The Callisto Protocol (survival/horror)

Lateralus said:
See, I actually loved the focus on melee. It was thick and heavy and murdery and sooo much more satisfying than the "melee" from DS1. There were obvious influences from Dead Space, but the game tried to bring some new ideas as well. That timing, though...just can't get around it. Remakes of older, well-loved games do not happen often...so when they do, you'd be well advised to not release a similar new IP that's trying to take chances.

The early technical issues combined with blatant and obvious comparison to DSR (which happened to be well executed vs. a shoddy cash grab) probably contribute to the negative chatter despite the game scoring well objectively.
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The early technical issues completely killed the game TBH, because they were really bad, and it's not like this was Cyberpunk with a massive great game behind it all. The game on launch day was 100% unplayable on PC, and even after the first shader cache patch was still pretty bad on PC. Console had serious performance issues as well.

Honestly, they would have been better off had they released the game as a Xbox game pass title or something, and taken some cash from Microsoft. It didn't help that the game was $60 retail at launch for what everyone knew was a one an done type of game.
 
Mchart said:
The early technical issues completely killed the game TBH, because they were really bad, and it's not like this was Cyberpunk with a massive great game behind it all. The game on launch day was 100% unplayable on PC, and even after the first shader cache patch was still pretty bad on PC. Console had serious performance issues as well.

Honestly, they would have been better off had they released the game as a Xbox game pass title or something, and taken some cash from Microsoft. It didn't help that the game was $60 retail at launch for what everyone knew was a one an done type of game.
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I don't ever remember it being 100% unplayable, or even close to it, so we are seemingly looking at it from two slightly different perspectives. I'll take your word for it because I don't think I received the game until just before the first big patch that really smoothed things out but it seemed to run fine from then on. Obviously my experience isn't representative of everyone's but I was playing at 4K on what was an i7-6700K/3090 rig at the time with some old Gen2 SATA SSDs, so not exactly a powerhouse other than a stout GPU. The RT implementation was bad and weird in terms of appearance and performance but the base game seemed fine to me.

The early technical issues certainly didn't help but they don't have to be game-killers, either. Arkham Knight was a disaster to the point of being pulled from sale, and that game is looked at very fondly today.

At the end of the day it's going to land in the 7ish range for most folks willing to give it a fair shot, which isn't a bad place to be. I don't think many space horror fans who pick it up on sale are going to be massively disappointed. There is a lot to like here if you enjoy the melee spin on DS. After much of the regurgitative vomit that we've seen from other studios, I'm willing to be a little more forgiving I suppose.
 
the melee aspect of Callisto Protocol was their attempt at differentiating it from Schofield's previous Dead Space games...otherwise it would just be a DS copycat...either way it was bad timing releasing it just a few weeks before the better received Dead Space remake...the DS remake has its own set of issues as it seems the developer has abandoned it after 1 patch despite the fact that it still needs some work
 
For some reason the game no longer works. When trying to continue or load a save, it locks up right there. This is on multiple attempts. No Bueno
 
Lateralus said:
I don't ever remember it being 100% unplayable, or even close to it, so we are seemingly looking at it from two slightly different perspectives. I'll take your word for it because I don't think I received the game until just before the first big patch that really smoothed things out but it seemed to run fine from then on. Obviously my experience isn't representative of everyone's but I was playing at 4K on what was an i7-6700K/3090 rig at the time with some old Gen2 SATA SSDs, so not exactly a powerhouse other than a stout GPU. The RT implementation was bad and weird in terms of appearance and performance but the base game seemed fine to me.
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I played the game after the first or second patch and it was mostly okay by that point until you got to the Colony. That's the area that looks like a multi-level shantytown. It's relatively close to the end of the game. That area was like 35fps even with a 7950X3D and a 4090. My rig was new at the time, so I also tried it with my prior system (5800X and 3090) and it was pretty much unplayable in 4K. Lowering the settings barely seemed to matter, at least unless you lowered the resolution or render %.
Maybe they eventually fixed that area, but it was really rough initially.
 
I picked this up, seems okay except after about 15 minutes or so the framerate will tank to something like 15-20 FPS and then just stay there until I save and quit to menu. Then reloading the save, the framerate is fine again (for awhile).

Is this typical with this game? Happened to me twice in the span of like 30 minutes.
 
MavericK said:
I picked this up, seems okay except after about 15 minutes or so the framerate will tank to something like 15-20 FPS and then just stay there until I save and quit to menu. Then reloading the save, the framerate is fine again (for awhile).

Is this typical with this game? Happened to me twice in the span of like 30 minutes.
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Shader caching issues if I remember right. Just go through this thread about a year ago for more info.
 
Ranulfo said:
Shader caching issues if I remember right. Just go through this thread about a year ago for more info.
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Yeah, I found some INI tweaks in another place, hopefully that will fix it. Wild that it's still a problem, though.
 
Armenius said:
Looks like Denuvo was removed today. The main executable shrunk by 230 MB. Why does the DRM bloat the size so much?

https://steamdb.info/depot/1544021/history/
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Because they don't want to reference exterior DLL's/libraries for security reasons, and Denuvo is doing a bunch of funky crap with virtualization, etc So it's going to be a large amount of code even compressed within the main binary of the game.
 
Was thinking about this game. I was $15 with the DLC on the Steam sale. Was performance ever fixed? I assume there is going to be some stutter left, but if it is mostly fixed that is okay. Does ray tracing work well?
 
Flogger23m said:
Was thinking about this game. I was $15 with the DLC on the Steam sale. Was performance ever fixed? I assume there is going to be some stutter left, but if it is mostly fixed that is okay. Does ray tracing work well?
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It's not a ray tracing showcase, if that is what you're asking. Even with ray tracing this game uses a lot of baked lighting in the environment. It looks good, regardless.
 
Flogger23m said:
Was thinking about this game. I was $15 with the DLC on the Steam sale. Was performance ever fixed? I assume there is going to be some stutter left, but if it is mostly fixed that is okay. Does ray tracing work well?
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Ray tracing on the PC version is garbage in spots and inconsistent at best. Anyone that thinks it looks good is blind. The shadows look better without ray tracing in some areas and the reflections look like absolute garbage in some spots similar to how screen space reflections look in the RE engine. Also, if you're using DSR, it can make the ray tracing even worse looking as it creates more little black lines when there is flickering around the shadows.

The performance is mostly fine, but there are areas that absolutely cannot maintain a completely smooth frame rate, especially in one area where it's easily reproducible on both systems I have played it on. The fire effects in this game are just laughable as they don't even look like they're at 30 FPS. There's also some really distracting flickering lights in parts of the game that actually can distract from the graphics giving them a little fizzling look. I think it could actually make really sensitive people sick in some spots as it's that bad. Overall though, it runs pretty good and at times looks stunning. I have played through the entire game including the DLC twice and overall I'd say it's about a 6 out of 10 game but totally worth it if it's on a good sale.
 
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Assuming it no longer drops to 20fps in the shantytown area, the game's definitely worth $7. It's flawed, but that's a price I wouldn't argue with.
 
Yeah it's part of the humble choice this month so lots of key sites have it super cheap now from people reselling the choice keys. I haven't claimed my choice bundle yet but is that season pass content worth it? I think the choice bundle has a 60% off the season pass coupon.
 
LurkerLito said:
Yeah it's part of the humble choice this month so lots of key sites have it super cheap now from people reselling the choice keys...
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I'd much rather pay a little more and get it through Humble Bundle than some shady gray market website
 
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Geforcepat said:
There's nothing wrong with wanting to buy from a reputable trusted source that we know works. And know it is legit.
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Not at all, but I don't mind buying it for a lot cheaper and still have it work from other sources.
I use to torrent EVERYTHING, so I am being legit in my mind.
 
LurkerLito said:
Yeah it's part of the humble choice this month so lots of key sites have it super cheap now from people reselling the choice keys. I haven't claimed my choice bundle yet but is that season pass content worth it? I think the choice bundle has a 60% off the season pass coupon.
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Seasons pass has a DLC which adds around 50% more length apparently. The whole thing was $18 on sale on Steam recently. The deal above seems to only include the base game without the DLC.
 
Flogger23m said:
Seasons pass has a DLC which adds around 50% more length apparently. The whole thing was $18 on sale on Steam recently. The deal above seems to only include the base game without the DLC.
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On the good side, if you got it through Humble Choice it IS the base version of the game, but comes with a coupon for use on Humble Store that gets you the Season Pass (which is all the DLC, including the expansions) for 60% off . That's another opportunity and overall picks it up cheap. Also this month's Humble Choice (while not one of its strongest offerings unless you're REALLY into Victoria 3 and Humankind) has some good games that make it a good value in addition to Callisto , such as Fashion Police Squad (an excellent 'boomer shooter' as they call the these days, with an interesting premise.), and Symphony of War (a Langrisser or Unicorn Overlord type SRPG - think sort of Fire Emblem with squads of units instead of individual units).
 
Just about done with this. Looks like the DLC is around 3 hours, so 25% more length. I am almost done with the main game. Story is around 12 hours on normal.

It is okay. Bit repetitive and simplistic enemies. I have not found a single thing scary about it though. Maybe I've played too many of these games. But this is probably the least scary "horror" game I've ever played.

I am running it maxed out with ray tracing on max, and without FSR (no DLSS support) I get 50-90 frame rates, with many scenes averaging 65-75 frame rates. Considering how slow you walk that is not much of a problem in this game. Performance is mostly good but I find if you run a lot there can be some stuttering, and there are occasional stutters but nothing that bad. Not sure if turning off ray tracing will help, and not sure how much of a difference it makes graphically. The game looks decent but looks much like any other UE4 game. Nothing spectacular.
 
Ray tracing is garbage in this game and if you don't notice it, then you should never ever be in any type of debate about image quality. It actually has worse shadows in areas and the flickering lights can create these little black lines at times. And even the ray traced reflections in some spots are just sparkly crawling garbage reminiscent of the SSR when Resident Evil 2 remake came out. Apparently this will never be fixed and I guess lucky for them that most people are oblivious.
 
jobert said:
Ray tracing is garbage in this game and if you don't notice it, then you should never ever be in any type of debate about image quality. It actually has worse shadows in areas and the flickering lights can create these little black lines at times. And even the ray traced reflections in some spots are just sparkly crawling garbage reminiscent of the SSR when Resident Evil 2 remake came out. Apparently this will never be fixed and I guess lucky for them that most people are oblivious.
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Some reflections look a bit better without it enabled.
 
On sale for $14.99 at the Humble Store

Recent Steam reviews have shifted to Mostly Positive also. I really enjoyed the visuals and the focus on melee combat vs. Dead Space (of which I am a huge fan). Didn't play with ray tracing as it was pretty badly implemented but luckily the game looks really good without it.
 
jobert said:
Ray tracing is garbage in this game and if you don't notice it, then you should never ever be in any type of debate about image quality. It actually has worse shadows in areas and the flickering lights can create these little black lines at times. And even the ray traced reflections in some spots are just sparkly crawling garbage reminiscent of the SSR when Resident Evil 2 remake came out. Apparently this will never be fixed and I guess lucky for them that most people are oblivious.
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View: https://youtu.be/Psetdjz01mI

DF doesn't have your back.
 
Dion said:

View: https://youtu.be/Psetdjz01mI

DF doesn't have your back.
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Well on the PS5 I didn't see any ray tracing issues, but he If he is blind if he didn't notice issues on PC because they're pretty obvious. I guarantee you I've spent more time playing through that game than he did testing it. I've done two full playthroughs including all the DLC and have spent numerous hours playing around in that game on different configurations and different settings in addition to that. I mean it only takes a few minutes to fire up the game and look at it with different settings. This is not an argument. It's just a question of do people notice it or are they bothered by it. I mean FFS I don't think a single reviewer has mentioned the fire animations which are a goddamn slow motion joke no matter what settings are used.
 
Dion said:

View: https://youtu.be/Psetdjz01mI

DF doesn't have your back.
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he's usually obsessed with Digital Foundry and quotes them like it's the bible...DF named Callisto as the 2nd best graphics of 2022...but all of a sudden he says DF is wrong...he also never admits that his system has major issues which contributes to it...he posted about his issues with crashing etc in a separate thread...yes certain games have issues but it's much worse when your system is not stable and he never admits that

and he never posts any videos...he always says that he's going to post videos but never does because he knows that his system is the major issue versus the game itself
 
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polonyc2 said:
he's usually obsessed with Digital Foundry and quotes them like it's the bible...he also never admits that his system has major issues which contributes to it...he posted about his issues with crashing etc in a separate thread...yes certain games have issues but it's much worse when your system is not stable and he never admits that
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Of course! I usually quote them because no one else really does the testing that they do but that does not mean that they notice or get every single thing correct now does it? And instead of being an asshole why don't you go back and look what the issue was with my computer a year and a half ago. I was getting some crashing for a couple of weeks on a brand new computer and it turned out to be the ram which was replaced and no more issues. That doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with this and you know it.
 
One thing about the game stuck with me that I find odd.

One thing that I found odd with this game is early on there are bodies hanged with ropes or tied bed sheets. Throughout the game I did not encounter a single mutant that had the intelligence to use items, and even if they did why would they hang bodies from a ceiling. If they had intelligence to use it as a psychological way to scare people it would make sense, but considering they typically kill people on the spot and cannot carry weapons I doubt they have the dexterity to hang people from a ceiling. I found that scene odd, suppose it was just generic horror game scenery.
 
Does anyone mind if I pour some fuel onto the raging RTX debate, which threatens to divide the forum, and blow the entire board asunder? I actually think that the difference between RTX completely enabled in this game, compared to RTX completely disabled, is dramatic. The lighting just completely changes when you enable RTX.

Conclusion: some of the board members need to get their eyes checked pronto.

LOL
 
Flogger23m said:
One thing about the game stuck with me that I find odd.

One thing that I found odd with this game is early on there are bodies hanged with ropes or tied bed sheets. Throughout the game I did not encounter a single mutant that had the intelligence to use items, and even if they did why would they hang bodies from a ceiling. If they had intelligence to use it as a psychological way to scare people it would make sense, but considering they typically kill people on the spot and cannot carry weapons I doubt they have the dexterity to hang people from a ceiling. I found that scene odd, suppose it was just generic horror game scenery.
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Well, in a prison full of killers, that could just be their handiwork.
 
Flogger23m said:
One thing about the game stuck with me that I find odd.

One thing that I found odd with this game is early on there are bodies hanged with ropes or tied bed sheets. Throughout the game I did not encounter a single mutant that had the intelligence to use items, and even if they did why would they hang bodies from a ceiling. If they had intelligence to use it as a psychological way to scare people it would make sense, but considering they typically kill people on the spot and cannot carry weapons I doubt they have the dexterity to hang people from a ceiling. I found that scene odd, suppose it was just generic horror game scenery.
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Not everyone was a mutant in the beginning, it was probably done by escaped prisoners before they turned, plus not everyone turned.
Ferris was the only mutant that kept his wits about him, maybe he did it? 🤷‍♂️
 
Flogger23m said:
Seasons pass has a DLC which adds around 50% more length apparently. The whole thing was $18 on sale on Steam recently. The deal above seems to only include the base game without the DLC.
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Will check that out.

Finished up main game last night. Really enjoyed it. Only 9.7 hours left me wanting a bit more. So bought Dead Space remake last night too.

CP was a welcome change from all the overwhelming open world games I seem to start and never have time/will to finish.
 
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