Finally played that Dead Space 'Successor'.

 

Striking Distance Studios was a studio that launched with such promise behind it- that of a name AAA-level action horror game produced by one of the core minds that birthed Dead Space- one of the greatest horror games of all time- even with everything it shamelessly borrowed from Alien and other Sci-fi properties. (Mostly Alien though.) It was creative, repugnant, thrilling, scary, exciting and mind fogging nearer to the end. I remember distinctly finding the world of Dead Space so very interesting, not only for it's industrial-space-farer aesthetic but for the bizarre ecclesiastical heart of the body-bending disease- leaning into the unknowable unfathomable depth of pure cosmic horror. What's worse than something you can't see in the dark- something you cannot even comprehend higher above it. Which is partially why I was so excited for Striking Distance's virginal title; The Callisto Protocol.

Otherwise I was excited because the original Dead Space was so groundbreaking in the way it worked with Physics engines to create a combat system unlike anything before- where shooting off the limbs of enemies could be used tactically in order to dismantle your way around tough encounters. Dead Space truly was a classic worthy of it's plaudits and the Remake it enjoyed not that long ago. A Remake I have already played and which I love quite a bit, I might add. (It truly adds so much without losing the spirit like I so feared it would.) But I wanted someone who was going to take that next leap and who better than the core team that pushed that envelope the last time around? Who were now free to innovate again, free from corperate boots on their neck? What would the Callisto Protocol bring to the horror world?

I am currently sitting on the other end of a playthrough across the entire game in it's top-most difficulty and I have to say, much as what I heard at the time of it's release, that was largely mediocre. To a decree that actually deeply bothers me. The Callisto Protocol does literally only two things better than Dead Space did- it is visually gorgeous to look at, and I care more about the characters. Although that might be because Dead Space's Isaac was mute and that game purposefully limited contact with the rest of the crew in order to heighten that sense of isolation- as opposed to in Callisto were you have someone nattering across your comm link every two minutes or so- it's actually a little annoying. Everything else that Protocol does feels like pale imitations of what Dead Space achieved fourteen years previously. And I still can't wrap my head around that.

Most importantly, the combat. Wowzer. So the original Dead Space was literally innovative in the way it opened tactical depth in a survival shooter through the dismemberment mechanic- The Callisto Protocol might be innovative in how they made possibly the least engaging combat system possible in their 'horror thriller' game. When I tell you the entire system is literally holding left to dodge an attack and then right to dodge it's follow-up I am not exaggerating. That is the entire combat system. You don't even need to see which direction the attack is coming from- any direction is fine as long as you point the stick the other way for the follow-up. Also, there is no timing window, (As the game stupidly puts in the in-game tutorial. Never talk about what the game isn't- that is so professionally sloppy!) I had several moments where I was fiddling with something on my phone and weaving through attacks without looking because it was that unbelievably simplistic!

And what's worst of all- all the enemies patiently wait in line whilst you kill them one-by-one. Groups add practically nothing to the challenge of the game because they will simply not attack you out of order, even if they surround you. Apparently they did at launch, but because this game's controls are so sluggish there really is no means of effective side stepping or really anything to counter multiple incoming hits- so they just removed that possibility from the AI and ripped any bit of challenge out of the game. Now you can be a bit more active. Shoot to interrupt combos, use the telekinesis power to chuck enemies into spike walls, throw a power attack to knock enemies flying into one another- but you don't need to. You can just slap them around all day and win like that. You have to try to be exciting, which I tried to do because otherwise I'd have torn out my eyes playing this game so lethargically.

Funnily enough, polite zombie monsters who attack you one at a time and can be dodged in your sleep also don't illicit anywhere near the amount of dread of the Necromorphs from Dead Space who could pop out from the floor and tear off your legs at a moments notice. In Dead Space rounding a corner into an enemy was a 'jump out of your seat' fear moment, in Callisto it's a cue to start wiggling the old mouse as your eyes droop shut in boredom. I cannot overstate how badly they dropped the bag with every aspect of the game on a tonal level. And a gameplay level. So let me touch a bit on story and character to wrap it up.

The characters aren't good. They're more present than in Dead Space 1, but that largely serves to show how annoying they all are. Everyone dances around their grievances and meanings with one another as though they have some grand conspiracy to unravel, only for the basic-most explanation for literally everything to end up being the route the writers take every-single-time. Why was Jason specifically taken by Black Gate? Why is Dani so unduly upset with Jason for half the game? What is the guilt stalking Jason? They are all the first guess you imagined when these questions are brought up. The guilt one does confuse me however, because Jason acts like he genuinely did not know the answer until it was unveiled through McGuffin in the third act but... how could he not have? He was literally suffering guilt hallucinations the entire game as embodied by truly pathetic jump scares that were frankly embarrassing to sit through. (I remember the chills that Dead Space Extraction gave when we started seeing the ghosts. That scene at the tram station shook me to my core. I yawned my way through Protocol. I am a horror coward, by the way- I shouldn't have been so blaise!)

The biggest narrative trips are both spoilers unfortunately so if you care I'll save you some time- the game is below average- get Dead Space instead. Now, I need to rant about how unforgivably disappointing the cause of the outbreak was. In Dead Space they uncovered an otherworldly alien 'Marker', an extra-terrestrial counterpart to the human marker which was said to have kickstarted the rapid evolution of early humans into what we are today. The fact that this Alien marker started twisting people into something horrific and destructive felt almost like the hand of an evil mother nature itself fraying the lines of evolution. The Callisto Protocol outbreak is caused by Aliens. That's it. They just... mined up some alien from under Callisto, shot it dead and then decided to start digging up it's glands and shoving it down people's throats. (I cut out a step or two in the middle there.) How generic! How boring! And why is the Warden spreading it around? Because he wants to find a subject who responds well to the virus to kick off the next stage of human evol- >Yawn< what is this, a template script for a sci-fi movie? How do you start with otherworldly cosmic horror and evolve to space Covid? What kind of backwards trajectory is that? 

And then we have the ending. So Callisto actually ends on a cliffhanger. I've got nothing against that, I think it's fine. What I do find a bit objectionable is the fact that this cliffhanger does not lead into the next game, but a paid DLC which contains the true ending. I opted out of the obvious scam and watched someone skim through it on Youtube. (Thank you for your sacrifice, Oboeshoe!) What a waste of time. Truly. Essentially the entire extra four hours amounts to little more than those really lazy after credit scenes in bad 1990's move where the camera zooms in on the bad guy's shut eyes before they open- only in the context of the alien pathogen research being recovered so this franchise can perpetuate itself. Yet there's such an strange actual finale that I think killed any small amount of hype people might have had. 

To cut a story short, the doctor who helped Jason near the end of the game before he cures Dani and shoves her on the last escape pod- (aside: Can't believe the Warden actually left an escape pod. Some evil genius he is!) contacts Jason about a possible second escape option from the planet. Jason rushes through some extra hallways, there's only one new enemy type, you get a new hammer- it's not worth the money. You collect the doctor's research but 'oh no' she is attacked by a monster who turns her into a boss monster. Jason kills her, the research burns along with her, he boards the escape shuttle and rides off into the sunset. And then he wakes up. Turns out it was a dream, he's actually being dissected by the doctor lady who is happy to have her research and presumably go do another war crime in the next game. Yikes, what a crappy way to send us off. Honestly, I think most of us was fine with having Jason's last on screen appearance be him heroically sending off Dani in atonement for his sins whilst he fended off monsters on an exploding station. This just feels... mean spirited and disrespectful. Like a punchline to a joke that no one remembered to set up.

There's a similarly dour ending to Dead Space Transmission- but that game handled it way better. First off, Transmission is a prequel, meaning you're pretty sure from the get-go that it's probably not going to be a happy ending given that no word of the carnage of the Necromophs got out before Isaac showed up. The entire latter half of the game offers a genuine look through the eyes of a mind being slowly broken by the Marker as the player fights to keep it together long enough to escape, and the extent of the physical toil reaches an extreme when the player has to literally cut off their own hand in order to escape the vacuum of space before their oxygen runs out. ( Did I mention this was a Wii exclusive game? It's some crazy stuff!) Only for at the end of game, when the final challenge has been overcome and he is aboard the escape shuttle with Lexi leaving the carnage- only then does the player finally succumb to the Marker and transform into a Necromoph which Lexi has to put down. A grim ending- but a purposeful one. This shuttle is the same one that players of Dead Space will remember seeing at the beginning of that game- tying the threads of story together neatly. Lexi goes on to star in another DLC for Dead Space 2- lateral movement is made in the plot. It's not just a footnote DLC that the team cruelly crucified the protagonist for in order to score cheap shock points. Callisto's DLC's ending was just another lazy move from an all around lazy game.

With embarrassingly lacklustre bossfights, (it's literally one bullet sponge copy-pasted four times and then a finale with a slightly different styled bullet sponge.) a near non-functional enemy they base one and a half chapters around (the 'blind' monsters quite literally can't hear you loudly stab one to death from touching distance.) and a 'twist' that is literally "I can't believe you accused me of facilitating the >bleep< on >REDACTED< Dani, what must you think of me" to "Oh whoops, guess I accidentally did. And I know that I accidentally did too, but also needed to be told for some reason?" You might wonder if there's anything good about Callisto Protocol whatsoever. Well, if you put it in a vacuum, ignore the many numerous ways that Dead Space is better, and turn your brain off- this could be a mildly entertaining enough B-tier horror game that isn't too awfully long. It's got fun set-pieces. You might get through it before the bad combat grates you too much. None of which stops me giving this game a D- Grade mind you. Experience pieces are all well and good, but a horror game with bad combat, crappy plot and near-fundamentally-broken gameplay? That is a mistake. (I'll admit the DLC might have knocked it down a couple of micro-grades.) Their next game is apparently going to be a rogue-lite in this universe... don't know what to make of that honestly... 

Callisto Impropiety

 In space, no one can hear your accountant screaming at you.

I cannot tell you how much I absolutely swooned for Callisto Protocol back when it was doing it's marketing rounds throughout all those award shows and industry trade events. In fact, I had an entire blog written up called 'I've fallen in love with Callisto Protocol' that I decided to can for being too overly fellatious- I decided that's the sort of shaft-riding that should be reserved only for games that have already come out. (Guess I did learn something from the Cyberpunk debacle) But can you really blame me? This game has to be one of the most beautiful looking titles to ever launch, (For a full gaming audience. Sorry, 'Horizon: Forbidden West' try being accessible next time.) the gore looks incredible, it was being fronted by one of the key staff members responsible for bringing Dead Space to life and it wasn't an EA title. It's really hard to get excited for the Dead Space Remake when I know it'll only run with the freakin' EA app running in the background. (I'd rather skin and fillet both my legs than navigate that trainwreck of an ecosystem again!)

So I was completely in Callisto Protocol's court all the way until launch. I didn't even have those last minute concerns like I did that time Cyberpunk delayed itself by a half a year less than two months before launch and I was the only one standing around going "Excuse me, when is the marketing wagon supposed to get here again?" Which one could perhaps argue is evidence of the scale of the respective issues, because by Cyberpunk standards the technological problems with Callisto at launch were utterly miniscule. Negligible in comparison. I mean they were annoying, stuttering in an action horror game where every missed frame could spell your demise, but the game actually functioned for the most part. The real problem was... well... underneath those bugs, the game just wasn't what a lot of fans like me wanted it to be.

And yes, that is definitely as much on us as it is on the marketing for playing up the Dead Space connections for a game that only passingly resembles it's ancestral predecessor. But what I yearned for was a survival horror experience that leaned into what I consider to be the core pillars of the subgenre as laid out by classics like 'Alone in the Dark', 'Resident Evil' and 'Silent Hill'. Atmosphere as a base state, supplies as a luxury, breaks as a rarity. Callisto Protocol attempts it's hand at these but goes in it's own direction entirely on easy point, and how successful their distinction from the industry norm turned out really depends on who you ask and their tastes. The shift to melee combat eliminates the feeling of fragility which typically defines the Survival Horror protagonist, not least of all for the 'skill friendly' dodge button which feels more plodding than reactive. But my dissemination of the core gameplay failings is not, I believe, the core problem here.

Because you see, Callisto Protocol sold well. Respectable enough figures for any video game studio's first foray, but according to reports on some internal discussions, not well enough to appropriately reward the hefty 200 billion won investment that went into making the thing. Whilst being on track to make 2 million sales this year sounds incredible, the figure that the production managers were looking for was around 5 million. They were looking to make 'Resident Evil' kinds of money. (Excluding Resident Evil 2 Remake, because that was a runaway success of nearly 10 million sales for Capcom.) I'm not sure how the gaming industry chalks up a successful release, I'm not sure if it's close to the 1.5 times investment that the movie industry shoots for, but only hitting half of one's alleged sales target is a metric I can fully comprehend. That's going to make some people quite unhappy.

And by some people, I of course mean investors. They, along with myself, must have thought that Callisto Protocol was going to smash when it finally landed, what with the amount of marketing this game secured. I know that my own prejudice is tainting my recollections to some small degree, but even beyond what I have imagined in my own head, this game really was everywhere during it's marketing run. It was all over the Game Awards, whenever the 'belles of the next generation' were brought up it was never behind the zenith of the conversation and all impressions appeared to be largely, sometimes even overwhelmingly, positive. I can only imagine that the account handlers figured this was going to be bright birth of a new Horror icon. There was even talk of the next game being worked through in it's nitty-gritty planning stages already! Before the first one had even actually come out!

But those early impressions were just killers. And not just because of the bugs, but the freezing error did provide an undeniable lightning rod for everyone to lambast the game and ward people off from those all important first week sales. But even beyond that, for a lot of the nostalgic crowd the game just wasn't as special as Dead Space was back in the day; it was missing that spark which seeped all the greatness from the original Alien and mixed it up into a brand new incredible concoction all of it's own. Of course, The Callisto Protocol was a much smaller project with much leaner resources in comparison to the first Dead Space, but the ultra-slick photo-realistic presentation of the Callisto Protocol succesfully smothered that reality in the minds of gamers and rose their expectations to frankly unrealistic degrees. Which is not to say that The Callisto Protocol doesn't have it's supporters; it's a solid game and earns it's praise, but when you put a solid game up against a classic masterpiece you're just setting yourself up for failure.

I also question the idea of marketing this game as a horror title, when it seems to be more interested in being an action game with dark overtones and a lot of gore. Dead Space worked a lot with psychological horror, atmosphere building, tense crowding with restrictive melee options and jumpscares. The Callisto Protocol only really has jumpscares in it's horror arsenal. Jump scares and the most gore out of any other game out there. Which one could argue is the classical definition of what a modern horror product is, but after all the Resident Evil games, and the upcoming Silent Hill titles and the general trend towards psychological horror in media- this feels a little behind the curve from a horror perspective. I would imagine there's a fair few horror enthusiast turned off from Callisto by that inconsistency alone.

Does this mean that the plans for a Callisto franchise are dead in the water? Well I'm not in the board room so I can't say with certainty, but I think personally the Callisto brand is just going to get a re-examining. 2 million sales ain't a complete unreserved flop, and there's definitely a crowd for the style of game that Callisto has to offer, even if it wasn't the exact crowd that the team set off to market for. Whatsmore, I can see behind it's systemic jank the potential of what Callisto could have been with some more resources at it's disposal, which is exactly what the game would get come sequel time so I personally want the franchise to be continued. Just, ya know, please fix the shader issue before launch next time around, that'd be sweet.

Callisto Protocol: A victim of marketing?

I really wanted it to be a masterpiece...

This week saw the release of the much anticipated, not least of all by me, spiritual successor to 'Dead Space': 'The Callisto Protocol'. Or is it a 'Direct Successor'? Hmm... I mean, it's more than just 'inspired by' considering it was fronted by the same director of Dead Space, and though it's not an actual 'sequel' you can definitely see the brain matter of Isaac Clarke splattered all over the cover of this game. And what even marks the difference between a direct and spiritual successor and why is that distinction important to Callisto Protocol? Quite simple; by my own definition, a Spiritual Successor is an attempt to capture the spirit and feeling of an influential game of yore, whilst a Direct Successor is a step up and forwards and whilst this type of game might  not perhaps by continuing the same story, it stillbuilds upon an expanding game concept and builds itself off that concept. By that expectation I expected Callisto Protocol to be a Direct Successor to the Dead Space franchise, and may have to instead settle for a temperamental spiritual successor.

It is the trap that can easily be fallen into as a fan, loving what came before and not really wanting to see anything that veers to much from that beloved and sacred vision in your mind. Whereas in the mind of the creator, the last thing you want to do is get stuck recreating the same game you did ten years ago; you want to challenge your abilities and creativity to bring something new to the table. Callisto Protocol doesn't really go for the same sort of gameplay style that Dead Space did, swapping a tense shooter survival game where keeping the horrific monsters as gun's reach was the goal; with an in-your-face melee focused horror game where the player is forever one slipped dodge away from getting mauled by a monstrosity. That's not really the game I was hoping for, even if many of the elements around the game are reminiscent of the horror game I once lauded. (Integrated HUD, heavy gore-focus, body horror enemy design etc.) Which is why I think it's so very important, when harkening to a specific fanbase with a successor title, to lay the groundworks and draw the boundaries of exactly what sort of game to expect and what not to expect.

Another such game which famously refused to lay these sorts of boundries was 'Back 4 Blood', a game which flooded it's marketing declaring how it was created by 'the team who made Left 4 Dead' and painting the picture of the threequel people had waited over a decade for. A direct successor which turned out of be a lie. Not only was the team who worked on Back 4 Blood only a small fraction of the same faces involved with Left 4 Dead, the follow-up game lacked the resources to even match the level of intricate detail that made the Left 4 Dead games so special; which is why the team knowingly tried to focus their efforts in other areas to make the game systematically different to Left 4 Dead, knowing that they couldn't compete in a one-to-one comparison. A galling switch-up considering the game relied on the 'Left 4 Dead' connection so much that they game literally borrows that franchises' naming convention for it's title.

Midnight Suns, however, is an example of a 'Direct Successor' to the Xcom franchise, even if it does take it's gameplay cues in a decidedly different direction to the game's it learnt from. Midnight Suns replaces the tactical placement of hit probabilities with a card-based 'powers' system which allows for a very different gameplay balance that still harkens to the tactical heart beating in the same development studio. It builds upon the frameworks and foundations that Xcom built, but is trying to evoke a wholly different sensation in the players where they aren't the underdogs constantly scrambling to get off the backfoot against the hoards of enemies stalking them, but are instead heroes that dominate the battlefield with flashy abilities that make the player feel powerful and audacious. 

Sonic Frontiers is actually another example of a 'Direct successor' in my opinion, because even though it sort of follows the same narrative of the franchise the only connective tissue is really the main character and the vague idea that 'Speed' is the main gimmick. Frontiers stands on the shoulders of Sonic Teams many many 3D failures to learn from every they did wrong and deliver something that feels like the Sonic we know and love but is actually a real game with a reason to exist. That may seem like small praise, but remember that the last Sonic Team game was Forces; a game that literally plays itself most of the time because the team had literally no idea what they were trying to make and ended up making nothing at all. In many ways, Frontiers is a successor to the '3D generation' of Sonic games into, what we might start calling, the 'Open generation' of Sonic. (If we're being optimistic.)

None of this is to knock the idea of spiritual successors, mind you. Callisto Protocol is said to be a decently fun game provided you play it on PS5 because the team just sort of gave up on optimising it elsewhere before their deadline. (Would delaying the PC version until you got it into working order really have been the end of the world?) And making a product that evokes the same emotion but goes in a different direction is not inherently bad. Some people really enjoy the unique style of repetitive play that Back 4 Blood's card system has to offer Left 4 Dead's comparatively linear presentation, and I already know that once the dust settles around it's rough launch there are going to be Callisto fans that think the more perilous 'in your face' action of Callisto has it's own special shine. I just wish that the marketing was more transparent about selling the inherently different type of experience, instead of complicit in the lie of 'more of the same.'

Dead Space was a horror game, at it's utmost core. Not only in the fact that it dealt with horrific monsters, but in the way it dealt with psychological elements and bone-chilling atmosphere. Ghosts of the lost are haunting you from the first scene, and the concept of The Marker allows for some vaguely cosmic-horror elements to wrap itself around the narrative as things start to get really crazy in the later half of the game. Callisto Protocol, from what I can tell, focuses more on being a suspenseful thriller, reinforced by that aforementioned combat system which forces you to get up close and familiar with the monsters of the game. It's hard to remain scared of a monster you've beaten to death with a baton, and there's no real added layer of fear when one manages to sneak up close to you before you know it, because you're fighting those buggers face-to-face throughout the whole game anyway!

I understand the desire to want to rely on what you've already spent years building and successfully establishing, but we've seen multiple times now how that can create a misleading precedent that scuppers the all-important initial reception. I was bought into the promise of Callisto Protocol solely due to the name lead designing it and not once was it ever even suggested that Callisto might be going it's own way and trying something significantly different. Is that my own fault for not figuring the obvious? Partially. But no one on their Marketing team was interested in disabusing the public of that perception when it was an assumption that could be profited off of. And where has that left Callisto? Squatting in overly-large shoes whilst the infinitely more funded and more staffed team over at EA Motive are moving to reclaim the Dead Space throne with a literal Remake. The moral of the story? Just be honest, ya'll. Damn... 

Callisto Protocol blocked in Japan?

 The limits are tested again!

When it comes to entertainment censorship you'll usually expect to go about and see your usual suspects on the list. You'll see your China, your Russia and probably soon England is going to start working it's way up that list with the way things are going over here; the 'video nasty' trend will be picking itself right back up where it left of, I betcha! But one whom I absolutely did not expect to see, was Japan. I mean sure; Japan has some pretty antiquated rules on censorship that means even in the modern age sexual organs cannot be shown, which is why the famous pixelated blur on nudity, even in pornographic products, is a stable of Japanese produced entertainment. I believe it's a potential felony under some moral decency laws that cannot rightly be challenged in the courts through a Catch-22 where any politician who does will be opening themselves up to career suicide when the opposition paints their entire reputation with that campaign. A silly law, no doubt. But how does Callisto Protocol tie in?

Turns out it doesn't. I truly expected to find out that Callisto Protocol had some overly graphic nudity based violence scene in the game but, unless that's being kept heavily under wraps, it would appear that the censorship laws being broken here are based purely on the traditional violence the game is priding itself on. And... I can kind of understand that. Callisto Protocol is the spiritual successor to Dead Space, a game that splattered itself in gore and viscera with wanton glee, and with Callisto coming out all these years later it only makes sense that these developers would up the shock and awe factor. But I wonder if it's really enough to start dolling out bans. Okay, this isn't an explicit ban, I guess. It's more a straight-up refusal to rate the game by the entertainment standards which makes it impossible to profitably sell the thing in Japan because no reputable storefront will list a game with no rating. But the result is the same; no Callisto Protocol for Japan.

For the moment, I endeavour to add, because I think it would be utterly insane of the team working on Callisto Protocol to not even consider work arounds. This move has demonstrated their utter staunch unwillingness to compromise on the level of carnage their game is going to present, which I respect, but that doesn't mean there aren't other solutions. Perhaps they'll go around and start adding that mosaic censoring for the Japanese version, and then Japanese players will go around wondering why there was so much graphic sex happening on screen in otherwise scary parts of the main campaign? Okay, I'm not exactly a font of ready-made great work-arounds over here but there surely has to be a way! I, for one, would not be willing to back down over such stupidness as violence regulations in a adults-only horror game!

I do wonder to what degrees the violence could have gone this time, or if perhaps the objection part is that the violence is set up in such a way to be a grisly reward for playing; given such a spotlight in the carnage that it feels like a key purpose of playing. Just like how Twitch will target anyone who plays a video game in which nudity is present if that nudity is the sole focus of the game or stream itself. And considering how wishy washy Twitch has notoriously been with those rules, perhaps that is the most apt comparison to make. Treading tip-toes around a ban hammer that strikes without warning is certainly the way of the future in these tech giant ruled times, it would seem. And Callisto is taking quite a stance, with it's reach, by refusing to shift.

But why is it that the CERO organisation has ground it's heels into the ground whilst everyone else has let this go by? It can't be because the game presents sexual violence like I implied, because then it would have absolutely run into trouble with the American and British ratings boards: that's the line they drawn in the sand. In fact, the answer is because the CERO organisation is actually renowned for being strict in a lot of manners related to violence. We can probably except a similar rating over in Australia, I can only assume their board hasn't been given the product yet. (They're probably kicking themselves over the fact they didn't get a chance to refuse to rate first, the tyrants over there...) But in some light research I've actually come up with something of an inciting incident which may explain things. But I have to warn you, it's going to get grisly in the real world.

The Kobe Child Murders in 1997 were, as they sound like, an incident involving the murder of children by another child; having experienced something similar England, us over here are very well aware what sort of landmark cases these situations can be. The perpetrator was a special needs pupil who, judging from his own notes, felt he had been left to slip through the cracks of society and become an "Invisible person", perhaps leading to these brutal acts of violence to cry out for attention. I'm no criminal psychologist, I couldn't say. But, I do know that a certain Japanese Politician with an abnormally square face called Shizuka Kamei used this as fuel in his campaign against violence in media. Which is interesting, because I can't seem to find any overt links between the crime and movies or videogames. But this is coming from a politician who apparently received funding from Yakuza affiliates according to a Wikipedia tidbit that I'm having trouble double-checking; so take from that what you will.

You can see how the primal outrage of such an event could be weaponised into a crusade against violence for some vague rule such as 'damaging moral decency', but one must also take into account how these are products designed to be viewed by adults, and not children. I know that seems like something of a moot point to bring up now in the face of industry regulations that are buried in concrete at this point, but if we can't trust adults to be responsible with the information that consume then we enter a state of doubting the mental maturity of our public at large. And at that point you probably have a larger and much more systemic issue on your hands than what video games get the go ahead in your ratings board! What the heck has gone so wrong in your society that adults aren't mature enough to recognise fiction? Did the Anime do this to them? I'm betting it's the anime.

As you can likely pick up in my slightly snarky tone, I'm staunchly against censorship in mostly every way when it comes to entertainment, I think restrictions are important, particularly on age, but there's a point at which the nannying and content policing has to calm down before it becomes the grass routes of some seriously bad precedents. Not only measures that the government will go in order to uphold the ever shifting borders of 'moral decency', but the extent to which the public and private sector will go to circumvent such overreaches. Without going into the grisly specifics, there are a great many number of sad situations in the Japanese adult entertainment industry that wouldn't have been allowed to happen if that sector was mainstream. Sometimes protecting people can start by trusting them enough to work alongside them. Let's start there, Japan.

The Callisto Protocol looks like the real Dead Space sucessor

 In space, no one can treat your horrific body protrusions.

If Resident Evil is the old school king of horror back to take it's crown, then Callisto is the nephew born of Horror's illegitimate affair with sci-fi, because everything I see of this game makes me fall in love with the horror genre all over again. Not since Dead Space 2 have I found myself drawn to something so unabashedly fuelled by gluttonous body horror carnage, and maybe I'll be able to approach it this time without being scared into an actual heart attack. Yes, I think I'm better off now. More grown and experienced. I'd never let a franchise shake me to my utmost- oh wait, didn't I get shook silly when playing Outlast a couple of years back? Yeah, I guess there's absolutely no hope for me then, and this allure I find from Callisto is my darkest psyche trying to clue me into to my latent masochistic tendencies. (Wait, I 100% Blasphemous, I guess those tendencies aren't entirely latent, are they...)

And of course I'm going to be drawing Dead Space comparisons when this game is being created by one of the co-creators of that EA space-horror franchise. Compare this game's offerings with whatever it is EA is cooking up in the labs for that Dead Space remake and I'll take the new story and setting anyday of the week, Dead Space is a little played out by this point. (Unless they want to tell a Dead Space story in a completely different environment. That might work.) And that's because whilst I love Dead Space and think it's one of the best action games every made, that just so happens to also be a horror; there's only so much you can do with one universe. We need to change things up, throw out the old, rocket in the new; revivify and resurrect. Callisto looks just fine and sharp enough to be that total shot in the arm that I'm looking for to remind me why I loved being torn to shreds by horrific body horror monstrosities all those years ago.

Now apparently, and this is a shocker to me; The Callisto Protocol actually started life as an expanded universe game for the PUBG brand. Which is just... what? So apparently PUBG has a universe with lore and something, and the developers who made Callisto, Striking Distance Studios, were created to try and create subsidiary games to broaden the horzions of the Battlegrounds. Which means that for a decent chunk of time the PUBG guys were completely kosher with SDS running off and making a sci-fi horror game until- I guess maybe Brendon Greene stuck his head around the door and went "Huh, I guess this isn't really anything like PUBG, is it? You know what, make it standalone." At that point why even bother? Just stick a terminal in the game about how a couple hundred years ago some nutters used to host death tournaments on earth and call it a day, universe expanded.

But even if this studio failed to hit their intended mark with their founding principals, I'm glad the project itself isn't being scrapped because right now this game looks fire. Running off the PS5 and looking glorious for it, we can see all the hallmarks of what makes a game like this great. Dark corridors with intense sparking fixtures, tight claustrophobic camera work that sticks just close enough to bring the viewer into each gross scene and, of course, horrific abominations of the natural order that look like silly-putty humans melted in a microwave and shoved through a blender. (Why the hell did that make me google what happens to digits stuck in a blender? What is wrong with me?) Oh, and there's some normal looking zombies thrown in there too for the balance of the universe, I guess? I don't know, they seem kind of out-of-place next to all the imaginative horror monsters here, like the Possessed in DOOM; they look utterly purposeless. (Oh, unless they're supposed to be the first stage in the post-death life cycle as they get turned into true body horror demons!)

For me one of the coolest things about seeing this game right now is seeing a sci-fi horror game that is AAA quality, so clearly of the Dead Space stock, and evolved from the baseline of a copyright-free Alien. Now don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Alien and the aesthetic grunge of truckers in space that movie created bought a vivid reality to sci-fi that has rippled in the hearts of numerous sci-fi projects. But my god did old Dead Space cling to the design principals of Alien like a clutch. The Ishimura was expressly designed to feel like the Nostromo, Titan station had elements of LV-426 in some of it's location design until that game just ended up going right back to the Ishimura. And when the franchise finally moved on in 3, you could feel a lack of artistic direction which made some of the visuals outside of set piece moments forgettable. They needed a break to take the lessons they learnt from that game and create something all of their own and I'm seeing it right now with The Callisto's world.

What I must give them a hard time for, and I'm going to do this to every horror game until some gets the memo; it's giving us another forgettable protagonist. It's not like they don't know their main character is under designed, if they have trouble figuring out they can just stick him in a crowded room, turn the lights off for a couple minutes than switch them on and try to find him. Seriously, this guy has less distinguishing features than bloody Isaac Clarke out of his suits, and I only remember what Clarke looks like because he was sporting that atrocious hair model which looks like a mushy mix between black and grey hair. Is it that hard to give us a horror game character who isn't just 'Square jawed action man in jumpsuit'? Can't you just give him a big nose or something? Just a big old honker right between the eyes. That'll give us something to remember him by.

Also, I'm not quite feeling these monsters as much as I was the Necromoprhs; they don't quite look twisted enough to look truly alien. Which is probably an artistic choice. The Necromorphs were so brutalised that it's very easy to look at them and not even really see the root of the body underneath it until you actually get to watch the transformation happen in front of you, which in turn allows the brain to separate the human form from the Necromorph body. By keeping enough of a recognisable human shape in their design, perhaps the team are trying to draw the eye to the horrific transformation that they've undergone so the gross fascination stays with us for longer. It's really a matter of taste and what we prefer at that point. Oh, and how we want to be brutally murdered. I'm happy to see this game is keeping up the Dead Space tradition of brutal death animations; now if they get anything to match the squeamish-provoking intensity of the eye-gouging scene from DS2 they'll have truly made a worthy successor.

The Callisto Protocol looks great. A return to form for a horror market that has begun to lose it's edge with endless fluffy toy games, joining the greats like modern Resident Evil and... wow these really are the only two modern horror games going in the AAA market right now, huh? You'd really think there'd be some sort of cosmic horror franchise or something, but nope. (Apparently 'Call of Cthulhu' was pretty mediocre) But I have been burnt by a horror game that looks promising before, what with The Medium being a boring slog, so I'm going to reserve kicking and screaming no matter how much the primitive ape in me wants to. I'm happy that one of my favourite horror games ever is getting some sort of revival at least. (Aside from the Remake. Seriously the original looks and plays fine, why do we need a remake?)