The Callisto Protocol - Dead Space spiritual successor?

Games
#51

Yeah, same. Like, on one hand it is ridiculous to be this upset, but on the other the guy does testing and making videos about PC games for a living and running into the same problem again and again and having to report and repeat the same thing again and again must get super depressing.

Weirdly enough though I don’t really remember running into shader compilation stutter much myself. Maybe I pick my games well.

I find it interesting that some games cache shaders before they start (like FarCry 6 or Forza Horizons etc), some do it during gameplay and stutter unless fixed by patch (Sackboy, Callisto Protocol) and some games do not have to cache shaders, and yet do not stutter at all (like Cyberpunk 2077, which also runs DX12, and its loading times are like 5 seconds long).

#52

According to Adrian Chmielarz that podcast is good and has better storytelling than the game itself.

#53

Having nearly finished the game, I don’t see how that’s much of a feat. The story of this game is like an inch deep. I want to check on this podcast just to see what wasn’t in the game itself, tbh.

#54

My request for a refund was denied, no actual reason given, but I decided to shrug it off and power on through.

The game does become more enjoyable once you get the suit and start getting more credits to use towards upgrades. It helps offset the unreliable feeling of the dodge mechanic.

Even with turning on auto dodge; Even when having multiple people tell me that groups of enemies will totally respect the 1 on 1 fight before jumping in… it never felt consistent.

Unfortunately, the upgrades don’t feel all that meaningfully different compared to stock either.

Yeah, I do some additional damage. Cool. But it doesn’t feel any different. All of this made worse by the fact that there’s a minimal number of guns and all of them feel…fine?

I maxed the riot gun and expected it to be great for crowd control but the starter pistol seemed more reliable and higher damage.

The assault rifle you get super late in the game and its maximum 25 round capacity doesn’t do much to offset its low damage output and burst fire.

I found the game to be aggressively mediocre.

Lackluster enemy variety, some of the worst goddamn boss fights I’ve seen in a game in a long time, and just atrocious stutter at the worst moments.

I understand sacrifices were made to produce these visuals, which are nice, but I sure do wish developers and publishers would consider “quality mode” as less of hey, it looks incredible in stills and more hey this looks incredible and fluid in motion.

I was hoping this would end up being an Evil Within situation. Iffy performance and lacking gameplay, but a diamond in the rough that makes me hope for a sequel. Not the case here by a long shot.

The story is whatever. Generic Sci-fi horror. Fine performances with questionable characterization.

Jacob Lee is definitely not Issac Clarke which, duh, but why does he say nice every time he opens a chest like he’s the missing fifth guy from Gears of War? He’s even bald like they were.

He has zero human reaction to all this horrible shit outside of the first…20 minutes? Game absolutely feels unfinished, which I expect the Spring expansion to be the rest of the story.

So much shimmying through tight spaces and crawling in vents too. Empty spaces and closets filled with nothing. Audio logs amounting to “I left them to die. Now I’m dying too”

Pretty sure the game would’ve been about 4 hours long without the artificial padding.

This is like someone made a Dead Space successor based on a game of telephone about what the three Dead Space games were. It’s all one badly remembered homage. Like Mighty No. 9 but with good sweat textures.

Sorry for the mildly-disjointed thoughts. Massively bummed after this one. The original Dead Space holds a special place for me. It was the first video game I ever wrote a review for.

It was 2008 and I had just become a teenager. My mom had found me a job on Craigslist paying $25 a week (!!!) to churn out SEO-friendly content a blog.

Every week I got to write a review. Dead Space was first; Saints Row 2 shortly thereafter. It was stressful having an adult man you’ve never met, scold you for low output and made me hate the idea of writing professionally as an adult. But man, it sure was great at the time.

So uh, thanks for the memories, Glen Schofield. I’m more excited than I ever thought I would be for the Dead Space remake.

#55

So as I figured I would, I ended up picking this game up. I couldn’t resist, it’s just too totally up my alley. I’m a long time fan of Dead Space myself, all three games actually (though the third game to a lesser extent). I made it through the SHU section that @Degausser mentioned, and I’ve noticed some of the things that were frustrating, it’s definitely taken some adjustment for me as well. It’s far more melee focused than Dead Space ever was - Isaac only ever had that wild swing he could do, though I guess there was that box-crushing stomp (which returns in this game too). But there’s much more juking and dodging, blocking and then finding your chance to beat down the enemy.

One thing I noticed during the dodge tutorial that I haven’t really heard much mentioned: it specifically points out that there’s no timing window for the dodge. You just need to be pressing left or right when the blow would land and you’ll just dodge. I think you can just hold the stick in either direction and wait for them to swing. Sometimes they’ll do a one-two so you have to be ready to dodge the other way, but so far that’s about the only trick. I’m not sure if it even matters which way you dodge.

What does remain bothersome is when you’re ganged up on. They’ll mostly hang back and attack one at a time, though they may change that up on you. And it’s totally possible for enemies to come at you from behind, and with no quick and easy way to change direction then you’re probably taking a hit. Can get tough when you’ve got waves of them coming, like what happens in the SHU.

One last thing I’ll mention without getting too spoilery: this game feels very Resident Evil to me, almost moreso than it feels like Dead Space. That game had the church of unitology backing its schemes, but this game … well, I said I’d avoid spoilers, but the big bad will seem familiar, I think. Also, I’m constantly struggling with inventory space, which reminds me very much of RE.

But so far, my impressions are fairly positive. It’s not breaking any new ground but I’m ok with that. We’ll see how things go from here.

#56

John Linneman of DF made that point about no dodge window and I did think I hadn’t heard that anywhere else.

#57

Reached my first sticking point last night, and in order to keep things as spoiler free as possible (if anyone cares), it’s a boss fight in chapter 6. I just don’t have a lot of maneuvering space and the boss pretty much has a one-hit kill. I probably tried to beat it a dozen times last night and had to set it aside.

#58

I know exactly what you’re referring to, and hated this boss. I died at least 15 times on minimum security mode, and having to fight him directly after those waves of normal guys was extremely cheap. I will say, one thing that helped me out immensely is to use melee combos(R2 a few times) on him when he kneels, rather than the big windup shot(R1). I was under the impression the big shot did more damage, but as near as I can tell, it’s not even close.

I probably didn’t need to spoiler that, but eh.

#59
#60

I regret to inform you that this happens again. Worse. Multiple times.

Your dodges have to be perfect every single time. Stinks.

#61

I’m not a fan of this game, but the dodge system is pretty forgiving. Hold left, and when you auto dodge, change direction and hold right. The crappy part of it for me was attempting to heal or reload when constantly needed to dodge.

#62

OK I got it, and I feel like a dummy.

I don’t know why it took me so long to think of using those containers on the transport to my advantage, but once it occurred to me to just kite the guy while walking backward and emptying the shotgun into his face, it was almost easy to beat.

#63

Whoa, I did it, the game is beaten. I ended up dropping to easy difficulty because it felt like the game’s approach to making the game harder was making enemies require more hits/bullets to take out and that just gets tedious to me. And even then the final boss was a bear. But I’ll come back to that.

You guys weren’t joking about that Chapter Six boss - I ended up fighting him three more times! Luckily I was able to use basically the same trick to defeat it fairly easily.

But that last boss, man that was a bear, so to speak. It’s like a hodgepodge of annoying enemy tropes crammed into what felt like to me to be far too many stages. I despaired of actually beating the game until finally I did - and I don’t know that it was due to any improvement or refinement on my part, I feel like I just got lucky. But a win is a win, I guess.

I’m going to keep the rest of this as spoiler free as possible since the game hasn’t been out long. Overall my impressions are favorable, I enjoyed the experience. I should say that sci-fi horror is way into my wheelhouse and I’ll tolerate a lot if I get a good time, and I feel I did. Ready for Dead Space remake!

#64

One might accuse me (fairly) of perpetuating a thread on a game that should maybe be allowed to drop into obscurity. But I do feel that I owe the game, and the thread, a little more detail and a bit of follow up on what I liked about it and what I didn’t care for.

One strength of the game I believe is its sense of place. Everything here makes sense, the places you will go and the path you will follow between them. There’s a cool little cutscene moment where your character will find a window and look out onto the surface of Callisto and see the next destination and then, beyond that, another that you’re working toward. And over the next couple of chapters, you’ll progress toward and reach them. It’s much like Dead Space in this way, in that I feel that its environments and characters and the story its telling are tightly bound and make sense together. Black Iron feels like a place, and not just a video game setting.

Second, and in service of the first point, the game looks amazing. As I mentioned, I played on Xbox and I know the PC had a rocky start though I think subsequent patches have gotten things going fairly smoothly. There are sections where I definitely thought to myself, ‘ah, that’s just gross’, and I don’t just mean the gnarly enemy designs.

Third, I like the feel of the character, he seems to have weight and mass. If he climbs a ladder or falls and gets back up, there’s a movement there that seems like what an actual person would use to perform them. I like the way he crawls through the little crawlspaces, pausing at corners to bend and haul himself around the corner. I know, a tiny thing, nobody buys a $70 game to watch someone crawl through tunnels, but it made an impression.

As for things I don’t like, the combat is just … odd. When it’s one-on-one, you’re good and there is even a flow that’s pretty easy to get into. As discussed above, dodging is almost easy once you get a feel for what they’re trying to get you to do. But add one or more enemy, and the game will do this, things get complicated quickly. It’s not uncommon for an enemy to pop up behind you and you can’t just flip around easily to face them. Would have been nice I guess if there was a ‘180’ button. But dodging and attacking more than one or two enemies could be difficult.

And the bosses were not great. That one boss I got stuck on above wasn’t too bad once I got the hang of it, but then he shows up three more times! Maybe they just ran out of time and felt like they needed another ‘boss moment’ and stuck that guy back in. I don’t know. But once you know its trick, it won’t give you as much trouble on subsequent encounters. The last boss though, if anyone has a reliable strategy for that dude, I’d love to hear it. I just banged my head against the wall until it (or my head) gave way. Did not enjoy that part much. But then, I usually don’t enjoy boss fights so maybe I’m not the best person to engage with that part of the game.

As I mentioned, I feel pretty positive overall and don’t regret buying the game. If you’re on the fence about the game, maybe wait for a sale or heck, maybe it will get to Game Pass or an equivalent down the road. I hope these guys get a chance to go back to this with a sequel down the road. I’d love to see things get expanded on.

#65

Low difficulty setting, 2 headed monster in colony, 20 or so attempts, uninstalled. Ain’t got no time for that. For a PS5 next gen $70 game, very underwhelming. It can be pretty at times, even in performance mode, which is the only way to play on ps5. I wanted to like it 🤷‍♂️

#66

Probably not too surprising this hasn’t sold well, but I am a bit surprised they had it forecasted at 5M copies?!

Kinda doubting they recoup their 160M on this one.

#67

This is funny because Dead Space, while a solid game, was also a huge disappointment to the publisher for the same reason. They had pointed at the top performing game in the class (Resident Evil 4) and said “We’ll do better than this.”

#68

Yep, that figure sounded all too familiar.

Fun bonus link.

#69

I think even if Callisto had 92 metacritic and flawless technical state on all platforms it would do 4 million at most. More than that is really reserved for Resident Evil and that’s about it.

#70

Gamefly has the physical discs for Series X and PS5 for $35. Tempting. Though I’d rather have it for that price in a digital edition without having to put in a disc.