Still, the basic combat is more melee-focused than Dead Space. I know this, because I walked out of my cell at the start of the game and was immediately beaten to death by the first enemy. The game was trying to teach me to dodge, you see. Hold in one direction and Jacob will automatically dodge, he says. Oh, well, it’s kind of a quirky dodge mechanic. Is this direction correct? “NO. Now watch a five-minute death animation as the enemy rams their fist down Jacob’s throat and uses it as a washing-up glove. This happened twice in a row. I think you’re supposed to push in the opposite direction the attack is coming from. Or towards it. Or corresponding to the limb the enemy is attacking with. Or their zodiac sign. Honestly, it was always hit or miss if I picked the right one direction to dodge, but then I struggle to make rational decisions when a guy with a face like a Rice Krispie treat sprints towards me with one hand raised and a pile of dirty dishes in the other. , I had flashbacks to Outlast 2. Make a small mistake early on thanks to poorly explained mechanics and watch our protagonist gasp over the sliced ​​meatball sandwich that was once their cock and balls for thirty seconds.

Horrifying, yes, but then you recharge, come back to life, and all tension is deflated. This kicks the game off on the wrong foot and instantly turns horror into frustration, though Callisto Protocol generally looks bad at telling the difference. He loves stealing health. Semi-regularly you walk into a room or open a closet and the game goes “THINK FAST” and a little face hug will explode towards you like Monty Python’s fucking killer bunny and say “Hee hee hee! Free damage for me !Name name name name name!” And you have to smash a button to pull it off. There’s never a way to see it coming. So what am I supposed to do here, play? Do not enter the rooms? Not going through every closet? Have you ever played survival horror? I have to go through every cupboard for ammo and health like an extremely stoned medical student in a communal kitchen at two in the morning. This is how the survival part works. Just to jump to the end for a moment, Callisto Protocol is, spoiler warning, a load of old crap and backpacks, and the funny thing is that all of its major issues stem from one thing, and that’s the animations.

Least of them are the inevitable, prolonged, gratuitously cruel death scenes that are our punishment for not guessing we were supposed to dodge if our enemy was born in the Chinese Year of the Pig, and soon after, I saw them start I had just exited the main menu and reloaded my save, which was usually faster. Plus, if you run out of ammo during a fight, you’re screwed, as the painfully slow reload and weapon-switching animations don’t count if interrupted, and they will, as these madmen reject seasonal McDonalds burgers. on legs are very aggressive and eager to do their dishes. If you need to heal in battle, then you’re double fucked, because Jacob can’t just get up and jam the glowing green needle into his neck, he has to slowly squat down and carefully lay down a little picnic blanket. picnic to sit on, first. Also, we can’t swing our melee weapon immediately if it’s currently holstered. So I would pull it out and try to keep it ready while crawling the hallways looking for the next inevitable ambush and the fools here kept putting it away yet again without my asking. Do you need both hands to pick your fucking nose, or what?

Oh, and the animators must have been particularly proud of the 3D printing sequence at the upgrade station, because we have to sit through this whole fucking thing every time we buy an upgrade for our weapons, and again and again if we buy one right before one of the frustrating boss fights because the idea of ​​setting up an autosave after the upgrade station apparently eluded everyone as they returned seven other different ways to remove Jacob Lee’s bruisers. I don’t know if the main animator was mobbed and threatened to call Louie Fishlips to come and break the kneecaps if any animations were skipped, but that’s as good an explanation as any. Wait, I feel like I forgot to mention something… ah yeah: there are guns. There is a pistol, a shotgun, another pistol and another shotgun. I never figured out what the precise differences were, but at least it meant having twice as many ammo types to clutter up the very limited inventory. And you can’t throw away the guns once you’ve crafted them, so you’ll still be getting ammo for them even if you want to focus on the classic pistol and caffeine-free shotgun.

Callisto Protocol is an almost refreshing game. Riddled with misguided and frustrating design choices rather than the usual generic drivel. While this is also generic drivel, make no mistake, we’re diving into new dimensions of shite-osity. It feels like Dead Space with all the interesting Dead Space edges sanded down. Unique limb cutting gameplay replaced with generic twatting. Unique monster design replaced with generic cornflake zombies. Which of course were created by a generic alien parasite extracted from a generic ancient ruin and then deliberately propagated by generically evil rich people for generic super-soldier reasons. And then, after a generic final boss fight against a generic monster man, the plot has the nerve to end on a cliffhanger. Read the play, Callisto Protocol. “I bet the last ten hours of bollock punches have whetted your appetite for an extra mule kick to the prostate.” The fundamental flaw of Catpiss Pokeyballs is that its core gameplay demands a speed of thought and action that slow control and animations cannot. As I said, frustration and horror are not the same thing. The horror is finding out what your overweight grandma did to your toilet, the frustration of trying to get an emergency plumber to come over Thanksgiving weekend.

The fucking audio logs no longer play into the gameplay