Game #1347: The Callisto Protocol

 Welcome to Broken Space.

 I got late to the party, but I got into Dead Space and I finally understood what the hoopla was all about. Sadly, EA did an EA and closed down Visceral Studios. So, imagine this, you are part of the team that made Dead Space and you get the chance to show EA how wrong they were by making an spiritual successor to DS, namely, The Callisto Protocol. What's more, EA announces a DS remake, so now you get to show them what's good. Except that EA knocks it out of the park and you ruin your once chance. 

 Firstly, this is just a spiritual sequel to Dead Space, as the gameplay is quite different. The visceral feel to the combat is here, but now it focuses on Melee combat rather than trying to tear your enemies limb from limb. But hey! At least it looks the part, as this could've been very well a Dead Space Spin-off, something akin to 'Dead Space: Warrior Within" or somethin', as the futuristic/horror direction is pretty much identical. The monsters you fight here could've very well been on Dead Space.

 The combat is... while it looks and feels satisfying, it sure is odd. When an enemy approaches you with an attack, or if you approach them with your own, the camera will soft-lock into the enemy, and then tapping left or tight will make you dodge incoming attacks. I had heard that the game was supposed to be hard, but it was very easy... at least when it came to fighting baddies. Going unscathed is quite easy, as long as you remember to focus on upgrading your melee weapon and using your guns ONLY as melee-combo finishers.

 Early on you also get a Gravity Arm which you can use to pull enemies towards you and then push them, and the game offers a ton of insta-kill environmental hazards for you to push your enemies into. I used it every now and then, but the melee weapon and the basic pistol carried me throughout the entire game just fine. There aren't puzzles to waste your time either, just you, abandoned futuristic environments and lots of gruesome baddies waiting to have their skulls caved-in.

 The game is quite linear, and it will penalize you if you are not careful, for y'see, even though it's linear, sometimes there are forks in the road that may offer you goodies. And you want goodies, since you can then sell them and you money to upgrade your equipment.... but here's the rub, the game LOVES to lock doors behind you, and it's never quite clear if you went into the optional fork in the road or the 'right one'. And since the game runs on a checkpoint system.... you might have to reload every now and then once you realize you are on the right path and  the game decided to lock you into that road.

 So, it sounds like a decent, if unimpressive game, clearly deserving of the lukewarm reception it got, right? Well.... the game is absolutely busted. It's ridiculous, because I looked up "Callisto Protocol PS4 crashes" but all I got were results... about the PS5 version being just as bad. I also came across idiots claiming how "The game will receive day 1 patches!"...so? I'm playing what's printed on the disc, and what's printed on the disc should, at the bare minimum, be playable.

 But it's tough. The game crashed during one of the first cutscenes, clearly a sign of things to come, as the game will crash every 20-30 minutes. But, in a way, it helps, because I'm sure there's some sort of memory leak issue that makes the game run worse and worse the more you play it, until the unavoidable crash.

 It can get so bad that just swinging your weapon drops the framerate to the single digits. But it usually fixes when you restart the game. Usually. Sometimes some sections are borderline unplayable, if there are breakable glass nearby... do avoid accidentally breaking it during a fight, or your PS4 will struggle like it never has before. Remember when I said that the game is, combat-wise, easy? Well, sections that should be easy as pie become tough because you are swarmed by enemies as the framerate struggles to keep up. Chapter 4 has a section with a giant fan in the middle, and pushing enemies into it should be dead simple... except that the framerate makes it impossible to aim. And this one wouldn't get better even after restarting/crashing the game.

 And that's not even getting into how broken the subtitles are. Sometimes they just choose to disappear, so, yeah, they even screwed up the subtitles. Oh, and I fell through the ground twice. And this isn't a bug, but when Jacob, the main character, gets the cervical implant graved onto his spine... the character model barely emotes while the voice actor puts his all into selling how much pain Jacob is in. Utterly hilarious. And during cutscenes, when Jacob gets attacked, monsters usually come textureless, looking all glossy, which is also funny.

 If the PS4 couldn't run the game it shouldn't have released at all.... except that I accidentally installed the patch, because the PS4 is such a garbage console that you can't turn off patches. But I gave it a try, just for giggles.... and the game runs BEAUTIFULLY. It's like night and they, you can be fighting five enemies at the same time and the framerate won't drop. And this made me even angrier because this means that the PS4 could run this game perfectly, but they just rushed it.

 So... the game is fixed, and it runs well and I did enjoy the game when I wasn't suffering all the crashes and the such... but what I'm interested in is in what is on the disc I purchased, because the Servers won't be online forever, and what is on the disc is borderline unplayable. An absolutely disgusting release. Oh! And the ending? It's DLC.

 2.0