I’m not saying that sci-fi survival horror supremo Dead Space was subtle, but its creeping, claustrophobic atmosphere took its time to terrify and dig its hooks into your brain. Pretender to the crown The Callisto Protocol, meanwhile, immediately wants to bludgeon it to a pulp. Within the first half-hour I’ve smashed off several zombie arms with a crowbar, crept through the bloody entrails of unfortunate souls and had the top half of my head graphically ripped from the bottom via the mouth.
The new game from Striking Distance Studios invites Dead Space comparisons with –among other things– its ghoul-infected space station, holographic HUDS and the fact that director Glen Schofield was co-creator of the former game. But while it’s safe to say you know where you are with The Callisto Protocol, it isn’t a direct tribute. It’s a blunter object, certainly, and has a slew of frustrations. But there is also plenty to enjoy in its schlocky, tentacled embrace.
You are Jacob Lee (played by Transformers star Josh Duhamel), a freighter pilot whose ship comes under attack from the ‘terror group’ Outer Way led by Dani Nakamura (The Boys’ Karen Fukuhara). Crash landing on the colonised Jupiter moon Callisto, Jacob is thrown into the brutal Black Iron Prison in a case of apparent mistaken identity. But not long after his arrival, things start to go terribly wrong in the clink. Suddenly and mysteriously overrun by ghoulish mutated inmates –biophages– the prison quickly becomes a grisly tableau of blood and fire. Your goal is, naturally, to get the hell out.
Though you do have to fight through some impressively rendered chaos on your way. Even in this age of high-end visual fidelity, it is hard not to be impressed by The Callisto Protocol’s technically brilliant if vaguely familiar setting. It is all hardcore sci-fi horror brutalism; metallic, angular corridors, holographic signs, a solitary confinement unit that hangs over a gaping black maw surrounded by layers and layers of gen pop metal bars and stairs. Blood and viscera is spread over every other surface, bodies in pieces that half tell the tale of scientists’ untimely demise. Messages are written in guts on the walls and left behind in hastily recorded audio logs. Immaculately executed lighting flashes and ripples in strobes of red, white and shadow before plunging you into darkness with the clank of steel and shriek of violins in minor key.
