The Callisto Protocol – the first pancake coffin? Review / analysis

I will immediately offer a video version for those who are more convenient for the video format, and for those – a pleasant viewing.

The same who is more convenient or familiar to the text format, I wish you a pleasant reading.

Introduction

Callisto Protocol is a representative of a rare genre of AAA – Survival -Horror, rare for large -budget games of space SCI -Fi setting. This is related to him with the famous series Dead Space. And there is no accident here, because Glen Skofield is at the head of the development of Callisto – the father of the dead cosmos, who endured his idea, which pushed it Electronic Arts, and led the creation of the first part. In the development of continuation, he no longer took part, leaving Visceral Games. For many years he said that he would like to return to Dead Space and make a new part (canceling, however, the second and third).

And so, at the head of the new studio, under the patronage of Krafton, responsible for the release of PUBG, Glen returned to his favorite genre and setting, promising to show what the correct and kosher Dead Space should be. Plus, we can recall that the initially Dead Space was to occur in a space prison, so Callisto Protocol looks like a remake-extension.

Naturally, fans of the dead cosmos were waiting for the game, seeing in it the right Dead Space 3. And the fast output of the remake of the first part from EA set good competition and scope for speculation. What to say there, I myself was waiting. Trailers greatly increased the degree of expectation, it was possible to make bets, who. Honestly, I would then put it on Callisto.

The plot and ENT

The game takes place in the not very distant future in which people settled down the solar system. The main character is Jacob Lee – a cosmic trucker transporting goods with a partner between the planets. Another flight from the Black Iron prison, located on the satellite of Jupiter, Callisto, is overshadowed by a meeting with terrorists who penetrated on board and ends with a crash near the ill -fated correctional institution. The guards who arrived at the place of fall quickly capture the survivors and put in prison prisoners. But the severity in places not so remote is canceled almost immediately flashed riot and an epidemic of an unknown disease, turning people into bloodthirsty creatures.

A frame from the first trailer for the game, in which the prison managed to change Jacob in the best traditions of the "Naked Pistol".

For those who plan to get to know the game themselves, this is enough. And if you give an assessment that … in the reviews they said that the plot lacks stars from the sky and collects all possible stamps. Before the start of the passage, I imagined that it could be there. Guessed in almost everything, but some of the things, like the motivation of the antagonist, were even worse than low expectations. I think this would have to be prohibited by the law by the police by the police if there was such. If this villain is from the next series of Resident Evil, he would have fit well, although there he would risk the wipes.

Comparison with good Sci-Fi stories, and any part of Dead Space does not withstand. The plot calls the fakepalms not constantly, but almost does not catch, does not carry interesting ideas and characters, the game rarely recalls it and he himself refers to not the highest quality representatives of the category B and below.

Jacob’s face perfectly conveys the player’s sensations after the introduction of local intrigue and motivation of villains into his brain.

The world of the game remains surprisingly unexpressed. In the first Dead Space, you manage to find out about Ishimur itself, about how people lived and worked on it, about the colony, about the extraction of fossils on other planets, about technologies, organizations, religion, in short, about the world of the game and the people living in it. In Callisto Protocol, even reading, or rather, listening, all the diaries in the game, you only find out a little about the colony that was before the prison on the satellite, and the outbreak of the epidemic in it.

Neither about Earth, nor about humanity, nor about its technology and development, and even about the prison itself you will not know almost nothing. Some games show little, but their world is felt by a huge. In Callisto, the world is felt by the decoration in the middle of a vacuum, without history and context.

Concept art. It is a pity that in the game itself there will be no such species and it will not be fully appreciated by artists.

This also includes the production. A striking example is the beginning of the game with the crash and getting into jail. It is well delivered, it holds tension. But how chamber is it. Remember how in Dead Space the ship with the player slowly flew to Ishimura, letting her and the planet and the planet against the background, evaluate future scenery before getting into them? Remember how at the beginning of The Chronicles of Riddick the player led under the escort through the prison, allowing to penetrate and evaluate the situation?

There is no like Callisto. Here is a player on the ship, here fell. Here he was led out of the ship, 3 seconds in prison, Katszen in the infirmary, and we are already in the cell. We will not see Callisto from orbit, will not see the prison from a height, we will not see the prison in her ordinary life, we will not understand its size before getting into the camera, which even more creates a feeling of scenery torn from the world and from each other.

One type of Ishimura, similar to a torn carcass, plunges a player well into the gloomy atmosphere of a spoke ship.. Rather, a beam ship.

Visual style and environment

Partly, the same note echoes and visual. Understand correctly, the graphics in the game are very beautiful, it gives out amazingly juicy personnel, animations, locations. The design of weapons, spacesuits, clothes, equipment, premises are extremely pleasant. It is felt realistic, mundane, you believe in it.

My favorite example is the elements of armor, worn over the business uniform of the guards, is surprisingly logical and vital, although it would be easier to put them entirely in spacesuits. And at the same time, everything is surrounded by rude, craft and brutal, which is surprisingly suitable for a harsh prison environment. A little resembles the first parts of GEARS of WAR, where all of humanity was also rude square warriors.

Memorable moments in the game are surprisingly few. 90% are very similar dungeons, workshops, sewers, laboratories, abandons with the same or infernal reddish or painfully green light. If you show random personnel from different moments of the game (which I am doing now), they are almost impossible to distinguish between each other. Yes, the game has several distinguished moments, but they are very fleeting. Only access to the surface, in the ice darkness of the snowstorms in the middle of the game brings a pleasant variety and remembered.

I really did not have enough such episodes, and if I were in the place of the developers, I would try to alternate them with dungeons – about an hour in rooms, 15-20 minutes on the surface. For example, at the beginning, when the hero has no spacesuit yet, the guards could block the doors, and the only way would lay in a short adrenaline crossing in a mask along the ice surface, as in one of the most memorable moments in the film of the Ridddik chronicle..

There are also a gameplay with a levela design. Often felt by rehearsal and routine. Here we are given a club and the first opponents, and for more than an hour we beat them. Identical opponents, one club, one combination and dodging with a block, until we get a gun and the ability to pump weapons.

Here we meet blind monsters reacting to sound, from which it is convenient to hide and kill from Stlax. And the next three hours we will sneak behind them and quietly kill, only occasionally meeting other opponents.

The game surprisingly carefully avoids creating interesting and complex clashes. Almost never releases different types of enemies, does not combine them.

Here are exploding monsters that appear a couple of times in the entire game and almost always on their own, without the support of other creatures, which reduces the difficulty in the fight against them to zero.

Here are almost up to the last moment before the blow of the monsters, which are always alone. Here is a typical room full of blind creatures, which, because of their blindness, turn around by routine.

It seems to me alone that add a couple of sighted opponents here, from which you really need to carefully hide, or fight extremely carefully so as not to exaggerate the crowd, and it will become much more interesting and more difficult?

Or here are monsters that have grown into the wall, who are waking up touch and noise nearby. You can make a battle with sighted monsters in a room, the walls of which are dotted with similar bombs of a slow action, and the player will have to fight without approaching the walls and carefully aim.

There are not many monsters at all and someone is very original among them. They look impressive, but default. Ordinary mutated people who swimming with ulcers and tumors are just one perspective, others are fatter, others spit with acid, fourth bloated, crawl and explode, the fifths with twisted limbs and become invisible. The latter are my loved ones, since fights with them require attentiveness and really keep stress. But, in general, that’s all. In any comparison with the variety of necromorphs even from the first part.

The strangest enemies in the game are the ridiculous mixture of "shit -lane" from the "catcher of dreams" King and the devils from the snuffbox.

Separately, it is worth noting the crawling toothy slugs vegas william hill and stationary tobacker devils that look ridiculous, which is almost impossible to notice in advance, as well as prevent their attack, which deprives the player, immerses in QTE and attracts to itself. But they are more sources of scamers. Or rather attempts, since the developers stubbornly try to scare them throughout the game, although it does not come out for the first time.

In general, the game is not terrible, rather keeping in suspense, and there are not very many scamers, often they are predictable, they are repeated even more often, not a single one seemed terrible to me terrible. In general, it feels about the same way as scary as in dead space, but somehow cheaper and less inventive. Even ominous hallucinations on the spot, having no real justification or plot occasion.

Local security robots look worse in impressive than any infected. It’s a pity, in the main game, they will not give a fight with them.

Late editing after a couple of hours at Dead Space Remake – the dark space is much worse and keeps in tension with the same sounds is not an example.

And here is also a large shortage of bosses. In fact, there are two and a half of them. It’s just the first one is five times per game, and the second is twice, but when a second meeting, he has a second phase. Their low complexity, as well as predictability, ease and re -registration in passage caused by the combat system.

But the episode, when enemies are hidden among frozen figures, is very good and gives exactly what you want and expect from it.

Read more about her. The player has a club of a guard for close combat and a whole arsenal of a firearm – three types of pistols, two shotgun and assault rifle. Plus local kinesis that allows you to attract opponents or objects, and throw them back in other enemies or on traumatic elements of the interior. All this good can be pumped on a workbench, improving the characteristics and opening a couple of new battleships and alternative shooting modes for the firearm.

Interestingly, in fact, all firearms are modules that Jacob replaces on two platforms – one -handed and two -handed. 3 pistols and a shotgun cutting on the first, a pumpkin shotgun and an assault rifle on the second. You can switch between the platforms almost instantly, the change of the module will take a few seconds. Therefore, joining the battle, in fact, the player has two types of quickly replaced firearms, so you can and should prepare before the battle, choosing the optimal arsenal.

But the most interesting in the combat system is its strong accent on the near battle, which in any case will remain a frequent argument throughout the game.

Dubinka allows you to apply a series of quick attacks and slow reinforced, block enemy blows, reducing damage and stunning opponents. But the main means of avoiding damage for Jacob are dodging. They are made spectacularly and very simple – it is enough to squeeze the direction of movement to the right or to the left, always alternating, and the hero will dodge any hand -to -hand attack.

I have no idea where Jacob, an ordinary trucker, learned to fight like that and where did he get the reaction of Bruce Lee and Muhamed Ali, but it is worth absorbing this simplest mechanics and not a single living creature on Kallisto can threaten him alone.

It is necessary to emphasize the word "alone". After all, the whole combat system is falling apart. While the enemy is one, the player shows him such a Devil May Cry, such a smoking Sexy Style, that the sky itself, Dante himself smiles at him, and the enemy already wants to just fall in place of shame, quickly die to endure the humiliation.

You combine quick and strong attacks, dodge, make hooks after blocks, switch to the firearm with lightning speed and shoot at vulnerable points, attract the enemy and put on the spikes and continue your deadly dance. In one -on -one battle, you don’t feel any threat. You are not a victim. And not even a hunter. You are an executioner, with the excitement of an inquisitor or a young naturalist, tearing his paw torn off the unfortunate fly.

The influence of "something" in the form is very noticeable. This guest from the horror of Carpenter does not yet know that he did not contact that trucker.

Because the bosses and boring. They are killed by the simplest algorithm – dodged, shot, dodged, hit, repeat to the victorious. No difficulty, interest, too, just patience. It is boring to play, it is boring to watch, it is boring to describe.

But it is worthwhile to appear to opponents together or more … and then most often you will not even have time to get your kung fu, as you will be put somewhere very deeply. It remains either to tank his face, trying to inflate enemies one after another faster than the rest will finish you, inevitably losing your lives and very risking, or switch to a firearm and telekinesis, forgetting about the close battle. In this case, the battles are quite elementary and are almost devoid of risk.

Yes, the enemies almost never attack behind in close combat. But a strong Lock on one enemy, a close, almost intimate camera that prevents the monitoring of the environment, and is practically inability to damage several enemies in close combat and control them, deprive such a way of the sensation of correctness and control over the situation.

Yes, the game makes us thoroughly approach the battle with several enemies, studying the environment and at least minimally considering its actions. Yes, it is worth gloating and quickly leave for a checkpoint, but there is almost no feeling of balance and worthy challenge.

Difficulty and sensations jump from the Abuez of stupid enemies to absorb tons of damage almost without the opportunity to do anything. The encirclement of enemies is generally almost always of death, because the hero is slow, he does not know how to quickly turn around, the ironly luclees on the enemy and does not cancel the animations of the attacks begun. Fight not so much with enemies as with uncomfortable mechanics.

But there is potential, and what. Especially considering how well the battles are felt, what are the savory and tactile animations of strokes, shots and hits here.

I easily see how you can pump a fighting.

This is a prison, for sure they should have a shocker – let the shot from it take the enemy out of the battle for a few seconds.

Let our electric Uber Uber Dubinka have two types of attacks – like an electric club that causes a little damage, but becoming enemies, and like an electrical sword that applies a lot of damage and shredding enemies, capable of cutting off the limbs, but poorly becoming.

Give, in addition to the blocks of parrying in timings, stunning enemies for a while and, possibly, applying a lot of damage.

Give telekinesis more options. Let the attraction and throw of the enemy be ultimate, which takes the telekinesis to a long kuldown. May its main use be shocks in different directions and attracting (like Jedi) depriving enemies of equilibrium, with a smaller kuldown and working after pumping in an area for several enemies. This will push the player to think more about positioning, it is easier to leave the environment, try to get the enemy among themselves and traps on the walls.

In my view, make an upgrade of such an upgrade, taking something from God of War, Bloodborne and Star Wars Jedi, disperse the fighting, make it angrier, and the enemies are more stunned, the first Survival-Horor-Slashasher would have been in my memory. I would look at that and I would play it. There are not many horror who have pushed for rage and aggression in battles with enemies, only the dilogy of The Suffering is remembered.

And now it turns out neither fish nor meat. It seems to be interesting ideas, good makings, but obviously not modified and not balanced. The fighter sometimes brings pleasure, but often causes the feeling that you are fighting with the game itself. not with enemies. What are added to the above -mentioned battles, in which the game almost does not create interesting situations and interesting combinations of enemies.

The game gives rise to a very similar desire not to run and escape at the sight of monsters, but to break into battle and break them all into parts.

Level Design

Levele design of locations as a whole, good. He alternates battle and research well. It is interesting to study locations, they often have buns for attentive. There are large branches, well -decorated and worked out, lurking both a reward and ambushes. True, you often do not understand which path leads in the plot, and which is optional, because of which you run back and forth, afraid to miss additional content. If the hero, partners or goals of the assignment made it clear which is the plot path, would be more convenient.

And in the game there are fuses that need to be found to open a de -energized door. Sometimes they can open optional zones. And the de -energized doors could be well used as an indicator, that they are a plot or optional path, and put more branches near them.

Sometimes the game gives out an amazingly beautiful picture and looking at the environment as if you can imagine what it is to the touch.

Separately, it is worth noting the interface, some of which are elements of the game world. It does not look original after Dead Space – the same Halsbar and a charge of telekinesis on the back of the character, the number of cartridges on weapons. I don’t want to scold, I can’t figure it out on the way how it could be realized differently, it feels comfortable and looks pretty.

A special likes deserve the screens of interaction with the doors that change depending on where we are in prison, the old colony, the rich premises of the authorities. It is a pity that terminals and shields with wiring on the walls are the same everywhere.

Balance is generally obvious trouble and Achilles’s heel of the game. When you get a baton, you have time to get tired and get bored before the game gives a gun and pumping. You meet blind enemies and fight only with them for three hours, and then you say goodbye forever. The inventory is extremely small before receiving the spacesuit, the workbenching is very far from a friend, you constantly either lose the loot, or run back and forth to choose everything if it is greedy (yes, it’s me).

With obtaining a spacesuit, the place becomes in bulk and at the same time the workbench begins to meet one after another. From too stressful, the management of inventory at once goes into completely non -burden.

At first there is very little money in the game, but by the end they begin to wallow just in packs in every corner. Doors with fuses at the end are full, just one after another. Devils made of snuffboxes are full in the middle. Slugs in boxes from under the loot before the end come across more than the whole game before, sometimes literally in a few in a row. Attacks from behind after pressing the levers in the second half occur so often that you turn around and get the weapon already out of habit.

And also these crawls between the walls, under obstacles and in ventilations that only the lazy did not fall. They knock down the pace, they are not needed, sometimes they go one after another. For what? Nobody will once attack you in these moments, although this is the same. And because of this, you feel in these moments in complete safety, because nothing will happen. Instead of tension, feelings of insecurity and helplessness, breaks are obtained.

Music and those part

There is music in the game, and it corresponds to the action on the screen, but it is completely not remembered or stand out. The sound is also of high quality, but does not pay attention to himself. There are no moments, like that at the beginning of Dead Space, when you go out into an empty tunnel for the trolley and a terrible howl is spent from afar, reflected in an echo all over the ship, which forces to represent the scale of this place and horror in it, raises the hair on the dazzle on end.

The technical unit six months after the release ceased to be the main nightmare of the game, turning into an acceptable optimization with rare subsidies and indecent long loading. I was not too lazy and measured, the continuation of the game from the menu takes an average of 2 minutes 15 seconds. Downloading a checkpoint after death – 40-50 seconds. Which, of course, is unacceptable, given that many contemporaries of Callisto, even having an open world, are loaded many times faster.

Here, not only the game has close corridor locations, so there is also loading between the chapters. Typically, such loads are hidden behind different “bottlenecks” – crawling, but here, I have the feeling that the developers did not insert them from technical reasons. And not from gameplayes, because they also give him nothing. Probably just a joke.

The plot in some points is conceived in the concept not so bad, but it is written extremely weak.

Spoilers

Jacob gets out of prison and unites with Danny – the head of the terrorists, because of which the crash in the beginning. She is sure that the hero transported something very dangerous on the ship, but visiting the crash site does not give evidence. Heroes get to the spaceport, but their ship explodes, and they themselves find themselves in an abandoned part of the old colony under the prison.

It turns out that the colonists more than 70 years ago found the local form of life in the underground oceans of Callisto and killed it. (echo the naivery local alien). But soon the epidemic began, turning people into bloodthirsty creatures, and the corporation cut out the entire colony, after which it built a prison above it, in which the study began.

Here Danny is infected and the heroes come across security robots who return them back to jail. However, one of the local scientists produces Jacob and says that Danny can be saved, ink her the blood of the alpha-laid-out, which the head of the local guard turned into, who did not dislike the hero from the very beginning.

Jacob, trying to get to the bottom of the truth, reading Danny with the help of an implant, finds out that she lost her sister during a terrorist attack in Europe, where the corporation specially experienced infection. It also becomes clear that it was Jacob who brought the stamps of the disease there, not knowing exactly what he causes, but understanding the illegality and possible danger.

The hero defeats the chief of security and saves Danny from infection, abandoning the salvation proposed by the corporation in exchange for samples. The prison begins to self -destruct, the heroes get to the last rescue capsule, into which Jacob pushes Danny, gives her evidence of the corporation’s crimes in the form of a sample of infection, and he himself remains to die in battle with the infected. Suddenly a doctor’s hologram appears, saying that there is a chance to escape. Screamer. Titras.

The plot is simple, but it has a lot of problems. For example, I don’t care about the second pilot at the beginning, partner of the protagonist, I saw him 3 seconds alive and 2 more dead. Because the image of Jacob pursuing the whole game of conscience, he does not work at all. Danny simply groundlessly bypasses almost the entire game, substituting the hero over and over again. And we do not know anything about her. And we only know about Jacob that he agreed to conduct an illegal load, because of which many people died, including Danny’s sister, and this torments him.

All characters are exhaustively described by one sentence. We do not know what they are for people, what they love, what they are afraid of, for which they generally get out of Black Iron. I know this, I get in sympathy for the heroes, self -sacrifice at the end of the game, looking well on paper, would make sense, would give the desired impact. If I hadn’t shown me off.

Well, the main villain who is in the company of local illuminates, who has been managing humanity (seriously) for centuries and explores the infection with the aim of the evolution of mankind, for which it produces all the convicts and infected, because the quote “Evolution occurs in nature, and not in the cell” I do not even want to comment on. So it is hacked and stupid. It would be just a biological weapon, it would be just as unoriginal, but not so shamefully stupid.

Yes, and Clifhenger with a jacob surviving at the end is more like an open finale or touched the future, how much to the uncertainty of the authors themselves, their ignorance of what to do with the plot and heroes, and whether they will have a continuation and what kind of continuation and what.

The end of the spoilers

Conclusions

And so the whole game. It has a lot of things, but everything is poorly balanced. A lot of routine actions, repetent, similar fights to each other. There are almost no interesting situations. The fighting gives excellent impact and can bring pleasure, but also often annoying, then being too light, then Besya with curvature. There are interesting locations in the game, but unusual surroundings are extremely fleeting, and the vast majority of time passes in the same dark technical rooms.

There are many untreatable and standard moments in the game and few original. A lot of perfectly made elements that work separately. But not in total. There is no synergy in them, together they do not make up something more, organic and well -working. The game is felt by the protracted with a low duration. It’s nice to play it, but after almost nothing to remember.

Sometimes unusual scenes and images flash in the game. This one was very reminded by the "Beond The Aquila Rift" from the Almanac "Love, Death & Robots".

Here he is, the Callisto Protocol. Swinging to the ruble, but hit the cents of fifty. Swinging to the Dead Space series, but capable of competing on equal terms with the weakest, wheelchair third part. There was not enough time, or budget, or work, or everything at once.

At the same time, understand correctly, I greatly scold the game, but because it has a lot of cool elements, something outstanding could make it from it. Her best aspects set the high bar. It’s nice to play it, this is a competent and good game. It is not a shame to get through, you will enjoy it, especially if you love the genre and setting. If this is the first pancake lump, then this is a good lump. And I would really like to see the second. Just from Glen of Scofield, judging by the interview, not constrained by either time or budget, they were waiting for not the first coma … And the second, judging by sales, news, and Glen’s departure from the studio, will no longer be.

From me 6.75 /10, if you try to lead to accurate numbers.

This is me, sadly leading the game to disappointing assessment, despite the love of the genre, setting and respect for Glen Skofild.

And on Sim I’m taking off.

Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen. Do not be like Jacob, do not make transactions with conscience and actions, the severity of which you have to be carried to yourself until the end of your life.