Too bad! I was hoping this would get good reviews. Oh, well. At least we got an awesome new forum member out of Callisto. Welcome, Degausser!
I mean, this doesn’t look good.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the norm since um, I guess Cyberpunk? At least for PC.
It seems they have released an update for xbox series x and pc that fixes the performance issues (well, somewhat in the case of pc, most of the stutter by shaders, but the requirements are still high).
On the other hand I just read it has a… very curious save system. It will save your location, but it won’t save what enemies you have killed or what weapon upgrades you have done.
Steam reviews are up to Mixed now! Overwhelmingly mixed.
So, I played some more and I hit a point where I encountered about 10 enemies all at once and I caught a creature spawning into thin air, not crawling out of vents but legitimately spawning in thin air, and decided I would try for a refund.
I find the general feedback about the dodge mechanic to be bizarre.
I cannot for the life of me get it to work when there’s more than one ghoul to deal with. Even solo, it barely seems to work. Some people seem to have no issue at all. Maybe it’s broken on Xbox but not PlayStation?
The mechanic as explained seems simple- hold the left stick to one side or another and then alternate to duck and dodge.
It does not seem to reliably work and I wish they had an option to hold the B button and move the sick side to side instead of it being contextual. Just confusing.
A bummer overall. It isn’t awful by any means; Just not what I’m looking for right now. As every game seems to be a service, we’ll see if I find myself at Black Iron in the Spring when the content rollout starts.
Have you tried the auto-dodge feature? Again, I have no firsthand experience with the game, but I’ve read and heard that there is a fair amount of accessibility options in the game, including (I guess) letting the game dodge for you. But if I do get this, and I’m kind of leaning towards doing so to be honest, I’ll be picking it up on Xbox so I can reply if I have similar problems.
Great question. I did try the auto dodge feature and I honestly found it worse once I was frequently assaulted by multiple enemies.
Felt like the game couldn’t figure out who I should be more concerned with and it made it much more of a headache overall.
Without spoiling, I stopped a fair bit after getting to the SHU. Not super far but I felt far enough in to feel like I’d rather just refund if I can now and pick it back up after some updates.
Alex Battaglia seems close to tears as his life is eaten up by #stutterstruggle.
Because we human are empathic beings, I started to feel a bit sad as I was seeing Alex so sad, tired and almost broken.
And also, at the same time I found it to be hilarious, how someone could be genuinely sad over something so incredibly niche and nerdy like framerate instability in videogames.
Not directly related to the game itself I suppose, but has anyone checked out the six episode podcast/dramatic play they made? I’ve only listened to the first episode but it’s pretty cool, they got Gwendoline Christie and Michael Ironside doing voices. Nice production values.
Episodes | The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station (simplecast.com)
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).
According to Adrian Chmielarz that podcast is good and has better storytelling than the game itself.
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.
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.
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.
John Linneman of DF made that point about no dodge window and I did think I hadn’t heard that anywhere else.
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.
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.
I regret to inform you that this happens again. Worse. Multiple times.
Your dodges have to be perfect every single time. Stinks.