November 2023 results

This is not Dead Space. Yes, there are similarities in many small details, but their core mechanics are different. If Dead Space is a more or less classic survival horror with an emphasis on action, then The Callisto Protocol is more of a third-person beat-em-up with one-on-one combat.

This is a normal game, just above the level of a strong average, but it is very easy and modest in mechanics. The combat system does not change at all from the beginning of the game, you can learn a couple of additional techniques and that’s it, so once you get used to it, all battles become very easy and develop according to the same scenario. There are also stealth segments in the game, and the stealth here is completely broken, the enemies are literally blind and seem to react to sound, but at the same time they don’t give a damn about killing their relative a meter away from them, despite the fact that both the monster and the main character grunts loudly when killed. There are practically no bosses, except for the final one; one fat enemy takes the rap for them, the battle with whom is repeated four times throughout the game. But the ordinary opponents are quite diverse, and in general the game is well staged, keeps the pace well and doesn’t become boring in the 10 hours it takes to complete it. It’s fine.

Definitely not the worst Call of Duty I’ve played. Decent campaign, passable plot, fine antagonist, more or less varied missions. A decent CoD for a couple of evenings.

It would be better if The Man Who Erased His Name remained DLC, there would be less demand for it.

Cons:

• a very filler and frankly drawn-out story with a protagonist who does nothing but grumble displeasedly about everything;
• bland side stories (with a couple of exceptions), which either rely on blatant fan service and “do you remember, there used to be such a character and there was such a scene with him? Soooooo”, or are lazy jokes, or offer to gather fighters into your team to participate in the tournament;
• mini-games taken from the previous entries with a minimum of changes;
• a new style of combat with gadgets, which is fun in itself, but feels quite strange in combination with the main character;
• a very bland soundtrack, which is kind of nonsense for the series;
• easy difficulty is broken, the game starts playing itself on it.

Pros:

• some good moments in the storyline and a couple of big side stories;
• a new fighting style, which, again, is quite fun in itself;
• large-scale battles on the level of that fight from the Yakuza 5, when twenty people are rushing at you at once, only here there are real opponents, and not whipping boys who fall with one blow;
• a coliseum with crowd-on-crowd team battles.

In general, the impressions are more negative than vice versa. The first Yakuza, in which you don’t want to finish the side content at all. It would have been much better if it had been a small, story-focused expansion like the Kaito Files from Lost Judgment. Play only if you really miss the series.

I played in story mode with auto combat enabled, so I can’t say anything about the combat system and will leave the game without rating. As a story-based game with constant need to make decisions, it’s okay, but it has a very uneven narrative. The authors change the style of dialogue on the go. There are a very large number of characters, and, as a result, many are given very little time. Some events remain behind the scenes and are not even mentioned (for example, at some point part of your team leaves you, and you will notice this only before the start of the battle). The setting is not bad and the story itself is interesting, but it could have been told much better.

I liked adventure games about main characters more. Colossus Down is clearly not the best beat-em-up I’ve played, and I just can’t imagine playing it in permadeath mode (by default, when you die, you return to the same place as if nothing had happened). Perhaps the game feels better in co-op mode.

I didn’t understand the combat system of this game at all. It seems that it is designed for one-on-one battles, but it seems like a slasher, where hordes of enemies attack you. I tried to play carefully - they quickly clamped down and broke my face in a crowd. I tried to play aggressively, but the crowd still broke my face. As a result, I felt more comfortable fighting bosses than ordinary opponents, because in boss fights I at least understood what I needed to do. I couldn’t master the combat and somewhere in the middle of the game I gave up, lowered the difficulty to minimum and started tanking without much effort. I played on a keyboard and mouse, perhaps it would have been easier with a gamepad.

Despite the above, I still enjoyed the game. It is well staged (the action without cuts is simply mind-blowing; the last time it was just as good was in Dead Space 2); very cool snow to roll around in; obscene Kratos who constantly says “cum”. It’s fine.

Great concept: putting the player in stressful situations, the way out of which must be found using logic and trial and error. Everything is spoiled by the great randomness, on which too much is tied in this game. Gods Will Be Watching itself is already quite evil and unforgiving of mistakes (its creators don’t even hide this), and the randomness here looks like an outright mockery. For example, in the second chapter you and your partner must endure several days of torture, and at one point you are forced to play Russian roulette. Bad luck, well, it sucks to be you, start over. And it’s one thing to replay an episode because you did something wrong, and quite another because the game wanted you to.