While it may not look like it from the outside, Gamescom has been very busy and filled with games this year, despite the absence of some key companies. At the newsroom, in the weeks leading up to the fair, we faced a deluge of emails inviting individual host games until it became a problem for our team of four to keep it all in order. Despite this, during the entire preparation, I absolutely clearly imagined one, the most important game, for which I went to Cologne. That game was The Callisto Protocol, a sci-fi horror game “reimagined” by the creators of the original Dead Space series.
In an effort to maximize my time with the game, I found it both at a public showroom and held a press conference behind closed doors. Unfortunately, it turned out that the booth, which looked promising from the outside, only hid the opportunity to take pictures in the artificial scenery of the game, but nothing more. After this betrayal, I went to this closed presentation rather disappointed – and, unfortunately, my impressions there also did not improve much. Although the game was already out three months later, even the closed-door presentation did not offer “hands-on” actual gameplay, only a short developer presentation followed by approximately 15 minutes of gameplay footage.
If you’re a Dead Space fan, the developers’ presentation revealing their philosophy behind making the game shouldn’t surprise you too much – you’ve heard the same rules and mantra that they followed in their previous series, such as focusing on working with creating tension, working with sound or perhaps trying to give the characters enough human dimension to show their vulnerability and reaction. The authors call this whole process “horror engineering”, and it’s true that Dead Space, with its masterful dramaturgy and processing, belongs to the top of the genre, next to games like The Last of Us.
While it was certainly nice to see a quarter of an hour of playing the current version of the game in development, I was not too surprised by the demo presented – after all, the goal is to more or less offer Dead Space 4 at an affordable price. another name. Callisto still looks as dark, dark and atmospheric as she has in all previous previews. One of the novelties presented was the ability of some monsters to turn into a stronger variant if their mutating body part is not shot in time (this can be seen from the waving tentacles that “shoot” from it). Unfortunately, this transformation, while perhaps interesting from a gameplay standpoint, doesn’t use any modern visuals, so you end up with a rather simple monster model switch instead of some effective morphing. By the way, I also talk about my impressions of this presentation in our podcast:
The presented demo further increased my fear of the game’s combat system, especially melee combat. It just doesn’t sit well with me that in the distant future, an astronaut equipped with modern tools is battling apparently bloodthirsty mutating monsters with a baton. In some scenes, he even pushed monsters away with his bare hands (as part of his dodge animation). In addition, it looks like we will have only one gun in the game, although its functionality can be improved.
I’m definitely not saying every horror movie has to be an outright shooter, but this one just felt a bit poor and out of place in the context of the setting/situation. I know that the creators will defend it by placing the game in a “prison” environment, but this does not change the final impression. I would have been a lot calmer if they had at least let us touch it and play the game for ourselves, but that didn’t happen. However, I still have a lot of respect for the atmosphere of the game and believe that it will be one of the top three games of this fall/Christmas season.
Callisto protocol will be released December 2nd per PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
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Source :Indian TV
