Ryan O'Doherty

I’ll keep this short and generally spoiler free for anyone looking at buying the Callisto protocol. I loved Dead Space and I took a huge interest in Callisto because I hugely support devs like Glen and striking distance who stick to their guns and are genuinely creative and not hashing out the same mind numbing shooters. The visuals and audio is stunning, absolutely stunning. The story is good but not great, it’s nothing ground breaking and Sam Witwers presence is less felt than I wanted, although, the cast give a solid performance and you do genuinely care about the characters. It was enjoyable to play through from start to finish but I found myself getting quite bored during the moment to moment game play. I have to say, I really did not find this game scary at all apart from the first ten minutes. It really isn’t that scary. Once you get a knack for the combat system, every encounter, regardless of enemy type become quite a standard process, dodge left, dodge right, auto headshot, force push. At first the combat feels unforgiving but honestly, once you realise there is no timing window and just make sure you don’t dodge the same way twice, it becomes quite a repetitive process. It’s unfair in moments when a dude grabs you from behind, forcing you to button mash all the while he drains your health for another guy to slam you after. But once I had a few bits of gear, by chapter 4, I was walking through those corridors like Connor McGregor. “You’ll do absolutely nuttin’” The enemy types aren’t as varied as I’d hoped in all honesty, generally everything is some version of a humanoid apart from the spider dudes who turn invisible but their tactic is to take off their invisibility cloak and charge you? Then… dodge, dodge, Wack, shotgun to face. Taking off limbs is not as important as I’d wanted. I’m sad the game is not what I’d hoped it to be, in all honesty, I regret buying it on day one at full price, you should wait for a sale. If I could get a refund, I absolutely would…