The Callisto Protocol (survival/horror)

[Mchart]

See, I actually loved the focus on melee. It was thick and heavy and murdery and sooo much more satisfying than the "melee" from DS1. There were obvious influences from Dead Space, but the game tried to bring some new ideas as well. That timing, though...just can't get around it. Remakes of older, well-loved games do not happen often...so when they do, you'd be well advised to not release a similar new IP that's trying to take chances.

The early technical issues combined with blatant and obvious comparison to DSR (which happened to be well executed vs. a shoddy cash grab) probably contribute to the negative chatter despite the game scoring well objectively.

The early technical issues completely killed the game TBH, because they were really bad, and it's not like this was Cyberpunk with a massive great game behind it all. The game on launch day was 100% unplayable on PC, and even after the first shader cache patch was still pretty bad on PC. Console had serious performance issues as well.

Honestly, they would have been better off had they released the game as a Xbox game pass title or something, and taken some cash from Microsoft. It didn't help that the game was $60 retail at launch for what everyone knew was a one an done type of game.

 

[Lateralus]

The early technical issues completely killed the game TBH, because they were really bad, and it's not like this was Cyberpunk with a massive great game behind it all. The game on launch day was 100% unplayable on PC, and even after the first shader cache patch was still pretty bad on PC. Console had serious performance issues as well.

Honestly, they would have been better off had they released the game as a Xbox game pass title or something, and taken some cash from Microsoft. It didn't help that the game was $60 retail at launch for what everyone knew was a one an done type of game.

I don't ever remember it being 100% unplayable, or even close to it, so we are seemingly looking at it from two slightly different perspectives. I'll take your word for it because I don't think I received the game until just before the first big patch that really smoothed things out but it seemed to run fine from then on. Obviously my experience isn't representative of everyone's but I was playing at 4K on what was an i7-6700K/3090 rig at the time with some old Gen2 SATA SSDs, so not exactly a powerhouse other than a stout GPU. The RT implementation was bad and weird in terms of appearance and performance but the base game seemed fine to me.

The early technical issues certainly didn't help but they don't have to be game-killers, either. Arkham Knight was a disaster to the point of being pulled from sale, and that game is looked at very fondly today.

At the end of the day it's going to land in the 7ish range for most folks willing to give it a fair shot, which isn't a bad place to be. I don't think many space horror fans who pick it up on sale are going to be massively disappointed. There is a lot to like here if you enjoy the melee spin on DS. After much of the regurgitative vomit that we've seen from other studios, I'm willing to be a little more forgiving I suppose.

 

[polonyc2]

the melee aspect of Callisto Protocol was their attempt at differentiating it from Schofield's previous Dead Space games...otherwise it would just be a DS copycat...either way it was bad timing releasing it just a few weeks before the better received Dead Space remake...the DS remake has its own set of issues as it seems the developer has abandoned it after 1 patch despite the fact that it still needs some work

 

[MelonSplitter]

For some reason the game no longer works. When trying to continue or load a save, it locks up right there. This is on multiple attempts. No Bueno

 

[Domingo]

I don't ever remember it being 100% unplayable, or even close to it, so we are seemingly looking at it from two slightly different perspectives. I'll take your word for it because I don't think I received the game until just before the first big patch that really smoothed things out but it seemed to run fine from then on. Obviously my experience isn't representative of everyone's but I was playing at 4K on what was an i7-6700K/3090 rig at the time with some old Gen2 SATA SSDs, so not exactly a powerhouse other than a stout GPU. The RT implementation was bad and weird in terms of appearance and performance but the base game seemed fine to me.

I played the game after the first or second patch and it was mostly okay by that point until you got to the Colony. That's the area that looks like a multi-level shantytown. It's relatively close to the end of the game. That area was like 35fps even with a 7950X3D and a 4090. My rig was new at the time, so I also tried it with my prior system (5800X and 3090) and it was pretty much unplayable in 4K. Lowering the settings barely seemed to matter, at least unless you lowered the resolution or render %.
Maybe they eventually fixed that area, but it was really rough initially.