More than anything, The Callisto Protocol wants to sh*t you up – hands-on preview

“I hate this fucking place,” says protagonist Jacob Lee after sliding down a sewage pipe, dodging turbine blades, mutated human abominations, protruding rocks, and all manner of dangerous shit. You just plunged the head of what was supposed to be a known former recluse, but you’re not sure, because it had tentacles where his face should be. Now you’re waist-deep in human waste, walking through a sanitation plant just so you can, maybe, live to see another day. I hate this place too, man.

For our The Callisto Protocol hands-on preview, we play a level entirely set in the prison healthcare system. You’re in a penal colony on Callisto, Jupiter’s second largest moon, and something has gone wrong. A virus is affecting the inmates and staff here, and you seem to be one of the few humans left in a closed industrial building full of things that want to kill you. But the violence isn’t the scariest thing, not really. It’s the masterful way Striking Distance plays with the tension that locks in your brain and refuses to let go.

Whether it’s steam vents depressurizing you, noises of pipes banging right next to your head as you walk, slipping and sneaking into vents above and below you… there’s enough on this level to shred my nerves and keep me on a toe. highly strung. DualSense triggers throughout my game. It’s a good job that Jacob is as stoic as he is: he doesn’t even flinch when a steam valve clicks right next to his head! – Because he was doing my anxiety breathing exercises and almost reaching for a propranolol when the demo ended.

The Callisto Protocol is strict. The camera hugs Jacob very tightly, and as a result, the burly ex-pilot frame of him occupies a substantial third of the screen space. This gives Striking Distance so much freedom to play with scares that get close long before you see them. It makes you feel, player, that any scares you may not have registered early enough are your fault: that you obscured your vision and deserve to take a good, firm whack to the temple from a zombie’s meaty fist.

When you’re not desperately checking how much ammo you have left and calculating if you can survive another wave of decaying undead corpses, there’s a heavy emphasis on exploration. The entire demo shows him following a large red pipe through the behind-the-scenes sanitary facilities of the prison. You take a tour of the sewage, the filtration systems, whatever. Along the way, you’re subject to claustrophobia, excrement, the threat of drowning, sharp things near your eyes, rusty blades… it’s a rogues gallery of every major fear and phobia anyone could have (and then some darker ones as well). , just in case).

Simple puzzles take you away from the golden (or red) path, but you always have a line that tells you where to go and where you can return if you turn it around. It’s less intrusive than the Dead Space target marker line that Isaac could summon from the palm of his hand on a whim, and more in keeping with this hideous brutalist industrial world. Straying out of the way may reward you with an ammo clip, but punish you with another tentacled ghoul trying to suck your brains out through his eye. Is it worth the exchange? Up to you.

If you opt for more fights than strictly necessary, you better be careful. You’re just a pilot, a normal human male, and you can really only take a few hits. Timing to dodge and block is important. You are a man who has probably seen his fair share of prison fights and manual labour; you are heavy, mean and slow. That feels great when you’re fighting for your life, but it’s another part of the bigger picture that plays into you making you feel vulnerable. Dodging, parrying, and reacting by poking a guy in the head with a cane feels much, much better than any of the physical encounters in Dead Space (but that might just have been the adrenaline rush you get when you manage to successfully avoid a zombie). with a blinking bit of red health left).

And you don’t rely solely on close combat, even if it’s the main way of doing things here (the prison knife feels particularly gratuitous when you land it right on the neck of a wayward undead inmate). You have a pretty good arsenal at your disposal, all of which can be upgraded with 3D printed add-ons if you collect enough flotsam. Unlike many other survival horror games, ammo isn’t non-existent; it is quite common and comes in clips. This means you know you always have enough left over to sink a clip into a body… but whether that’s enough to finish off an enemy before they evolve or bite the dust is a different story. Because these assholes use cover.

And they are smart. They react to you. If you try to beat them all to death, they will learn and either outflank you or rush you in numbers. Or maybe they sneak up on you and come to you when you’re not looking. If you keep shooting they will crouch, dodge and weave when you aim down sights. These bastards are tough and make you really nervous about any encounters to come, even if you spotted the exploding barrels and environmental hazards on your first trip through this area.

But not everything is horror; the game is fun, too. You know, in the way that the scariest things are: they make you laugh and make you feel a little more comfortable before the goofball hits you with something that has powers more horrible than you expected. Whether it’s a knowing nod to Visceral/EA for abstaining from Dead Space with a blood-smeared “Kill the virus” message above a sign that reads “keep this area clean,” or a spurt of blood perfectly timed to the comedy from a fan after kicking a zombie into a wood chipper, Callisto’s Protocol knows how to make you relax before ramping it up with even more screech time again.

Glen Schofield and his team at Striking Distance know what they’re doing at The Callisto Protocol. Every encounter, every mechanic, every time his eyes widen and his fingers grip his pad a little tighter…it all feels intentional and well-orchestrated. The breaks in tension are well placed, and the explosive results work to keep him scintillating as his heart rises and settles, making him feel eternally on the brink of a cardiac event.

“I hate this bloody place,” Jacob mutters again, as we reappear after a particularly nasty ‘murder dessert’. I’m sorry, friend, because I can’t wait to make you live all this again.

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Callisto Protocol is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on December 2.