I do not recommend: The Callisto Protocol

Christmas is just around the corner so fill your stocking or someone else's with some good stuff premium quality gaming kit from steelseries they've launched a huge range of award-winning products this year so it's a great time to refresh your setup or someone else's get 12 off all purchases using offer code skill up at stillseries.com click below or stick around to the end of the video to learn more uh okay so by now you've seen the title I feel like this is as good an opportunity as any to reiterate that reviews are opinions no reviewer holds a monopoly on truth and that you can still love something that a reviewer doesn't look at Sonic Frontiers everyone loves that I didn't that game is literally third place in the upcoming player Voice vote for the game awards just a few percentage points behind Elden ring and God of War point is don't worry too much about reviews their opinions and should always be treated as such I say all of this because I know how excited everyone is for this I mean I was super excited for this from the moment Kalisto protocol made its debut we were all like holy [ __ ] that looks incredible some of the best visuals we've ever seen combined with the sci-fi horror aesthetic that we've been missing for a hot minute after the collapse of the Dead Space franchise all the more special was the fact that this team was made up of people who made the original Dead Space Games reunited under a new Banner to pick up where they left off after EA screwed them and their franchise so this look Dawson it was a setting and a genre we were all keen on and it was an Underdog Story Redemption Arc thing that we could all get behind that makes it really tough for me to say that I do not recommend this but unfortunately I don't Kalisto protocol is everything that the trailers said it would be an absolutely stunningly realized sci-fi world full of zombies trying to kill you I don't believe that the marketing of this game promised any more than that and that's a good thing because there really isn't anything more than that to call the story threadbare would be generous there is an alarming absence of characters there are no Puzzles there's no exploration to speak of as the game is effectively one long Corridor it runs terribly on PC there's one boss and one mini boss who is frustratingly recycled four times and the combat is just oh man it it straight up doesn't work for reasons I will talk about most terminally Kalisto protocol just isn't scary or horrific or anything like that it has scary things in it but no true grasp of horror it will endlessly throw jump scares at you because it hasn't managed to invent scenarios that have you on the edge of your seat the aliens stalking you in isolation the oppressive atmosphere of Silent Hill the soul-like scenarios the baker family put you through in Resident Evil 7. Callisto protocol has nothing like that it's just corridors filled with zombies for 8 to 10 hours and then credits roll after one of the worst design boss encounters I've ever done in my life I don't think Lister protocol is terrible I think that plenty of people will find some enjoyment in this if you just want to walk through a really pretty sci-fi prison turn your brain off kill zombies this will do it for sure if you're down for some summer blockbuster filler to kill some time Callisto protocol will fit the bill nicely but I don't play games to kill time I play them to enjoy them and I found very little enjoyment here my time with it was more about frustration than anything else and for that reason I just can't recommend it I played Callister protocol on PC on both the desktop and the steam deck steam deck uh no when you run the Benchmark it returns a result of around 14 FPS even when on low settings so yes definitely don't recommend this on Steam deck it's not meant for that I played it on an RTX 2080 TI with an AMD ryzen 7 3700x I tried to run it at 4K without Ray tracing on but that couldn't happen was returning around 20 frames a second that's fine by the way this is a really pretty game and I wasn't expecting 4K performance out of the 2080 TI I dropped it to 1440p with Ray tracing on that didn't work either sadly as Ray tracing was just too taxing it was dropping down to around 25 to 30 FPS I turned array tracing off and set it to 1440p Max settings and that was still too demanding frame rate couldn't maintain a stable 60. in the end I dropped this to 1440p medium settings and at that point I was able to stay comfortably above the 60fps mark most of the time however the fluctuations were truly wild sometimes I'd be running as high as 120 FPS and the next minute I'll be at 40 when I'm in a setting filled with lots of particle effects and geometry on the whole though base frame rate stability is pretty good the issue is the stuttering oh my God the stuttering I experienced out of control stuttering is an increasingly common phenomenon these days on PC titles Callisto is one of the worst Defenders I've experienced this game is constantly stuttering all the [ __ ] time whether it's moving into a new area or just anytime really most often it occurs during jump scares Callisto is packed with jump scares and so often when they happen the game just kind of shudders for a few seconds or it tries to catch up with the speed of events this completely neuters any potential impact that the jump scare might have had because all the animations are missing it's just a big loud sound and all of a sudden an alien zombie is attached to your neck I hear that this runs really well on PS5 I spoke to three other reviewers all of whom said they had no problems at all on PS5 I would say that the stuttering on PC is so bad that if you can play on another platform I would do that I had such a bad time with it it was super frustrating no matter which platform you play on Callisto protocol is [ __ ] stunning this is an absolutely incredible looking video game the trailers you have seen are super impressive but they do not do it justice in the slightest from the very first moment you are over awed by the level of visual density in each space and that is one aspect of Callisto that never lets up the whole way through I didn't have much fun playing Callisto but I won't lie looking as good as it does that helps I was always interested to arrive at new locations because I was Keen to see what these artists had in store for me and the Fidelity with which tracking distances technical team was able to bring it to Life Special shout out goes to faces man these look good like really really good especially the main character modeled on actor Josh Duhamel I'm not sure how to pronounce his name these may be the best looking faces I've ever seen in a game and it's a shame that there's so little story because faces and facial animation this good are wasted when there are so few cut scenes and when very little happens in those cutscenes bottom line PC performance sucks and if you can play it on a console I would do that but God damn to the visuals in this game go hard visuals so good that they help distract from what's missing from the rest of the experience which is obviously a bit of a backhanded compliment but that's genuinely how I feel secured moving to Medical sector the Callisto protocol begins aboard the Caron a freighter ship running a job from Europa to Callisto Jacob and his buddy are meant to be delivering some mysterious no questions asked cargo to the black Iron prison facility when they're suddenly boarded by Persons Unknown a fight breaks out the ship is trashed and a crash landing on Callisto sees Jacob and his assailant imprisoned at the exact moment that everything at the facility turns to [ __ ] it's zombies as you'll soon find out and so Jacob has to find a way off this zombie-infested rock while maybe trying to figure out why everything fell to [ __ ] the way that it did that is definitely a secondary objective in more ways than one Callisto got me thinking about what is the imperative for a survival horror game to have a story and how good does that story have to be I mean Resident Evil games they can get pretty out there with their stories whether it's corporate conspiracies or moldy Bayou Shacks or you have to rescue the president's daughter Silent Hill games have always been more about their inner turmoil psychological warfare with oneself dinosaur Isis was essentially Jurassic Park the video game and it was awesome but it was partly High art so I don't think that survival horror games need to have a compelling story per se but if they're not going to have one then they at least need some hooks some strong characters or some narrative or thematic adornments to help you sink into a world so it doesn't just feel like one of those ghost train rides at a carnival Callisto has neither a story nor characters or any of those thematic books I mean there is a story but like if I told you that there were zombies on a remote prison facility on one of Jupiter's moons and I said guess the story you would be able to guess the story like almost beat for Beats it's not only predictable it's also kind of just absent it's at least three to four hours before the plot is even picked up before then it's just pushing forward because a voice tells you to do that but it does get moving it happens in spasmodic bursts that never pique your interest and never create questions in your mind or a desire to learn more when the villain is revealed and their motivation it's yeah it's pretty goofy and it doesn't feel remotely earned and the ending is so abrupt I legit did not know I was headed into the final confrontation until I was there because the narrative certainly wasn't building to any sort of recognizable Crescendo the story is so hard to care about because of the absence of characters the main hero Jacob he's just a dude there's really nothing to him he doesn't have a backstory you'd care about he doesn't have a personality that's interesting he's a little more than the suit he's wearing or the weapons he's carrying same goes for the very lean Supporting Cast there's not many of them and none of them are at all watchable or compelling there is some effort to breathe a bit of Personality into them but they largely serve a function within a chain of events rather than being actual characters that you look forward to interacting with in the absence of a story or characters clista would have really benefited from some thematic hooks Silent Hill is the best example of this the oppressiveness of its world and its monsters all serving as a reflection of James's grief and guilt hell goes why Tokyo wasn't a fantastic game but its use of Japanese Urban mythology combined with this Yokai bestiary created a setting that felt worthwhile despite the game's many shortcomings Callisto doesn't have anything like that there's nothing to be unpacked or considered in anything that Kalisto presents to you its setting is absolutely an old sci-fi prison with noddescript zombies the only difference between them all is that some of them are blind and that's it I really wanted something other than the visuals to pull me into this world I wanted a character I wanted a storyline I wanted some [ __ ] up horror [ __ ] that would mess with me and I'd have to take a break from the game because I found it too confronting or whatever I wanted something but unfortunately that just never comes here in Callisto it's just push forward the video game a summary that applies not only to the narrative but very much to the level design foreign So lately I think the term linear game has changed slightly or at least the way we use it has changed these days we sort of call any game that's not an open world game a linear game even though that's not quite right like we call Resident Evil Village a linear game even though you spend a lot of time exploring specific locations in a distinctly non-linear fashion same goes for a plague tell Requiem where large portions of that game are non-linear affording the player a fair amount of choice about where they go but we still refer to it as a linear single playing game pluso protocol is a linear game in the strictest and most literal definition of that term exploration is not a feature of this experience there is one pathway and that is where you will go for the entire 10 or so hours now there are some little side passage things like a pathway will Fork both left and right and if you go right you'll walk for a bit kill some zombies and then you'll get looped back around via an air duct or something so that you're pointed towards the other direction and then you press on that's about as extensive as exploration ever gets now there's nothing inherently wrong with a distinctly linear experience The Last of Us games for example almost entirely linear but for a few sections and they totally work it works I think because those sorts of linear experiences are punctuated with scripted events or set pieces that all benefit from having the player carefully shepherded through them the search lights over the sewers as you flee under cover of night the traps in Bill's town the sniper sequence as you approach Sam and Henry's house all of those Unforgettable moments don't really work if you give the player too much space Callisto protocol has some of these moments but very few one standout example is this snow field where you're pressing through amidst all of these Frozen zombies and you just know that any one of them could spring to life at any moment and they do that is a great sequence there's another one where you make your way through this nature biome and all around you the trees are rustling with the sound of these zombie things and you just know that any one of them could pounce on you at any moment and they do again great sequence albeit quite frustrating out in my mind because they are very much the exception to the rule most of the time you're just pressing forward through these very linear environments without set pieces or new enemy types or new environmental mechanics to make them feel distinct and after some time you really feel starved for some more connection to the space you're moving through as you do all of this you should know that there's no puzzles in this game the only thing you're ever asked to do is find fuse boxes to open doors you'll take one fuse box from one place and you'll put it somewhere else that opens the door you move through that's it this find the fuse thing is repeated I'm gonna say no less than 10 times it definitely gets old again should a survival horror game have puzzles I mean not necessarily but if you're gonna have a distinctly linear experience like this without many set pieces to break it up and I think some puzzles would help this is getting into the more wishlisty territory but I really wish this had a different level design philosophy survival horror games have typically done a great job of showcasing however effective exploration of distinct locations can be the town of Silent Hill the Police Station of Resident Evil 2 the Talos of prey the callista protocol is set in a big ass sci-fi prison and yet there is zero interconnectedness between any of its spaces you don't need to build a map of this place in your mind and return to previously sealed off sections when you found the right key there's no metroidvania elements no lock and key progression no exploration it's just press forward and I suspect this game would have been a hell of a lot better had its structural allowed us to properly explore black Iron rather than shuttle us through it like we're on some big conveyor belt foreign so this brings us to combat now if everything I've described to this point had been what it was and the combat was okay I probably would have just titled this video closer protocol review I wouldn't be recommending against it I'd just be like look it is what it is the combat is what done it the combat is what pushed me into territory of being like nah man this ain't it especially the boss encounter at the end of the game oh my God okay so survival horror combat it's usually a fantasy of disempowerment your enemy is stronger than you and you have limited resources so the goal is to avoid combat generally speaking because you're generally outmatched and resource staffed the Callisto protocol is not built on the same philosophy by and large you are as strong as your foes and you have Limitless resources in the form of your baton that's your primary weapon and your Workhorse in most encounters since combat is generally predicated upon up close and personal melee engagements it's more visceral than most survival horror combat no pun intended and I think it has good intentions creating a unique selling point for Callisto within the survival horror landscape problem is that it's stupid and it doesn't [ __ ] work so combat is a sort of qte when you're facing an enemy they will swing at you and you're supposed to dodge That Swing the way you're supposed to do that is by pressing either left or right you don't have to time it you just have to be holding either left or right and your character will Dodge every time at at first I thought I had to be holding a specific Direction so if the enemy was hitting from the left I thought I'd have to dodge right and vice versa but no it doesn't matter which way an enemy is swinging from so long as you are holding either left or right you will automatically Dodge what happens after that first Dodge is that you then need to press the other direction from the one you're initially pressing to dodge the enemies one two combo and they can have up to four swings in this combo so you're just pressing left and right and then waiting for them to stop swinging when they are done it is your turn to swing you will hit the right trigger a few times to do a combo and very often a little reticle will appear presenting you with an opportunity to fire off a quick shot for lots of damage once you've done that you essentially stand and wait for the enemy to get back up to complete another one of their melee swing combos for you to dodge back and forth and then you'll hit them a few more times to kill them just to show you the extremities of how this dodge mechanic works by the way this is the one mini boss in the entire game you will fight him four times you can't melee him because the game won't let you you have to shoot him with guns and I use the shotgun because it's most effective and when I need to reload I can just stand in front of him holding a directional button left or right and he can't hit me it is impossible for him to hit me and I can just stand there reloading and then taking shots in between each of his swings that is literally how you kill that boss and that is literally how the Dodge mechanic Works in this game so everything I've described at this point is kind of dumb but it works in one-on-one settings where there's you and one enemy and that's it it functions it stops working entirely when there's more than one enemy present they will continue to swing at you even when they are out of your field of view so you can't anticipate their swings you also can't Target specific enemies because there's no lock-on feature so you might be trying to finish off an enemy on low Health but suddenly another one shoulder bite is in and now your melee swings will snap to the new Target that's already bad but it becomes catastrophic later on because every enemy begins to mutate when you see tentacles coming out of their belly then you had better shoot them fast otherwise they'll become temporarily invulnerable and then immediately transform into a stronger variant with way more hit points and they do way more damage so not only can you not reliably Dodge enemies because the Dodge system literally isn't built to handle more than one foe at a time and not only can you not Target the enemy you want to Target but you also can't reliably shoot the target you need to shoot because the auto aim kicks in so hard that it will often snap you to the wrong target and the window to shoot mutating enemies is really small furthermore you do have a handful of weapons at your disposal but weapon switching on the fly if you happen to run a demo doesn't really work most of the time because you get animation locked when you get staggered or when you start automatically dodging enemies so you're trying to pull out a shotgun when your pistol runs out of ammo and you just can't do it and all the enemies around you are transforming into these giant meat sacks ready to ream you I cannot properly communicate just how frustrating this game's combat is it's so [ __ ] annoying basically if the qte goes well and you're able to dodge everything and bring down your foe as you planned it works but if one thing goes wrong and other enemies are alerted or you run out of ammo and need to reload or another enemy just happens to wander over or one of them mutates or whatever just so many things can go wrong and any one of them spells instant death oh and by the way you can't heal during combat because the heel animation takes like 15 minutes so like with all these issues I've described the least they could have done is add an instant heal that could be used to kind of crutch us through all of this frustration but no again if like one thing goes wrong it's basically impossible to recover pushing you into yet another lengthy unskippable death animation that I won't show here because YouTube will demonetize the video there are so many ways that this combat could have been improved a targeting system the Parry system quick turn so many problems all immediately apparent and all of them totally unresolved and that's setting aside the total lack of enemy variety account a total of four truly distinct enemy types and even then there's a lot of overlap in those since one of them is just a regular melee enemy who happens to spit things and the blind enemies are exactly the same as the non-blind enemies when you start fighting them and yeah like I said there is one mini boss in the whole game you fight him four times and there's one actual boss I won't spoil it here but it's one of the worst designed most frustrating boss encounters I've done in a long time I spoke to five other viewers about it three of them lowered the difficulty to beat it because in the end they just couldn't be [ __ ] and two of them did it but they said it was horrific and and they were right it absolutely was Kalisto went for some things in its combat and I respect that but sadly none of them worked and this was one of the most frustrating games I played this year if not the most [Music] we don't stand a chance alone but together we might just make it out of here alive so look I'm as disappointed as you are I know everyone was pumped for this I was absolutely right there with you but the more I pressed through this the more it wore me down I tried desperately to love it I tried desperately to see past all its flaws and look for the redeeming factors but I just couldn't find them because I don't think they're there the skin in Deep Beauty is astounding it is a remarkably pretty game to the point where the beauty will at times distract you from the repetitiveness and the frustration of the broader experience but even that beauty is undermined by shoddy performance on PC though as I said I have heard that console performance is better the story and the characters are so lightweight that you could knock them over with a feather and at no time does the game reach for any sort of themes or ideas that would make the experience more thought-provoking or more scary beyond the throat of yet another jump scare the linearity of the level design would be fine if it had more interesting set pieces or scenarios but structured the way they are the entire thing feels frustratingly on Rails and the promise inherent in a big scary sci-fi prison feels wasted when you don't actually get to explore any part of it terminally the combat does not work it doesn't work and had Callisto another six months in development some solutions to these obvious combat challenges could have been implemented that didn't happen and as a result the only Terror that Callisto inspires is the terror of having to sit through frustrating death after frustrating sadly I do not recommend the Calista protocol all right so Christmas is just a few short weeks away and people are asking hey man what do you want and you're like uh I don't know or maybe you're wrecking your brains thinking of something to buy for your gamer brother or your gamer girlfriend or even your gamer mum that's right mums play games too much respect to them whoever it may be treat yourself or the special gamer in your life with the best kit money can buy steel series steel series products are industry leading you don't have to take my word for it go look up reviews and you will see that in every category from mice to keyboards to headsets and Beyond steel stuff racks up Awards left right and center with a mix of functionality quality comfort and reliability steelseries has cemented an enviable reputation and I'm very proud to have them as a channel partner this has been a huge year for them with new product launches Galore and a refresh of almost all of their major offerings take headsets the Nova Pro Wireless is astoundingly good it's the headset I use and I can't imagine using anything else but there's other variants in the mix as well such as the Nova 7 offering an AI supported noise canceling microphone and blue tooth integration so you can take calls while you're playing but what about mice right now I'm rocking the aerox wireless so light so comfortable fantastic battery life and pinpoint Precision how about keyboards this year steel series refresh their range including the Apex Pro tkl the fastest keyboard ever built with their all-new Omni Pro 2.0 adjustable switch technology awarded best gaming keyboard by Wired Magazine that is the keyboard that I use and I love it whatever gaming kit you need steelseries make it and they make the best version of it so you can buy with confidence from them and you can buy at a discount because steel series have partnered with the channel to provide you a no questions asked 12 discount on any purchase from steelseries.com when you use offer code skillup at checkout any item at all 12 off when you use off code skill up at steelseries.com perfect time for Christmas but do get in quick as Stock May sell out during the busy gifting season thank you still serious for sponsoring the video and thank you for watching it [Music] thank you

Channel: Skill Up

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Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, callisto protocol, the callisto protocol review, the callisto protocol gameplay, callisto protocol review, playstation 5, dead space, ps5 games, ps5 gameplay, the callisto protocol reaction, playstation games, xbox series x, callisto protocol gameplay, callisto protocol reaction, callisto protocol walkthrough part 1, the callisto protocol, pc gameplay, callisto protocol game, callisto game, calisto protocol review, pc

Id: mm8pxfU9c6E

Length: 25min 5sec (1505 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 02 2022