We’ve spent a few hours this evening trudging through The Callisto Protocol, the latest horror game from some of the minds behind Dead Space. And maaaaan. At first we were into the bizarre hand-to-hand combat: duck and weave to dodge mutants’ swings, then counter when you can! But it is mush.
It doesn’t matter what direction you’re holding on the analog stick: your guy will dodge the first blow, and then it will want you to hold it in the opposite direction for the follow-up dodge. And it’s serviceable(?), if odd, when you’re fighting one-on-one, but as soon as there’s multiple guys on your tail, it turns into an incomprehensible slog of canned animations and difficult-to-track direction changes. Once the novelty wears off, it gets tiresome.
As popular as Dead Space is, we know it’s infamous for its “monster closet” approach where enemies spawn seemingly out of thin air (and often right behind you). But at least its stellar sound design and sense of timing meant it could startle, even scare you! Callisto doesn’t have that. At least it didn’t for the first three hours, until we stopped seeing leeches jumping from washing machines (yes, really) and started dealing with an awful bastard of a flesh Slinky that hid around corners. But it still feels too little, too late, and the plot ain’t exactly putting in the effort to keep us engaged as a backup.
We’ll probably finish it? We do want to write something closer to a review, and Dead Space is near and dear to our wretched little heart. But as of right now, it’s hard not to feel deflated about the whole thing.