If you like horror games similar to Resident Evil 4 or especially Dead Space, you’ll find a lot to like in the Calisto Protocol. The game is from the one of the co-creators of Dead Space and also has several of the same team that made that classic survival horror game on board with this game.
The game sees you play as Jacob, a space ship co-pilot who finds himself in a prison on Calisto, which is a moon of the planet Jupiter. With an implant put into the back of his neck that seems to be giving Jacob strange visions the game doesn’t take long before launching you into some zombie action.
After waking up in your prison cell you find that the prison have been overrun with some kind of virus which is turning all the inmates and prison guards into wild fast running zombies. These are zombies of the Dawn of the Dead remake/28 Days Later running variety and they come at you relentlessly. You spend the game on a mission to escape the moon and uncover what is causing everyone to become savage mutants.
The story is ok, although even though I’ve played it all the way through twice I found I wasn’t super clear on everything that was happening. It doesn’t quite make sense to me that between Jacob being put in his cell and him waking up from a nightmare that the prison would have been completely overrun the way it is shown to be in the game. Sure, I get that the developers wanted everywhere to look atmospheric and creepy, but this space dome on Calisto looks more overrun and dilapidated than the post apocalyptic world of The Last of Us.
There’s a lot I liked about the game. The acting is good and I found the atmosphere creepy and the jump scares got me more than once. The detail on the graphics are some of the best I’ve seen recently and the lighting and level design really does make for an enjoyable horror experience.
The game is very like Dead Space even down to the health metre being situated on the back of the neck of your character. I always liked this in dead Space as it meant you would always know how your health is doing without the need to go into a menu. It also shows a metre for your power glove, which allows you to use Darth Vader like force powers to pick up and throw enemies and objects.
The combat in the game is perhaps the area I’m least happy with. You will primarily be using melee weapons to fight the zombies and the way the combat works just doesn’t feel fully like you’re in control. It’s hard to describe, but I’ll give it a go.
When you swing your baton to hit enemies you find you enter a sequence where you can do a combination of four or five hits in a row. This almost feels automatic like a quick time event. Along the way if you have a gun it will flash up on screen that you have the chance to shoot the enemy with the tap of a button and then can continue the melee attack. You can also dodge enemy attacks by holding the thumb stick either left, right or down.
For me the dodging doesn’t feel like I’m actually controlling the dodge, but am just pressing a button like in a QTE or like on the game Space Ace. Then pressing the attack button to use the baton kinda just takes over the chain of attacks, and the same with the quick gun shots. You really don’t have to aim to the gun to get a direct hit. If you don’t have enough ammo the chain will be broken and more likely than not you will be hit. There’s just something about it that doesn’t feel like you’re really in control.
Fortunately the more you play the better things do become. The game allows you to throw enemies with your force powers into environmental traps such as spiked walls and rotating fans. You only have limited use of the force powers before they will need to recharge, but this really does feel more like you’re in control of things.
The game also features that you can pick up money (Calisto credits) and can pick up machine parts which you can sell and then buy new weapons and upgrades. This is very similar to the system found in Resident Evil 4, 5 and 8 although it’s not as satisfying. This lets you power up your weapons, but doesn’t really come into it’s own until you start a New Game + which allows you to play through the game again with all of your weapons and upgrades at the same level as where they were when you completed the game before.
On my second play through I found that you couldn’t access the weapons from the previous play through until around 30 minutes in and it was a pain that you don’t seem to be able to skip cutscenes. This makes the prospect of just speed running through the game a little less possible. Whilst I certainly felt a lot more confident with my upgraded weapons on play through two I didn’t feel significantly more overpowered compared to my first run through. You can continue to upgrade weapons on your second play through, but as the game progresses it felt like the tougher enemies were evening the odds against me rather than me feeling like I was becoming invincible against them with my upgrades. It does seem like three play throughs may be needed to fully upgrade everything, but not sure I’m in a rush after the second play through to instantly jump back in a third time.
Another thought I have on the game is that I wish there had been a little more variety in terms of enemy types and locations. You’re on an alien world although for a lot of the game it will just feel like you’re in any sci-fi set space station or a prison setting. There is one point where you reach the edge of the dome the moon base is on and you see the sky above you has Jupiter looking huge and that is really impressive. I wish more of the game had let you see this and other aspects of the surface of Calisto. You do get a short section set outside and it’s basically set in a snow storm and you also get to go through an area which is like a town where people who live on Calisto would stay. These both feel a little lacking in imagination with the town area feeling a bit like no one ever lived there.
The enemies are mostly fleshy looking mutant zombie dudes. You do get one which is like a head that spawns out of a pod with a huge neck and one that is like an wall crawling bug thing, but after a while most enemies do feel very similar and attack in the same way. There are literally only two bosses in the game. There is a huge two headed dude called a Two Head, and after the first fight with one of these which feels like a true boss fight you do get another two times where you fight more of these creatures in the exact same way.
The final boss fight is a challenge, and I’ll avoid giving spoilers here for things that relate to the story, but I will note that the game kinda ambushes you with the final boss and it feels most unfair. You have a couple of encounters with the final boss and when you do you will find the game autosaves and you won’t have an opportunity to load the game to before you face the boss so that you have a chance to reload weapons or fill up on health items.
In the final boss’s non final form I discovered that there is a certain pattern the fight can take where the boss will never actually be able to kill you, but will obliterate your health down as low as it can go. This again feels a little unfair as the game is very mean in that you don’t really have any opportunity to use health items or reload or change weapons when against the final boss. It’s this in particular that makes some of the upgrades you get in the game feel a bit meaningless. I mean so what if you upgrade your power glove if you’re fighting a boss character that it has no effect on?
Conclusion
The game is really good and if you love the Dead Space and Resident Evil games there is a lot to like here. The combat is the area which I feel could have been better, although improves as the game goes on. The graphics are great and the atmosphere is creepy so will please anyone seeking to scratch that horror itch.
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