jen-and-aster

Scanline Media. Plural. Awoo.

Hi, we're Jennifer! And Aster! Feel free to refer to us with either name, or both.

We're the co-editor/co-host of Scanline Media and its various podcasts, but we also host Novel Not New: A True End Podcast at readinggames.online! Feel free to ask us anything, as long as you're polite about it.


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.


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in reply to @jen-and-aster's post:

It was sounding as if there was a bit of Fight Night/Knockout Kings in primarily melee (!) combat..."Mushy" isn't the term you'd want to hear in this case!

Is there any sympathy towards the prisoners in this setting, or are they just fodder for the player?

If anything, the warden and guards are presented as the bad guys: your protagonist is sent to the prison for bullshit reasons, and another prisoner who's been there forever becomes your pal as you two work on escaping as all hell breaks loose. There's a fighting tutorial where you battle two cognizant prisoners, but that's mostly happening because they're just as confused as you are. And nearly all of the profiles you pull from dead guards mention they were sent here because they were abusing/profiteering from prisoners in their previous jobs, or did something equally shitty.