The Callisto Protocol (2022)

I'm only an hour or so into TCP so far but I'm really digging it. The immersion and overall atmosphere are best in class but I'm probably biased in saying that since I have always had a real soft spot for gritty sci-fi. The combat is very satisfying and the gore is just what the doctor ordered.

Needless to say, I'm not far enough in to give any kind of definitive statement but so far, my reaction is favorable and I'm not sure what all the hate was about. I stayed relatively blind going in and my expectations were pretty low. I just knew it was a third-person horror set in a sci-fi world made by the minds behind Dead Space. I didn't expect it to be Dead Space, nor am I holding it to that bar (though of course, there are a lot of things in TCP that are directly lifted from Dead Space). I guess people wanted something more than a linear version of a Dead Space clone? But again I didn't really expect anything different so I'm not hard to please in this particular instance. I also see a common criticism that says the game didn't do anything new.

Man, that one really annoys me. I just don't see why something has to be new for it to be good. If it's good at what it does, that's usually enough in my book. It's a different story if the dead horse has been beaten, like with Call of Duty or Far Cry, where you've played that game a million times and each new entry is marketed as innovative when it's anything but, but I don't know, I guess with this specific type of game - third person horror - I know what I'm going to get and I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't really want or need innovation. That said, I get why others do.

That said, I've noticed a few things that are kinda weird to me. Nitpicks at best, but here they are:

1. The fire. It looks godawful. When your entire game looks clean as fuck but your fire animations aren't up to snuff, it sticks out like a sore thumb. It makes me wish developers would stop using fire as a crutch to tell us the environment or world around is dangerous or in a state of crisis. I get that when things go wrong, things catch on fire, but in an all-metal prison complex, it doesn't make sense for there to be so much fire everywhere. And we're in space! Get more creative. Replace fire with toxic gas or radiation or something.

2. The voice acting for the security robots. It doesn't sound like a robot at all. It just sounds like a man trying to sound like a robot and forcing his voice deeper than it naturally goes. It's cringey to me.

3. The tutorials tell you to look for health in "loot crates". This is kind of a facepalm moment for me. Loot crates? In today's gaming climate, loot crates refers to a very specific industry mechanic, and is entirely the wrong descriptor for what I would argue they were trying to say, which probably would have been better put as "item box" or "item chest", something along those lines. Dubbing these things "loot crates" just sounds weird.

4. The facial animations. The faces themselves look great, but so far, the animations don't really match the dialogue and/or emotions being expressed. There's a degree of 'static' to them. But, again, these are all nitpicks - after all, not every developer is going to match the facial animation superiority of Naughty Dog.

More to come.