Intro:
Blending old school horror with modern day concepts and graphics’, the Callisto Protocol is a diamond in the rough, blending unique stories, mechanics and chapter by chapter pacing. A new type of horror is immerging, gone are the days of the cheesy jump scare, and in with a new more thoughtful approach to horror, one that will task the players with a more mentally challenging approach to gaming.
Intellectual Horror:
Horror never looked so good in 2023, changing up the game (no pun intended) and giving gamers a new style of horror to sink their teeth into is a challenge that, in this instance created confusion and unfriendly chaos amongst the masses. Gamers have seen a lot of horror games over the years and as a result, have become desensitized to it, which created this want for the envelope to be further pushed by developers.
The Callisto Protocol created a minimalist approach to horror with its immersive creepy atmosphere and truly eerily done sound design. This game brought back horror in a revitalized way, with refreshing concepts that were seen back in the early 2000’s (minimal health items scattered around, tricky bosses, save points that made you work for that achievements, and randomly generated items that enemies drop). A lot of these classic concepts we know and love, but they are incorporated in a fresh way.
Doing the Impossible:
Making a great horror game is like baking, each part of the game has to have equal parts of everything that make a horror game important to the player. This game does something new and innovative where it takes a new approach to storytelling with multiple plotlines interwoven seamlessly into one. Now, you’re probably thinking “other games do that, what’s so special about this one.” Other games don’t carry multiple plotlines off seamlessly without hiccups along the way, which is fine. Having multiple narratives is difficult to pull off successfully and subtly in a way that the player doesn’t notice a break in the plot.
The base of the story is quite simple, on the surface it looks like a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, now has to escape from Black Iron Prison and understand what the hell is happening. As you get deeper into the story, the player will soon uncover that Jacob is one of the people behind the transport and is complicit in the outbreak. Jacob's survivors' guilt, seeing Max at pivotal points throughout the game tie beautifully into Jacob uncovering what he took part in. Another plotline we see are the miners of Arcas and their discovery of a larva that accelerated evolution. Vir Salitarious ( the lone man) is another plotline where we find out that Jacob is the lone man etc. So there are a lot of varying plotlines that effortlessly weave into the other and create a better sense of immersion (or at least that’s what it did for me)
My Issues As of Now:
While the story is winner in the game, the controls have a learning curve that create frustration and questions. The mechanics are mostly dodging and hitting but are set in a confusing manner that that made me feel like I was taking a part in Demon Boxing match. We float like a butterfly, and sting like a zombie. The written prompts for the instructions that are given are slightly confusing as well and come up right before you’re supposed to fight said monsters, so it took me out of the immersion and had me slightly annoyed.
Once you get used to the controls you will be dodging and swinging hooks with the best of them. But don’t get discouraged if you can’t nail the combat right away. In addition to controls that take a while to get adjusted to, the save mechanic lacks desirability. I’m not a fan of when I try to save after I’ve upgraded my weapons (then when I die) the upgrades don’t save, it just reverts back to the save that was originally made at the checkpoint.
All in All…
This game was really something special, and going through it I was unsure if I would enjoy it or not, but once the story picked up it created such a unique level of immersion that I was thoroughly impressed with the sophisticated way in which the story was delivered to me. It didn’t spoon feed me knowledge, I had to pick up audio logs if I wanted to know more and pay attention to subtleties in the world that created a magnetism in how each plotline, cut scene and audio log interact with each other.
Comments