The Callisto Protocol - The DF Tech Review + PS5 vs Xbox Series X/ S + PC #StutterStruggle Analysis

This is the mehest meh game of recent years. It tries to be a few things at the same time, but is okay at everything, nothing more. Played the game, was mildly entertained, greatly disappointed, and uninstalled the game seconds after finishing it.

Gosh man I want to play this game so bad on pc but I don't support bad devs...

Just bought it a week ago. Solid game!

Needs a patch of 22gb to even be playable and not freeze/ crash on PS5. Ridiculous

Playing this for the 1st time now, on PS5 Quality Mode.
It's always nice to wait it out and enjoy the game post patches, but I am still shocked that the HDR hasn't been fixed. Black levels are a total mess and they only added the black adjust slider, which is not a proper fix.
Other than that, it is exactly what I wanted after so many tedious open world games: an intimate linear cinematic experience, without skilltrees, tons of collectibles and other crap.
For the 20$ I paid, I got my money's worth. It's nowhere near Dead Space, but it holds its ground and If you look at it as more of an interactive movie, it really shines.
It's sad that it didn't meet the publisher's expectations, which is highly likely we won't ever see a sequel, and questions Striking Distance existence...

Picked it up for a 20. Excited to play it at Halloween.😊

Once again PC is left out in the cold... 😥

In 6/3/2023 the game is still broken. It is a great game, and it was going to be added to my favorite game list, but after 4 hours of game play it just stopped working. I also tried it on my gaming laptop, and it has the same issue. If you purchase it, the company is cheating you out of your money. If it is not fixed one year after release, I will never purchase another game from that company. You have been warned.

Usually ray tracing isn’t that noticeable but in this game it changes the scenes. This is one game I don’t mind playing it in 30fps with ray tracing

The colony level on PC
The area where you have to go to the elevator in the steel forted shelters has the most terrible performance with Ray tracing engaged
I was able to play through most of the game smoothly on an RTX 4080 laptop in 1080p completely maxed out

There are parts of this game

Where you become trapped in a shader compiling limbo in which case transferring to room-to-room sometimes your frames don't come back.


Thank you digital Foundry for saying this game is broken

Because if it weren't for you I'd be mad at my computer but I'm not thanks again

I also believe this is a true next-gen title and has the best graphics I've ever seen

I really wanted to love this game. The gameplay and story just didn't grab me. Everything else though was absolutely solid, and when it first began I really thought we were in for a masterpiece.

My game crashed not even 1 hour in! I'm so mad I even put it on Medium preset just to TRY to enjoy gaming without stutters and it still crashed

Actually in details Consoles on war of creating full game experience while a lot of pc gamers just rely on graphical fidelity and frames, hardware talks etc. I personally feel consoles push first party games way ahead than pcs because it's consoles create a decent experience to the overall story

Just got it on Steam and it runs like butter…using a 6800XT. It must have been patched a few times by now.

This is one more reason why you should never buy games in preorder, especially from big companies...

i just got this on a price drop from GAME on the ps4. My first play experience was a strange one...the security droids had no textures on them they were solid grey blocks that barely resembled any kind of droid...so weird! and lots of the voice overs were not there and what voices WERE there they were not balanced at all. I could always tell when something was going to happen because the frame rate dropped massivly and glitched like crazy and the textures on the enemies and characters was not as nice as i thought it would be. Maybe on the PS5 i will have a better experience.

Buying this game in 2 months when they fix pc performance

This game is great. Need to quit being so negative. I've gone through it 4 times, and I sure hope there is a sequel. It is hard at first but you figure it out, if you play it long enough. Only problem with Callisto Protocol is that the graphics are soooooo good, you don't enjoy your other games anymore. They look stupid. You start playing an old game and think, "I'm not wasting my time with this arcade looking shit".

Hmm, I'm surprised Alex didn't mention the broken motion blur on PC, seeing how you guys always focus so much on motion blur. The vector speeds are all wrong, which makes the blur go with a weird pacing.

John just got lost in the visuals which are amazing. This game has the worst combat system that is almost a quick time event. This must be the most disappointing game in recent memory

Wondering if Series X is up to par now for Quality Mode? I been going through DF comparisons to see if I should get RE4 Remake on SX or PS5.

Interestingly the Xbox FPS boosted version of Dead Space is the only version where it has the VSync on and running at 60fps. As for some reason, the PC versions VSync caps the game at 30fps, requiring you to use an outside sources VSync.
Also if the frame rate goes too high that game actually breaks and becomes unplayable, something likely to happen because it runs extremely well on Modern tech

Why this game has so many negative reviews? I haven't played it but this video convinced me on buy in it and give it my support. I read also that it flop and that's to bad

I honestly wonder: if the Deadspace remake was never announced, what kind of Callisto Protocol would we have ended up with... my feeling is they rushed (crunched) to the finish line to beat Dead Space.

I came here from seeing Dead Space Remake review, I watched the review thinking I'm going to buy it now until the PC analysis started. What a shame. Has this been fixed or is this a likely avoid on PC forever title?

I actually think the faces look better than the matrix awakens, because while the rendering was good for that demo, the animation was subpar

Interesting to hear you say how the game represents a mastery of the tech and art within the Unreal engine. Feel like this is how things used to be in that developers had to ring out every last drop of performance from a platform. Shame about the shader compilation stutter on PC.

There’s a part in the the colony where there’s a big drop in performance

Corridor games tend to have amazing graphics.

No optimized settings 😥

Just dropped the new game plus, so going to do that now. Hard wasn't that hard though as after I beat it, I played about halfway through there, but stopped since I thought I'd just wait. I don't dislike this game, and it's good enough for me to want to play it again, but the game is overly uninventive that it verges on boring in some respects. Also, I can't agree with John in his comparison of it to Alien Isolation as I find Alien Isolation to be one of the best games of the last generation. Callisto Protocol doesn't come close for me so the reviews stating it's middling rings truer (even if I don't necessarily, entirely agree).

It's such a shame that this game ended up having so many performance issues (and is also apparently a fairly repetitive gameplay experience) because I love seeing devs put this amount of care and attention into their visuals. It's the kind of thing I used to get super excited about back when Unreal Engine 3 first debuted with all those Gears of War tech demos showcasing ambient occlusion, new lighting techniques, high res textures, and real-time physics capable of generating destructible environments, water orbs, and giant meat cubes

Have they fixed the RT on series X yet?

Can you guys go back now end see how it is on PC?

This game is fantastic. I played on PS5 and didn’t come across any issues. The game looks amazing, the story is enjoyable and can’t say a enough good things about this.

Such a beautiful and Amazing game! I dearly hope that it gets fixed on PC.

Definitely biased towards playstation

Ran almost flawlessly on PS5 with only a few glitches before the patch. A lot like Dead Space but more cinematic, and with better graphics.

Just cometed on Series X. Loved it.

The checkpoints are incredible bad, you can advance a lot, manual save, and if you die you can still go back half an our ago, even if you saved, and for me unfortunately the game isnt scary at all, it is sometimes gross, but not scary tbh

Yes! I'm so glad you mentioned the OLED settings. HDR Off w/ SRGB selected is PERFECT for my PS5-LG B8. It makes the game far better looking IMO. I'm loving this game so fa, reviews be damned. Very much like a Dead Space/Chronicles of Riddick mash up. It doesn't do anything monumental. But it's fun, looks fantastic, and is eerily moody. Wish all versions had launched correctly. PS5 is a great version. Dark room with good speakers/headphones? You're in for a treat. Cheers.

Another forgettable bargain bin game, wait for it to be $10

Is it fixed on Series X ? Gonna receive a second hand copy tomorrow 😕

It’s really not rare for HDR games to have raised blacks. This is sadly the case more often than not on PS and Xbox. Lowering the brightness (black level control, not brightness as in luminance) a few clicks does the trick.

You should do the same whenever you encounter a movie/tv show with raised blacks as well. Opening credits screens that are supposed to be pure black, but appear dark grey are perfect for dialing the black level just right. Just make sure to set it back to the default setting when you’re done otherwise you’ll have crushed blacks with other content.

Don’t care what people say I loved this game. No expectations, no prior knowledge and never played Dead Space. Getting it for free with an RX 6600 only sweetens it further.

Wow what a team! This game is stunning, won't play as not my thing more than 1 hour but will buy as a Thank you for developer skill.

Playing now on PS5 and fully updated. Game is amazing that's all I know especially with this haptic feedback controller. Wow

Been playing this on the s and the x. The s actually holds up very well. If they gave better hdr settings you could make the game look way better.