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The Callisto Protocol review: could be silly, bloody space fun if it ran on PCListen you have to wait for my frame stutter to stop before you attack me, okay?
Listen you have to wait for my frame stutter to stop before you attack me, okay?
Sometimes when we get sent review code for a game, the PR will say that they’ll be getting PC code later, but if we want we can have a console code so we can get a head start playing the game. There are a lot of reasons that might happen, but I’ll be honest: it’s never agreatsign. I’m usually pretty chillaxed about the occasional wonky animation or frame stuttering when a game runs, but in this caseThe Callisto Protocolruns so badly on PC that if it were my child and the coach wasn’t putting it in to play football - even as a sub in the last five minutes, you know, just to give it a go, like - I’d be saying, “Yeah, bench the sucker, I get it.”
The stuttering and slowing down whenever anything moves is especially problematic in a horror game where your survival depends on quickly dodge-reacting to sudden threats. So I can’t, right now, recommend you get The Callisto Protocol on PC. If Striking Distance get it running properly? Eh. Maybe.
The Callisto Protocol - Official Launch TrailerMutants? Inmyspace prison?!Watch on YouTube
The Callisto Protocol - Official Launch Trailer
WOOOO PC gamers eatin' GOOD right now!!1! I had to keep knocking the render percentage down (16GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070)
What’s the warden’s deal? What’s that terrorist group’s deal? What’s Jacob’s deal, really? Where did this virus come from, and how did it spread into the prison? Is that one asshole guard going to stop showing up? All these questions and more will be answered to varying degrees as you stun-baton your way around the prison, the prison sewers, an ice storm, an old outpost, an even older colony, and so on. The Callisto Protocol takes you a relatively linear path through areas that it successfully disguises as sprawling. I particularly liked the oxygen garden, which felt like a nod to extremely good space-horror movie Sunshine.
Like butter
As an aside, several times Jacob will be like, crawling through a vent and hear a bang, or see something run past, and he’ll mutter “What the hell was that?”. Like, idk man, probably another one of those big fuckin mutants you’ve been fighting for the last several hours?!
The big problem is the combat controls. There isn’t a dedicated button for dodge or block on controller. Rather, you pull the left thumbstick either left or right to dodge, and back to block. This does look incredibly cool to an outside observer: dodge left, dodge right, hammer the guy in the face and then pull out a 3D printed shotgun to blast his leg off. The game claims there aren’t windows for dodging, but it feels like there definitely are, and combined with limited health and over-durable enemies, I found it too easy to have a bad time with a controller. It’s going to be divisive. If you play fighting games a lot you might get on with it more, but I kind of hated it until I got a proper shotgun, which does enough damage to sway things in your favour. I actually find the controls work way better with WASD on PC. A thumbstick can be slightly off the angle to register the right input, but a W or D key is either pressed in or it ain’t.
In fact, I’d probably enjoy it more on PC than console. But the thing is, it’s not just that the game runs badly. There are a bunch of smaller annoyances I noted on both platforms. Enemies might grow tentacles as a prelude to mutating into something worse, and you’re supposed to shoot or smash them to stop it - except I could never tell when I actually managed it. The different varieties of enemies don’t make substantially different noises, so you can’t quickly read a situation as you can in, e.g.,Left 4 Dead. If you start inputting your dodge too early, the game defaults back to movement controls and you start to strafe, which is annoying. The quick-kill prompt just flat out doesn’t appear if you have your gun out, but your gun is also your torch so you have it out almost all the time. I was looking forward to The Callisto Protocol, and I want this dog to hunt. I don’t think it can right now.
