The Callisto Protocol is beautifully grotesque, appealingly brutal, and a visually impressive performer on the PlayStation 5. This debut title from Striking Distance Studios is replete with bona fides and – if the preview is any indication – seems a worthy spiritual successor to a Dead Space, updated for modern appetites.
Dead Space is catching headlines as well, with EA’s long-awaited remake expecting a release next year, but The Callisto Protocol is an original IP born from some head-turning talent. Industry veteran and Dead Space franchise co-creator Glen Schofield directs the new title, making it even harder to discuss one game without mentioning the other, with each combining action-oriented survival horror with grimdark science fiction amid buckets of viscera.
Screen Rant was able to test drive a portion of The Callisto Protocol’s gameplay this month, blasting off alien limbs and stomped credits out of corpses. The comparisons to Dead Space were predictably numerous but the combat and presentation feel appropriately current-gen, awash in dazzling lighting effects and finely detailed gore at every turn. It’s a game where the budget is apparent in every visible frame, joining a short set of upcoming end-of-year AAA titles like God of War Ragnarök.
The central hero is Jacob Lee, an inmate at maximum-security penitentiary Black Iron Prison, situated somewhere on Jupiter’s moon Callisto. At some point prior to our preview slice of The Callisto Protocol, an infectious alien mutation takes hold of the prison and affords Lee the opportunity to escape, now forced to battle the monstrous hordes as he scavenges for resources and inches his way through the facility to freedom.
Dead Space fans will immediately recognize The Callisto Protocol’s HUD-less approach, always presenting vitals and other information through immersive readable designs built into Jacob’s gear or the environment itself. Rather than crowd the screen’s real estate with glowing text and icons, this approach centers focus and immersion on the environment instead of arbitrary gauges in the corners of the screen. Even inventory reserves and machines are interacted with using an in-world holographic display; being ambushed while rooting through item menus is always good for a laugh.
Black Iron Prison is visually stunning yet repulsive, a corrupted backdrop which combines buzzing industrial machinery with high-tech systems and interfaces. The bulk of The Callisto Protocol preview saw us navigating a sewage facility, dodging emergent hazards and powering up fuseboxes to grant further access. Eventually this scenery gave way to hydroponic laboratory farms and a view of Callisto’s night sky, which was appropriately awe-inspiring.
The Callisto Protocol’s enemies are gruesome and intimidating, with each encounter a dynamic action set piece mixing melee, projectile, and environmental combat in desperate fashion. Jacob can perform a standing dodge or slip when enemies get too close, countering with a club and following up with a firearm, along with a gravity-gun-like tool that tosses mutants against walls or, preferably, into a variety of deadly devices and incidental traps. The latter seems an ideal fit for puzzle sequences, though there were no telekinetic puzzles that we saw in our time with the game.
Combat feels slick and stressful simultaneously, especially when multiple enemies draw close for the kill. Similar to Resident Evil 4, Jacob is at a loss when contending with more than one monster, so careful aiming alone is never enough to succeed. The Callisto Protocol features the type of action which requires constant quick reads of the environment and repositioning, as even a full health bar gets melted by a focused enemy, and he can easily be knocked over into deadly grinding machines for a demoralizing insta-kill. And, in an additional nod to RE4, enemies have a tendency to mutate into harder tentacled versions if they’re not dispatched efficiently.
Much like Leon S. Kennedy (and less like Isaac Clarke), Jacob feels like an accomplished warrior right off the bat. Most fights leave him covered in blood spatter and, despite his trusty firearm, combat in The Callisto Protocol is frequently short-range. Ammo is limited and magazine sizes are meager, prompting desperate inopportune reloads and last-gasp melee scraps before every target in a room is down, which is a good time to stomp out those corpses for bonus credits.
In keeping with survival horror’s greatest hits, player deaths are never a simple game over screen; our preview saw Jacob shredded to pieces in gory detail numerous times. Actor Josh Duhamel (Transformers, Jupiter’s Legacy) voicing and embodying the main character adds even more oomph to those moments, with terrified facial reactions to accompany his painful eviscerations. Earlier allusions to “collecting” the wide variety of death animations in The Callisto Protocol hint at time well spent.
Still, aside from the impressive presentation and ambience, The Callisto Protocol does not appear to be reinventing any kind of wheel. Scrounging for keycards and replacing fuses aren’t cutting-edge gameplay concepts, but the visual fidelity, violence, and oppressive tone of the game are working overtime to earn its ticket price. The frequent action sequences, while certainly familiar, bear that high level of polish that we just don’t see enough in the genre.
At this stage prior to release, it’s hard to imagine that The Callisto Protocol hasn’t already captured the attention (and pre-orders) of eager Dead Space fans worldwide. Crawling through airducts and listening to audio journals may not sound like genre innovation – and these certainly took up a good portion of our preview – but our two hours spent surviving in Black Iron Prison flew by in a heartbeat. Hopefully Striking Distance Studios has a few gameplay twists to reveal, but The Callisto Protocol is already looking like tailor-made entertainment for the sci-fi horror fan with a strong stomach.
The Callisto Protocol releases on December 2 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Screen Rant was invited to a preview session for the purpose of this article.
