, and feels like a truly next-gen game. The original Max Payne was moody and cinematic, but Rockstar made it broody and bombastic. The original Far Cry was pretty, but what set it apart was AI and combat, not a marker-strewn map and over-the-top villains. These games might claim to be direct sequels or spiritual successors, but they’ve all failed in that regard because they failed to respect and recapture the core elements that made the original tick. Just as Ubisoft’s Far Cry is nothing like the Crytek original, or Rockstar’s Max Payne nothing like Remedy’s, Callisto Protocol is not a true successor to Dead Space. These animations are visceral and voyeuristic and painstakingly animated, but what motivates such maliciousness? You’re just an inconsequential pilot who was forced into Callisto’s prison system after all, and the monsters and robots truly mindless, right?Īgain, you don’t ask such questions when playing Dead Space because the world of Dead Space just makes sense. Why would a crowd-control robot brutally break your spine, slam you to the ground and crush your skull with its foot, before then twisting its ankle to grind the already pulpy remains of your head to a paste? Was it programmed to execute escaped convicts in such fashion to “send a message” to similarly inclined inmates? Where the original’s murderous monsters would dismember you as a consequence of their sword-like arms and sharp teeth, why Callisto Protocol’s virus-infected denizens brutally gouged out your eyes, ripped apart your jaws, or broke your neck before stylishly spinning you to the ground and sauntering into the darkness is anyone’s guess. The disparate elements were fine in isolation, but never coalesced into a unified vision. The game was pretty, and gory, and looked and played vaguely like Dead Space, but it was no spiritual successor. Combat was clunky and repetitive, and the story beats made little sense. Clunky gameplay segments were replaced with more interesting ones, entirely new sections and story elements were added that better explain the story, weapons were refined further, I could go on.Ĭallisto Protocol, on the other hand, launched as a buggy, nearly unplayable mess. The lighting is moodier, the puzzles more interesting. This same effort went into the 2023 remake as well, where the remastering efforts only served to more fully realise the creator’s vision rather than detract from it. Mature and refined because it was a group effort, where a team of experienced writers and game designers worked to refine the creator’s vision and translate thoughts into gameplay. Much like the new Star Wars trilogies - before Disney ousted George Lucas - Callisto Protocol’s shortcomings come down to, I believe, a lack of editorial control.ĭead Space had its faults, but the experience it offered gamers was a mature and refined one. Callisto Protocol falls short on all three counts. Dead Space is remembered for its dismemberment and gore, yes, but it was combat, pacing, and story that made the experience so memorable.
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