3.5/5 ★ – DeluxeSamuel's review of The Callisto Protocol.

'The Callisto Protocol' is a solid action-horror game, but it falls just short of it's contemporaries. I actually quite liked 'The Casllisto Protocol'. I got it Chrisitmas the year it came out, but with it's mediocre reception I just put it off. After finally getting round to it in the big ole 2025, it's not nearly as bad as I feared. It did take a little getting into and I wasn't feeling it the first couple hours but once I pushed on I all but 100%ed it, bar a few achievements (which I'll get to later). It's very much 'Dead Space' inspired as you may have already guessed, what with it's space, zombie-esque action-horror design, not to mention previous team members working on the 'Dead Space' series before this. As I mentioned though, it just falls short of those games. The story has it's moments but honestly just feels lacking. Protagonist 'Jacob Lee' is played well enough by Josh Duhamel, but is given little emotional or characterising moments to really set him apart. His connection to the story is interesting later on in the game, but as soon as the story begins to pick up that pace, it ends not soon after. Karen Fukuhara and Sam Witwer also perform admirably here too, but like 'Jacob', they are not fleshed out terribly all that much. The 'Final Transmission' DLC continues on the story, giving it a form of epilogue, and a true ending to Jacob's story, but given it's critical reception and sales numbers, I doubt the overarching story is going to continue beyond this which feels like a shame. The gameplay is solid though. I admit, I couldn't get into it at first and found myself dying quite a bit, but once I perfected the timing of the dodges, it was mostly a breeze. It has decent weapon progression and options, offering melee combat, a few guns and a familiar "gravity/telekenis" based option, similar to 'Dead Space'. I mostly defaulted to melee, opting to upgrade the 'Stun Baton' as I was comfortable with the dodges and preferred to conserve ammunition when possible, but given it's variety of options I imagine you may be just as viable with other preferences if you desire. My favourite elements that it borrows from the 'Dead Space' franchise is it's use of an in-game, visual HUD. Jacob's health is shown on screen through his in world 'C.O.R.E. Device', visible on his back. His ammunition count is also shown on his weapons display, visible on the gun itself. I'm a big fan of incorporating the HUD like this, doing away with a lot of the clutter on a game screen, improving immersion, whilst still maintaining the useful information. The graphics in this are also gorgeous. Particularly in the character models (its a very specific thing, but you can always see the beads of sweat on Jacob's head), but the environment is largely fantastic too. The lighting is always top notch. It's visuals are definitely one of the highlights of the game and as it's paired with it's immersive HUD, it means it's never ruined. The enemies are solid enough, with a decent variation in enemy types. They usually require a slightly different approach in each case, but as I said before, if you're good at the dodging/blocking then you're likely going to find it manageable. The only criticisms I have with them is that a lot of them feel rather generic. They're your standard zombie/infection fanfare and in it's (very hard to avoid) comparisons to 'Dead Space', they just don't feel as unique. My favourite element of the enemies, and to an lesser extent, the game as a whole, is the death animations in the game. There's quite a few and they're delightfully gory. So in the moments I do fail an encounter (or die to something stupid), there's likely a new animation I get to watch in which I go out in horrific style. It lessens the blow a little and makes it far more enjoyable to watch my own death cutscene. As an avid achievement hunter, I'm okay with this title's achievements. Nothing particularly ridiculous or specific, but there are some difficulty related achievements which may prove to be overtaxing. Such as completing the harder, permadeath 'Contagion Mode' difficulty, which I doubt I'll even bother with to be honest. Personally I wish most story focused games would drop the difficulty achievements, but I've seen worse game achievement lists. But if you're a fan of challenging game modes, you may enjoy it. It's not a hugely long game. Between 1 playthrough, the DLC story and finishing the other DLC's horde-like "Riot Mode", my final game time clocked around 16-17hours. With another clean-up playthrough for collectibles and achievements, you could probably get another 10 hours or so, depending on the difficulty. So if you're looking for a shorter game then this might be a good option. Overall, I did enjoy my time with the game, despite the criticisms, and I would play again down the line, but with the underwhelming story and lack of a future, it makes it hard to recommend as a must-play.