The Callisto Protocol review: There will be blood (lots of it)

One of a handful of famous faces among The Callisto Protocol cast, Jacob is brought to life by Josh Duhamel (who you may recognise from the sitcom All My Children, or Jupiter's Legacy more recently). Without wanting to give away too much that could spoil the story, suffice it to say that Jacob ends up trapped in a prison on Callisto, the second-largest moon of Jupiter, trying to fight his way out as zombie-like creatures wreak havoc.

It's a strong opening, with the performances from Duhamel et al. selling the action nicely. The opening cut-scenes are suitably epic, too, and they set up some mysteries to pay off later. The creatures on offer are nicely varied and gruesomely designed right from the start, although you might find that fighting them off is a little bit harder than you'd expect/like from a mainstream action game (luckily, you can shift down to the easier difficulty at any time).

Of course, scariness is a valuable currency here, and the developers have dreamed up lots of different ways to spend it — borrowing tricks from The Last of Us Part 2 and recent Resident Evil games, the game is constantly trying to unsettle you. Even locations that feel like they should be safe, well, guess what... they're not! Simple actions like opening a locker can throw you straight into a jump-scare where you're only a couple of mistimed button-bashes away from certain death.

Dying in this game is one hell of a punishment, as well, at least in a visual sense. It feels like the designers had lots of fun coming up with properly gruesome, over the top, nigh-on sickening death scenes to play when you fail an encounter with the monsters. If you're not willing to see a man's face being eaten off his skull, literally, you might want to close your eyes when you muck up a combat scenario.

Whichever difficulty you're playing on, we'd wager that death will be a fairly regular occurrence. Resources are scarce in this ruined space prison, and there's only so much you can do with your melee weapon and the game's clunky-ish dodging controls (in an interesting twist that doesn't always feels right, you dodge with the left stick). It's fun to wade into combat, though, especially once you've unlocked guns and gadgets. But you'll make a lot of mistakes before you get into the proper flow.

In some ways, the cracks begin to show as the game settles into itself, with the level design starting to feel repetitive after a few hours. At times, it feels fairly basic, old-school even, as you're forced to explore dingy corridors and cavernous rooms, crawling through vents and moving batteries around to open story-important doors. There's some very light puzzling to be had, but we doubt that's what the game will be remembered for.

Another thing that starts to grate after a few hours is the dialogue, which veers into hammy territory at points. "Hell of a view," one character says when they finally see the moon's surface through a window. His friend replies, in total seriousness, "You got the hell part right, bruv." It's just that slightly grating, faux-macho, action hero swagger that feels a bit out of place in such brutal surroundings.

If the main thing you're looking for is horror, though, we can't stress enough that there is loads of it here and most of it is very effective. We did get a bit sick of the gruesome death animations — especially when, due to the somewhat stingy checkpoints, you can sometimes lose a good few minutes of progress at the same time that a space-worm is burrowing into Jacob's mouth and blowing him up from the inside — but there's a lot of good work being done in other areas to ramp up the scares.

There's the eerie soundscape, the lack of any text on screen that could dampen the atmosphere, the off-kilter lighting choices, the subtle cranking up of fear as you realise there's a creature nearby and you're all out of bullets. Do you chance it with a your melee weapon, try to run away, or just admit defeat? The game forces you to really think about your survival and not just take it for a given, in a way that draws to mind the blood-splattered dilemmas of Alien: Isolation.

There's also an element of inventory management at play. With limited slots available, should you hold onto a health pack or would it be better to carry another batch of bullets? And then, when you reach a 3D printer (the game's smart way of letting you make upgrades), should you swap those bullets for an upgrade to your melee weapon? In a game where there are scares around every corner, you've got to be careful and make the right choices.

At the end of the day, we think that's what The Callisto Protocol will be remembered for. The tough choices, the growing sense of dread, the relief when you see the auto-save icon and realise you finally made it to a checkpoint. The thrill of engineering a plan with upgrades and items, then seeing it play out in style as you send a zombie flying into an environmental hazard and bursting into a cloud of blood. Oh yes, that's one thing to be sure of. There will be blood.

The Callisto Protocol launches Friday 2nd December on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. We reviewed on PS5.

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