Created by new developer Striking Distance Studios, The Callisto Protocol is a third-person survival-horror title in which players enter the role of Jacob Lee, an inmate of Black Iron Prison on the moon Callisto. The game shares many similar elements with Dead Space, largely due to the fact that The Callisto Protocol director Glen Schofield was Dead Space’s co-creator, although the studio has been adamant about trying to differentiate the feel between the two.
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Only hours after the game’s launch, The Callisto Protocol’s official Twitter account announced that a day-one patch for the PC version of the game was to be rolled out within a few hours. There have been rampant reports from players on the platform that the game suffers from choppy performance, frequent stuttering, and poor optimization. Another common complaint about the new title is the game’s overall length, with many gamers completing the story in roughly seven hours. This has led The Callisto Protocol to a rating of “Mostly Negative” on Steam, with over 4,000 reviews at the time of writing.
The tweet from The Callisto Protocol also reveals additional updates are on the way, though it remains unclear on what exactly those updates entail. While performance issues appear to be most prevalent on PC, performance issues are present on the console version as well. One of the top comments from the aforementioned Steam reviews claims their PS5 version of the game suffers from stutter issues as well. The player claim is especially surprising, considering The Callisto Protocol features a 60FPS performance mode on PS5 and Xbox Series X.
Still, despite the game’s initial performance issues and rather short runtime, The Callisto Protocol is being praised for its other aspects. Many initial reviews praise the game’s supremely creepy atmosphere, varied visceral combat, and graphics. GameRant gave The Callisto Protocol a 3.5/5 rating, calling it “an excellent game let down by some hugely important missing features, but hopefully future updates will help it live up to its full potential as a worthy successor to the Dead Space franchise.”
Some of those updates will hopefully be a part of the game’s to-be-released material, as The Callisto Protocol has six months of post-launch content planned. With performance issues addressed and hopefully some additional story content, the title has the potential to eventually be considered among the very best in the survival-horror genre.
The Callisto Protocol is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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