So you're probably wondering if the game is as bad as everyone says:
Yes, it is.

There are numerous reviews pointing out the game's problems, but if you're interested in my personal opinion on why it's one of the worst games I've ever played:

I got it with my Humble Choice bundle some time ago and thought that I should give it a try.
Character models and graphics in general look great but that's about it tbh.
The combat system doesn't feel good. Firearms are really only there to end your melee combo with “quick shots”.
Most fights are just boring, especially the end boss. There isn't a real mechanic to learn. It's just dodging in the first phase where you're basically 2 shot and you won't get a chance to heal yourself up, because the timing feels like RNG and running away in the second phase just to hit some shots and repeat. Not really great.
There are an incredible number of passages in the game where the character is unnecessarily slowed down, for example by crawling through tunnels or ventilation shafts or squeezing through narrow passages. You also can't sprint in many places, as the slightest organic infestation of surfaces means that the main character can only walk slowly. It feels to me as if the developers had to stretch the game to achieve an acceptable playtime. It took me about 7 hours to complete the story.

And on a sidenote: Only thing scary about this game is it's abysmal performance, stutters and freezes. I'm running a 7800X3D + 7900XTX with 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30 tuned @ 3840x1600 with FSR2 balanced and the game would just freeze for some seconds (I guess that was occuring when loading a different area / traversal stuttering). General performance also wasn't that good for my specs tbh.

Just get the Dead Space Remake tbh. That was great.

A quick foreword:
I have a number of criticisms about this game, but the primary reason this review is negative is due to The Final Transmission "DLC" being paywalled out of the base product. This DLC isn't just some extra addon content, it is in fact the game's actual ending. For that to be snipped off and sold as an additional purchase is... Shockingly poor form. :(

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♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, that was quite an unpleasant ride, in both the fun ways and the not so fun. Based on the reviews I wasn't expecting this much of an intense horror experience, but the game really gasted all of my flabbers.
That said, compared to Dead Space it does fall flat. That specific survival horror panic rush / fear of the unknown anxiety isn't there - but Callisto has its own brand of tense & disturbing action that had me sweating up the controller.
https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3289734793
As a fan of Dead Space, I really wish The Callisto Protocol didn't align itself so closely with it and call itself a spiritual successor. Some surface level similarities aside the two games are just too different.

If you're coming into Callisto as a DS enjoyer please firmly set your expectations appropriately. If you want to have any shot of enjoying the game, this is mandatory. While it failed to fill that Dead Space shaped hole in my soul, approached without that kind of baggage Callisto has some good things going for it so at a deep discount it is worthy of consideration.
The atmosphere and art direction are generally fantastic. Despite not being set in space for the majority of its runtime, it still captures that particular space horror vibe really well. This is pretty much the highest praise I'm able to afford this game however.

The game has a problem with pacing. Slow beginning, middle act often drags and is quite repetitive, however the last few hours of the base game and the Final Transmission DLC really brought it together and revealed the game's own unique identity. I felt it finally managed to step out from behind Dead Space's shadow.
It really is deeply unfortunate that this DLC is paygated, and that the game doesn't come into its own until so late.

One of the other major downsides to The Callisto Protocol is the weird af combat. The way the dodge system works is absolutely baffling, not to mention when you're surrounded by multiple enemies choosing which one to attack is almost futile as the game will mostly choose for you.
Once you get the shotgun or find that scattergun or w/e it was called you might start having fun with it, however ammo conservation is a constant worry so I only used those sparingly. The craftable gun upgrades / mods are even better, but their high cost makes them difficult to attain.

With the combination of the weird forced melee and the high cost of gunplay, combat is just frustrating and poorly implemented.
https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288645345
Additionally, both the protag as well as the camera controls are imprecise and floaty. I know the argument for this is stylistic, but if you're going to make a stylistic decision and make your game annoying to operate imma call it out just the same.

This is even more pertinent when it comes to the horrible FOV. After an hour or so the eye strain was too much and I almost quit the game. I did find a workaround using cheat engine for the FOV issue, and along with increasing the camera sensitivity from the default value the game became significantly better.

The game has a *lot* of blood and gore. In Dead Space all the wanton dismemberment served a functional purpose, but Callisto has it just for the sake of having it. It's fun and neat, but not very conducive to horror; the ease with which limbs and gobs of random flesh fly off can sometimes veer into slapstick.

I also have a bit of a bone to pick with some of the environment design. A lot of spaces are essentially huge and exposed meat grinders in a near literal sense. It makes for fun gameplay, but where the ♥♥♥♥ was OSHA when all this was designed? It really does mess with immersion, its just far too unrealistic. I mean, what were those coffee grinder things in the air vents for instance?
https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3290485331
The game does look very nice and the voice acting is fantastic, I was not expecting such big celebrities to be involved - they did a great job. The overall art direction is mostly excellent. Narrative is, except for a couple of specific instances, cliched but solid. The atmosphere is deliciously bleak and oppressive, but often lacks originality. The quality of the lighting does vary quite a bit, which can be pretty jarring.

At the end of the day The Callisto Protocol is a game that suffers mainly from poor combat and not being able to fill Dead Space's monstrous shoes, which perhaps was an unnecessary requirement to place upon it. I do find it difficult to feel any sympathy however on account of the ending requiring an additional purchase.

What in the ♥♥♥♥ exactly even is that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥?

There's a lot this game does well but the combat / gameplay completely ruins the entire game for me. The combat is almost entirely melee based which I actually quite like as I'm sick of shooters all the time. The problem is the way the combat system was built, it was very clearly built around 1 vs 1 however the game throws 3 to 5 enemies at you at once, you have no way of blocking attacks from behind and enemies do not "wait their turn" which might sound thrilling but it becomes a jumbled mess as the enemies pile on top you from every direction with no tools or way to handle that situation. You have 1 target you can focus on at a time and each enemy takes a significant amounts of attacks before they die. You can survive 2 enemies at most before just getting totally annihilated as the systems in place do not equip the player to deal with more than 2. Also this isn't a horror game, it's an action game so not quite what we were promised. All you do is walk 5 meters then fight a bunch of monsters, rinse and repeat until the end. No puzzles, no inventory management just combat. Disappointed.

I really wanted to like this game but everytime i press continue it freezes and doesnt load

Terrible combat, just clicking and occasionally holding A or D while enemies politely wait for their turn to fight you. Once you're done fighting this group of enemies, climb into a vent and crawl for 5 minutes, repeat this process for a few hours.

If you're lucky, you might enter a room or open a container where a little critter will fly out and take some of your health with no warning or way to avoid it, this is especially fun on the harder difficulties!

I only have 46 hours because I accidentally left the game running while I went to work.

For the most part, I enjoyed my play through of the Callisto Protocol. First and foremost, the presentation of this game is superb. The character voice acting, animations, and overall visual fidelity were a standout. I played this game on an OLED with HDR and Ray Tracing enabled and FSR2 enabled (RTX 4090) and didn't have any issues.

The gameplay was very reminiscent of the third person Resident Evil games. You have an inventory you need to manage and you need to be sure to be mindful of bullets and resources (for the most part). There were times where I found the progression of your inventory space was lacking and limiting. I imagine it was a design choice to not let you upgrade your inventory only up till a certain point but it's something that could have had some improvements.

Also, when it comes to controls, I found them to be rather slow and cumbersome. Again, I suspect this was a design choice but the responsiveness of the controls did cause problems with certain fights. Also, this game desperately needs a quick turn button as there are situations where you need to grab something and quickly turn around.

If you're looking for a short adventure game (10-12 hours) and this game is on sale then I'd recommend that you give it a try. It's standout feature, being the presentation of the game, is certainly worth an "on sale" purchase.

Based on the trailers an videos i was expecting something along the lines of Dead Space.
This is nothing of the sort.
This is cutscene after cutscene only interupted by walking and quick time events.

It feels dull.
Can't really immerse in a horrer gamge when you can't really do anything. It's all quick time scripted for you.

Not my kinda thing at all - Can't recommend it cause its a bore fest.

I don't know if I'm angry or disappointed. Maybe both. Most bad stuff you heard about this game is true. So much, that I can't comprehend that this was made by same folks that made Dead Space. But again, people who made Left 4 Dead made Back 4 Blood... and Evolve, so there's that. Callisto Protocol is a pale, miserable copy of Dead Space.

PROS:
+ game looks incredible
+ they fixed most technical problems game had on launch
+ it's not the worst game ever

CONS:
- actual ending is locked behind a DLC paywall. They did the same thing with Dead Space 3, so i'm "glad" they're copying the worst parts of that franchise
- game is just miserable to play. Melee is slow and without any depth at all, shooting is somewhat usable, GRIP was developed as an afterthought
- enemy design is bad and not scary. They all look like bunch of mangled ballsacks and the variety in enemies is pretty slim. Just visually uninteresting and very generic looking
- story is pretty much Dead Space-like, only worse in every aspect
- gameplay is very repetitive. There is like, one type of boss that you fight couple of times and there is also the "main" antagonist, who is absent 99% of the game. Every room is empty, there is no point in exploring everything when everything is barren except some ammo here and rarely an audio log there. And the game is big but a lot of that space is non-interactable empty decorations
- you wouldn't believe how many times the main character falls from something or through something or the bridge breaks, building collapses and he falls on the bottom and has to fight to go up. It's just silly and it breaks game tempo and immersion completely after 5th time it happens
- crafting is... well usable but very basic, uninspired, looks kinda cool but after some time you just want it to go faster but no, you have to have an animation. And resources needed for crafting are very scarce, so much so, that I don't think you can upgrade everything through first gameplay. I didn't and don't plan to in New Game+

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I'm sure this will be the best game ever for someone, but I don't think most people should play it. Even in 2024, most things they fixed are performance problems that made the game almost unplayable on PC during launch. But the core gameplay and content is just not there and they can't fix that. Also, for me, locking actual ending behind a paywall in a form of a DLC is unforgivable.

Some boss fights tend to be pretty nerve racking because of the ammo scarcity in that right moment. Weapon swap is also often nightmarish, reloading is somewhat slow and using healing stuff is even slower. I have no idea how GRIP battery works, sometimes I have to use it manually, sometimes it's auto applied. To make it even worse, health bar is small and GRIP indicator is even smaller so can't see sssshieeet

Story wise, it's dull, not bad, just very cliche filled sci-fi fare. And everything looking the same, despite the size of the game areas, doesn't help but to create pretty generic dull atmosphere as well.

Playing this game is just not fun or satisfying and looking at the people who made this and how good the game looks, it's incomprehensible how is this not way, way better? Every part of the game needed something more, some X factor, love and care it didn't get. Callisto Protocol is playable in 2024, I just think you would not enjoy it much.. if any of it.

Bought this pretty much only because I loved Days Gone and wanted to see Sam Witwer again. Unfortunately he's there only for a couple minutes in the entire playthrough.

The graphics are great, feels like true next-gen. But the combat is horrible and the story is predictable. And while it might look terrifying on paper, it's really not scary at all. Overall a disappointment.

Dont buy this game...pirate it ....its not worth not even 5 dollars

Its so badly made, corners cut everywhere, extremely short story i finished it within 13 hours, the melee is garbage, the level design is repetitive as ♥♥♥♥ and the ending suck ass with no meaning....its a very bad wanna be dead space but its not even close...i have never left a bad review bad this is the first one and it deserves it wholeheartedly