THE CALLISTO PROTOCOL Review for PlayStation 5

A game that seemingly came out of nowhere when it was first announced and debuted its first trailer back in 2020 at The Game Awards, hype has grown to become astronomical ever since. “The Callisto Protocol” brings Glen Schofield into the director’s seat with newly formed game company Striking Distance Studios. Glen, most famously known for being part of the team that brought upon us “Dead Space” back in 2008, it was clear that this would be a game to keep our eyes on, with every sci-fi gorefest trailer after the next, the hype may have gotten to greater heights than the game possibly could deliver. After playing “The Callisto Protocol,” did it manage to meet those such great heights? No, unfortunately, but that’s alright, because I still had an enjoyable time.

Taking place about three hundred years in the future, you play as Jacob, a freight transporter who is very suddenly thrown into Black Iron Prison on Jupiter’s moon called Callisto. As a victim of fate, the player only gets to learn pieces of what actually happened to Jacob over the course of the game. What happened though is not what’s important, but what is happening currently, as the inmates in this maximum-security prison are slowly transforming into monstrous creatures. Talk about a character dealing with the worst luck in the galaxy! This third-person action game is a fight to stay alive and to figure out what the hell is going on in this dead moon. With Hollywood actors such as Josh Duhamel, Karen Fukuhara, and Sam Witwer contributing their likenesses and voices, you will embark on a very violent narrative that may not always land its story beats, but at the very least it will look and perform damn good doing it (unless you’re playing on PC).

This review was done on PlayStation 5, and I had no performances issues at all while playing, but I would be remiss to say that at this time it currently seems the PC version of “The Callisto Protocol” is having some serious performance issues and that may not be the best format to experience this game for now. One of the best highlights for this title is the visuals, the character designs, the monsters, the overall look and atmosphere are top notch. Next-gen video games are slowly starting to actually look like next-gen games and it’s amazing. Many times, while playing the character models will look impressively photo-realistic, I was in awe. The combat on the other hand, is what threw me for a bit of a loop. While there are skill trees to upgrade your guns and weapons, I often found myself hardly even using guns. The game made it feel way more melee focused. When fighting off monsters I was essentially brawling them most of the time. The dodge mechanic was also a very odd choice, where in most games like this, dodge would just be a simple button on the controller, but here you have to move the joystick left or right in order to dodge. Frankly, I respect them for trying something a bit out of the box, but this ultimately felt like a poor choice and consistently bugged me throughout my playthrough.

What bummed me out the most was how thin the overall story ended up being. Narratively it was just a bunch of excuses to get you from A to B to C to D the entire time. Not enough breadcrumbs were thrown my way to keep me captivated about what was really going on. So, at the end of the day the game just ended up being a bit of a bash-fest, hitting monsters and seeing gruesome deaths, rinse, repeat. While the violence and deaths do get pretty creative (so much so the game is actually banned in Japan for its violence), it’s hard for me to sell you on this game if you’re looking for something a bit more than that. Depending on your skill level you will probably finish this game just after about ten or so hours. With a lot of it feeling a bit repetitive, I needed to play it in chunks, so I wasn’t exhausted by the repetition. So “The Callisto Protocol” wasn’t really the next “Dead Space” of the modern age we were all hoping for, but it’s ultimately a very nice-looking game that can be fun to play in shorter doses. In a handful of weeks early next year, we will be getting a remake of 2008’s “Dead Space” (talk about interesting timing!) and hopefully that will be more of what I was hoping to experience.

7/10

For more information, visit callistoprotocol.com and follow The Callisto Protocol on Twitter @CallistoTheGame and on Instagram at CallistoTheGame. Follow Striking Distance Studios on Twitter @SD_Studios.

Related: Reviews by Nick Navarro

Nick Navarro

Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87