Dam, I admit I like the game. I had fun, it’s absolutely not as good as Dead Space but it’s got the same visceral gameplay that made it so satisfying. It’s also really fun to explore, but it’s definitely flawed.

But I could overlook flaws, lack of gun and enemy variety, drowning in ammo that I didn’t really need because you can hit stuff to death pretty easy, every shortcoming. I was going to recommend it, I wanted to even! And then it hit me.

They put the real ending in paid DLC…

Not worth the full price, especially when the base game doesn't even have the actual ending.

- I need to state this first before anything else. You get to a checkpoint, you upgrade your weapons, you go somewhere, you die, it brings you back to that checkpoint before you even did those upgrades, that feels like ♥♥♥♥.

But even if that was the only problem, if you upgrade, manually save, and then load, it still didn't save those upgrades.
Wtf? It's 2022 almost 2023, no games should have that type of problem. This is making you do the same things if you die over and over again.

Another thing which is the dumbest thing ever, let's say you have 2 paths, A is story and B is loot :

- You go B first you clear everything, you go A, you clear it, and then manually save, IF YOU RELOAD THAT SAVE, everything you did on A AND B side are UNDONE. WHY? So basically you're only saving your POSITION, and nothing else?
What's the point of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ save system then?

- I'm a huge fan of the Dead Space series. I was expecting this game so f-ing much, and yet it comes out and I'm very disappointed.

- They tried to go the "cinematic" route, which means every animation is very, very realistic, which also means it's very "telegraphed". Sometimes you hit a monster before they hit you and they still get the hit in for some reason, that's kinda frustrating honestly.
You can abuse the melee mechanic, just get the heavy melee skill and spam light heavy, light heavy, light heavy.

Also the dodge system and auto-target thing is broken (in every sense of the term) and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks.
You can't even go backwards or left and right if there are multiple enemies around you, they expect us to stand around and just dodge attack, dodge attack like a robot.

For example there is a specific part where there is a trap and monsters come at you running, imagine you're right in the middle of the trap and you want to go left or right and avoid it, IF the monster attack you, since you're holding left or right, your character will just dodge on the spot, and you'll die.
Why is the dodge mechanic even a thing? Why did they make it like that? It's the worst thing I've seen in a while.

Oh and the enemies obviously wait their turn, they're monsters but they're polite :)
But if they didn't do that though you'd just have to rely on guns and not melee unless it were 1v1 or 1v2s .

- I too have stuttering and FPS issues (RTX 4080 + i5 13600k) considering the game looks good, but sometimes you get huge FPS drops for no reason whatsoever, nothing's happening on the screen, and the environment isn't supposed to be open-world.
Sometimes you do something, you go back to that room, everything reset (when you move boxes for example)

- Okay you can go DX11 and maybe get some better FPS but that prevents you from using Ray Tracing and other things that look amazing and are SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING.

- I didn't refund because I really want to like this game, but they made it VERY ♥♥♥♥♥ hard.

- Anyways, probably not a lot of people will read my ♥♥♥♥, but this is so sad considering they said at some point that the gameplay was "perfected" months before it came out. Perfected? It isn't even working properly.

I really hope they fix this game today or tomorrow, AT LEAST the FPS, because that's just sad at this point.

Much like Dead Space 3, this game makes me wish Steam had an inbetween to "yes" and "no" recommendations. Callisto Protocol isn't a "so bad dont play under any circumstances" game, but it's also not one I'd say "yes by all means it's a must play for horror fans", at least not at full price.

For context for the review, I beat the game in a little over 11 hours, playing on Maximum Security (hard mode). My PC specs are a Ryzen 5 5600x CPU, RTX 3060TI GPU, 32GB of Ram, with the game installed on a m2 SSD and played at 1080p on DX11 with a mix of medium and high graphics.

• The game looks and sounds gorgeous. Character models are up there with some of the greats of modern AAA. Sound design is pretty good as to be expected by these devs, Maybe not on par with others like the RE2 Remake but still fairly effective especially in a few parts where you're fighting enemies you can't see very well. Lighting is also phenomenal as to be expected, though perhaps a bit too dark in some places.
  
• Combat is fun. I know the combat is a sore spot for a lot of people with this game and I get why, but I thought it was fine despite it's simplicity. Once you get the hang of the dodge timing it's incredibly powerful and has room for some additional depth like Perfect Dodges that slow down time to guarantee counter attacks even against multihit combos, using your GRP and melee intertwined to make short work of enemies, and the guns and melee all feel impactful. Some of the weapon upgrades also have fun mechanics though admittedly I didn't play around with too many of these as those upgrades tend to be super expensive.
  
• A lot of really fun enemy encounters in the early-mid game portions. They're setup very intentionally so that smart play and use of GRP and stealth can get you through scary situations without burning through your resources. Plus it's always fun to group up a bunch of enemies near spikes on a wall, do a heavy melee attack and send them all careening into the spike for free kills.
  
• Maximum Security feels appropriately balanced. You die extremely quickly, but enemies don't feel too spongey for the difficulty, they'll die really quickly once you get the hang of the combat. Reminds me of Zealot from Dead Space 2 in that way, it feels properly balanced even if bosses can be a slog at times.
  
  
  The Mehs
• Enemy variety is a bit on the lacking side. You have basic melee and ranged units for most of the game, later on you'll get exploders, there's a few sections with invisible four legged enemies, and for one section of the game there's blind enemies that are very vulnerable to stealth kills. Later on the melee units get enhanced variants but unlike Dead Space where it'd be a mix of basic and enhanced to try and get you to prioritize your targets basically every melee enemy can become enhanced.
  
• Story and lore are very by the numbers for a sci-fi horror property. If you've played Dead Space or watched things like The Thing or Event Horizon you can probably figure out what a lot of plot points are going to be way before they happen. The overall cast didn't feel as interesting or well thought out as most horror game characters but that's honestly just a nitpick cus most horror games don't have very good plots to begin.
  
• There's a lack of meaningful side areas to explore. The game never distinguishes which path is a side path and which one is the main path, and all too often going the main path will lock you out the side path with no way to go back. Most side paths usually don't hold too many resources or will throw enemies at you that still result in a net-negative on resources almost as if to discourage exploring side paths in a horror game for... some reason?
  
• For as much as they were toting the death scenes in the pre-release, there's surprisingly not as much as I was expecting. Each enemy only has like, 2 different death scenes and with how quickly you can die especially on max security you'll tire of them pretty quickly. It's a good thing you can pause during the death animation and return to checkpoint that way and skip the animation as a whole.
  
  
  The Bad
• The game falls off hard in the last third. While there were a lot of fun encounters in the first 2/3rds, the last 2 chapters it becomes clear the devs got really lazy. They reuse the same miniboss 4 times in the span of like 2 hours, in one case literally 2 encounters after the previous fight. The last boss fight also sucked but horror game bosses are generally not very good in general so that wasn't too big of a surprise.
  
• Even post day-one patch the optimization still isn't great. While most of the stuttering was fixed, the performance is still wonky. Most of the game I'd stay within the 60-90 FPS range no problem, but in a few late game areas my FPS would just tank to 30 or below for no discernible, even if I dropped the graphic settings to the lowest possible the FPS wouldn't improve much. My PC isn't an insane beast by any means but I could play Elden Ring at the highest possible settings and keep a stable 60 FPS or Cyberpunk post-1.6 at high settings and stay within the 60-90 range, so Callisto playing on closer to medium settings and still dropping that low is just unacceptable.
  
• Some things that Dead Space got right, Callisto gets so wrong. The biggest one to me was how the game determines enemy drops. For some reason, in the last few chapters I'd be walking around at full health with no ammo in my inventory and the game would insist on giving me health gels from defeated enemies. Not the injectors that I could carry around and potentially sell, but the gels that are worthless if you're at full health already. It was a real pain in the ass considering how many fights this late in the game basically require using a gun.
  
• The save system is completely worthless and the checkpoints fluctuate between working as intended or having horrendous spacing. This is especially noticeable in the early game as I died a lot playing on Maximum Security before I got the hang of the gameplay and it was frustrating to die to an encounter and be sent like 3 minuts back. As far as I can tell the save system does literally nothing as even if you reload it all it does is throw you back to the nearest checkpoint and nothing more. What's even the point of a save system at that point?
  
  
  Overall, the game is fine. It's not the next Dead Space like I'm sure a lot of us were expecting, and if anything it reminds me a lot of The Evil Within just with a sci-fi horror aesthetic instead. There are things that work and things that don't work, and there's still a lot of kinks to iron out that I'm sure as we get closer to the season pass and more patches are released, eventually things will get fixed but as is, I can't really recommend this at full price. I'd probably give it around a 6/10, wait for a sale.

--Negative review about gameplay--

Callisto Protocol, is artistically beautiful. The audio stage and production is amazing. You can absolutely feel the love and passion poured into this project from the devs, Striking Distance Studios.

The issues are with the gameplay, mostly the close combat loop. I know they have said they wanted to make the combat feel
threatening and dangerous. I get that. The issues are how jank and terrible it is.

This is not a case of "git good". Basically the combat in this game goes like this - you sight enemy, enemy sights you. Soft lockon begins. Hold direction (any direction) to commence dodging minigame. Enemy swings, You dodge, You then hold alternate direction, Enemy swings and on it goes till the enemy has an opening and you get to attack them.

Sound good?. Its not. Its inconsistent as all hell as the direction held needs to be absolute and it doesnt even have to relate to the enemy movement (for example they do a left hook you dodge right, as you would in real life boxing). Just hold a direction as long as its ABSOLUTE because if it isn't, you will get punished.

Sometimes you'll even get punished when pushing absolute directions. Its cool like that and that isn't even the games biggest combat flaw.

The flaw comes into animation lengths, enemy density in areas and the overall HP of enemies.

You see kind reader when you dodge you are locked into an animation with no cancel ability very much like commitment based attack systems in games like Darksouls. When you are 1v1 in Callisto Protocol, you deal with the jank.

When you are being dogpiled by enemies this becomes a huge issue. You will dodge one enemy into another enemy to be grabbed and damaged this will happen repeatedly. God forbid there is a ranged enemy vomiting from a far and hit stunning you whilst oldmate bashes your skull in.

You can't just run from engagements. You are soft locked into combat. If more enemies are around, You are done.
Its frustrating. Its terrible and the HP of the enemies is insane.

People liken this to Deadspace. It isn't anything like it and those saying that need their heads examined. In that game the combat never felt fruitless. In Callisto Protocol you get guns, and they do nothing. They can "Parry" of sorts but when you are being dogpiled nothing helps.

Enemy placement is another crap thing for example an enemy I've nicknamed head handbag is hidden out of sight around corners. This thing is hit scan, it will get you and you will take damage and play the QTE game. This will happen to you repeatedly.

The game is entirely not fun to play. Its a grind, a slog.

How can this game be fixed/saved. The combat needs a rework and enemy HP numbers adjusted. The game needs a directional melee risk vs reward parry system. The player character isnt new to violence allow us to facilitate this and maybe have fun. It can even be an unlocked ability. Instead of hold any direction to dodge, You hold the direction of attack and also hit attack. Counter, Stun. Fun. Depth.

The game also needs to give the player some kind of crowd control as it stands you are going to get ganked by crowds especially on harder difficulties. People would then say use the kinesis style module to throw enemies around - This is all well and good but the usefulness of this depends on how you upgrade your character in the starting chapters. GG if you put money into your guns and baton first.


Overall im not going to refund this game. I want it to succeed, be patched and tweaked. Its absolutely anti consumer that it cost me $130 dollars Australian.

Devs make it count. I can see your vision. I don't hate this game, Make us love it.

Thanks for reading.

Good bye, DENUVO!

This game got much better after recent patches and it's definitely more enjoyable now. The graphics, atmosphere, animations and sound are really great. The story is pretty mediocre though and the combat is repetitive.

Overall, it's a decent game but seriously, do NOT buy at full price!

I want to start by saying I really enjoyed my time with this game, but it is way too short to justify a $60 USD price tag. My first run (normal mode) took hardly above 7 hours....and the game locks the true ending behind an additional $15 USD DLC. Wait for a minimum 50% off sale or just watch a gameplay video online.

Don't buy this game right now.

It is a stuttering mess than runs poorly as of day 1. I will update if they fix it and then maybe talk about game play. The PS5 version also drops frames apparently but no where near this maybe buy that one instead if you can.

FSR2 really doesn't help at all for 4k with raytracing.

No DLSS for Nvidia users.

HDR is broken and doesn't work.

Shader compilation stutter on each new asset load.

12700k and 3080ti avg 28 fps at 4k High settings Raytracing and FSR2 lots of dips into 10 fps. A couple of 4090 users reported less than expected results as well. Games needs a patch.

Lots and lots of agreeing to give them and third parties rights to your data.

the stutter protocol