The Callisto Protocol Reviews

The Callisto Protocol is ranked in the 34th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
Dec 6, 2022

The game’s dedication to graphical fidelity feels like a blinder to thinking outside the box in every other regard. It can’t help but feel like intensive overcompensation for inconsistent, tension-less stealth, one-note combat, level design that doesn’t reward exploration, generically fleshy enemies, upgrades that don’t reward experimentation, and ineffective jump scares, from enemies that get cheap hits in on Jacob every single time, regardless of how well-prepared the player is. Much has been made of the fact that this was meant as the heir apparent to beloved survival horror series Dead Space, a game that, 12 years later, can still induce goosebumps just from its terrifying attract sequence. By contrast, if not for its graphics, The Callisto Protocol feels like a relic from 1998, undone creatively even by the decaying likes of Shadow Man.

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3 / 10
Dec 23, 2022
The Callisto Protocol - Angry Review - YouTube video thumbnail
3 / 10
Dec 7, 2022

The Callisto Protocol isn’t scary. It isn’t fun. It isn’t entertaining, fascinating, or mildly enriching. It lays a self-entitled claim to Dead Space’s stylistic and mechanical elements yet wields not a single one with grace, instead performing a crude pantomime.

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3.5 / 10.0
Dec 9, 2022

The Callisto Protocol had some performance issues, but at its core just wasn’t a great game lacking exciting moments or well anything even remotely scary. I was never entertained while playing this game; finding it boring, cumbersome and honestly rather traumatic but not in a terrified sense which is a shame.

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4 / 10.0
Jan 3, 2023

Technical issues aside, The Callisto Protocol is mostly forgettable.

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4 / 10.0
Dec 19, 2022

Playing The Callisto Protocol made me feel like I'm wasting my time and I rarely feel that way when I play video games. With simple and repetitive combat and a world that's completely void of tension yet still filled with absurd amounts of violence, it can go suck an egg.

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Saudi Gamer
Top Critic
4 / 10
Dec 8, 2022

Beauty can be skin deep as the game squanders its strong points as it progresses with baffling design choices that are annoying and frustrating far more than scary and challenging

Review in Arabic | Read full review

4 / 10.0
Dec 20, 2022

The horror is the least scary thing…

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4 / 10.0
Dec 6, 2022

A bland sad protagonist with all the charisma of a rock with a frowny face, a mystery box-style narrative that only ends with more mystery boxes, a combat system that wants to be multiple entirely different games. The Callisto Protocol might function, and it’ll certainly have its launch issues patched out in due time, but in no way can I recommend it to anyone but the most morbidly curious. Everything was stacked in this game’s favor, and it still wasn’t enough. We didn’t need Dead Space 2.0 - we just needed a cohesive, focused game. Instead, it's an oddly soulless concoction of unfocused ambitions, poor planning, and inconceivably amateurish design. Whether you're winning or losing, Callisto Protocol never feels right.

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Dec 14, 2022

I hope there’s a horror game or Dead Space fan out there who gets more out of this game than I did. As it stands, I can’t really recommend it. I feel it would probably disappoint both the horror game aficionado and the Dead Space fan. I know I walked away from it feeling unfulfilled.

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2.2 / 5.0
Dec 17, 2022

Gloriously gory visuals let down by an unoriginal and scarce story, by-the-books gameplay and minimal replayability.

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4.5 / 10.0
Dec 7, 2022

With such a rushed story and sloppy mechanics, The Callisto Protocol betrays the legacy it was built upon.

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4.5 / 10.0
Dec 10, 2022

The Callisto Protocol has occasional bouts of fun melee combat and fantastic graphics, but too much of the game is simply not fun to play to be worth it.

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5 / 10.0
Feb 9, 2023

From the story to the enemy design and combat, The Callisto Protocol is copy-paste “horror”. I used the quotes around horror because the use of common tropes means that the title fails to provide the most important ingredient in a horror game – fear.

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5 / 10.0
Dec 26, 2022

Despite providing rich atmosphere with its stunning visuals and anxiety-inducing sound effects, The Callisto Protocol’s gameplay is frustratingly designed and its story feels almost like an afterthought which was quickly churned out through an online ‘survival horror game’ story generator. At least the Dead Space remake is coming out in January.

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Kakuchopurei
Tony Tudin
50 / 100
Dec 6, 2022

Rather like a beat 'em up, you're just going through a bunch of linear corridors, fighting and dodging your way out of prison hell. That in itself is more frustrating than fun because of the overall poor design. So why pay triple-A price for a watered-down sci-fi horror game experience?

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5 / 10.0
Dec 4, 2022

Good graphics and lighting can only go so far and unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing else here worth getting excited about. The Callisto Protocol is this generation’s The Order: 1886. It could have been great. There are flickers of greatness here. But in the end, this turns into a great big disappointment.

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Dec 2, 2022

The Callisto Protocol brings high-def sci-fi horror to current-gen consoles, but it suffers from a lack of dynamic gameplay ideas outside of its gore.

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TheGamer
Top Critic
Dec 2, 2022

It's a shame that The Callisto Protocol is so uninteresting at its core. Though it looks gorgeous on the surface, a dozen hours of nothing special can have a clarifying effect.

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5 / 10
Dec 13, 2022

The Callisto Protocol is mediocre at best with nothing to brag about as every aspect of the game like story, ending, boss fights, visuals and pretty much everything else is below the standards of 2022.

Review in Persian | Read full review