4.5/5 ★ – _DogBiscuits's review of The Callisto Protocol.

The Calisto Protocol is not a scary game, per say. But it does an excellent job at creating panic. You will traipse through the corridors of Black Iron prison thinking in overdrive about what threats could come around every corner. Second guessing every grate or vent you walk over. After only a few enemy encounters you will realize everything can take you down in only a few hits. To remain calm in the face of the horrors in front of you is paramount to your victory. It is with a mastery of your skills and preparation of your equipment that the game finds its footing in a challenging march to escape the dead moon of Calisto. The game leans on the tropes and ambience of similar games or movies that have come before. But while a lot is borrowed it doesn’t deliver a shallow experience. What’s here represents the best of ideas prior developed with a high level of finesse. Gorey Zombie-like enemies have become scary again. Dark lit high tech hallways are met with an amount of reserve. Striking Distance Studios has put a lot of effort and detail into something familiar to create a disturbing cinematic experience. Enemies in particular have a lot of different reactions to player input. You can lift them into the air through a device that defies gravity, and fly them into walls or active machinery to create all different kinds of disgusting scenarios. Enemies will churn up into chunks and liquid to spray around the room leaving a permanent mess. Shooting enemies in limbs can mutilate them, leaving them crawl or limp towards you in a desperate jaded manner. From the beginning enemies have the upper hand on you. Running away will almost never work as a way of defence. So after learning the combat and starting to master it, you will begin controlling the battles. Knocking enemies into each other, destroying limbs, flinging them into rotating blades and making last second dodges followed up by powerful melee attacks. It’s an addicting repetition that would leave me feeling superior. As each enemy really does have the power to take you down unless you fully understand and take the time to master the mechanics. The look of Calisto itself can be described as gorgeous and horrific. The game just looks startlingly close to real. I could describe to you in great detail about the environment. But if you take the time to imagine yourself stuck alternating between destroyed underground labs covered in dead bodies, and the surface of an ice cold derelict moon covered in only snow and rock. Surely you can picture how you might feel a bit panicked in this situation. We are long past the days of ps2 graphics imitating what something could look like. We are at the point where your nightmares look as real on screen as they would off screen. I must talk about the details in the human character models though. Photorealistic is one way I could describe it, but it’s not enough. Every person has sweat that will bead down the face and reflect in strong lights. When someone is visibly stressed and puffing to keep up pace I never realized just how much moisture on the skin could elevate how real a video game character could feel. Particularly in cutscenes. Calisto at the very least, sits at the benchmark of what we’ve come to expect from environment and character detail. From the game's opening moments I did find myself invested much greater into the story than I did expect myself too. Now make no mistake, there is not a great deal to get invested into. It is quite thin in terms of plot detail. I could probably sum it up now in about 2 paragraphs if I really wanted to. But the term “less is more” really applies here. Everytime a cutscene would play, ranging anywhere from 30 seconds maybe to a few minutes, the game would take one simple idea and make the most out of that moment. Like two characters having an argument, an intense chase scene, the introduction of a new enemy type. These all served as great interludes before turning back to the gameplay. A fun change of pace, backed up by strong performances. If I did have to pick out something negative from I had a greatly positive experience from. It would have to be the ending, specifically the closing 10 minutes. It wasn’t bad, it was far from bad. But it wasn’t able to put a bow on the experience quite as well as what it had leading me through the main game. To summarize, the team behind The Calisto Protocol are doing what Hollywood can’t. Taking tried and true ideas and bringing them back in a meaningful way that is both fresh and familiar to those who play. A great gameplay loop is backed up by breathtaking visuals and a mostly strong story. A strong start to what will hopefully be a prosperous new franchise. Good: Easy to learn, hard to master gameplay Stressful environment / great ambience Industry leading photorealistic environments/characters Strong Character performances Okay: Performance can dip, but not enough to hurt my ability to play. Mediocre final Bad: 9/10