Was working on this with parallel with the Dead Space video hence it being out faster. UPDATE: With the Riot mode patch you can properly listen to audio logs while playing the game.
The madman promised the Callisto protocol and the madman delivered the Callisto protocol... Praised be the madman. No but seriously thank you for your effort for Dead Space + Callisto at once.
Good job reviewing both games back to back! I hope you play a rather bright game next time, these games are dark and spooky. But whatever it is, I'll be looking forward to your next review!
@@electricbayonet2 Neat that the takedown animation doesn't just cause the enemy models to clip when they make contact though. I'm fishing for positives lol.
@@Naz-xk6hq Issac is the name of the main character of the Dead Space series. it's just another example of this game being locked in Dead Space's shadow
Like massive spiked walls in the sickbay. Seems like a clear indicator that they were running out of development time and copy/pasted spikes everywhere. So realism might not be the term I would use.
I genuinely laughed out loud at the reveal that "The giant, prison-planet panopticon complete with kill-bots and forced implantation procedures is actually villainous!" I had no idea it was supposed to be a reveal. I thought it was a given. That's like someone getting confused at Darth Vader's first entrance because they can't tell whether he's supposed to be the main character or the villain
@@diomedes7971 one microchiping like for a pet would probably be easier and two it kinda shows how shoddy everything is that a core feature has to be implied
I agree. At the very beginning, they know you're a pilot delivering supplies (as far as you are concerned as the player at that moment.) and they arrest you and drill shit into your skull. That right there makes it obvious the company is run by the villainous sort. A more obfuscated twist would be if everything was a PUBG match and that it was for the entertainment of sick and demented trillionaires. Where the reward was a few survivors of each game being tossed in a cryopod to be one of the new colonists, while still against their will, because society in the Sol System is near collapse. A kind of "Only the strong are deserving" thing. Then they wouldn't have needed to drop the PUBG connection, simply expanded on it. Still a silly connection though. I mean wtf?!
Darth vader is 100% the main character of Star Wars. The first 6 movies revolve entirely around him and his actions and his character arc. Sure in the ot he’s technically the villain, but he’s secretly the main character of the whole franchise even then.
I like that you showed The Order 1886 gameplay since both games clearly suffer from the problem of making the environment so detailed they forgot they were supposed to be making a videogame.
I loved the order…still own the copy. Then again I expected and wanted gameplay like that….I don’t always need to play the bestest games…and currently playing red dead 2 and Metroid prime…yet I want to play a cheesy game like Callisto right now.
Those badass looking security robots being taken down by 3 headshots each for a grand total of 30 seconds of gameplay is actually criminal. Incredible.
god it's so fucking upsetting that the first genuinely cool and horrifying looking corporate swat bot I've seen in a game is literally less durable than the trash enemies in the game.
@@chaoko99 From a logical standpoint you could explain it as, because the prison staff would have firearms but not the prisoners you could give it an easy to shoot weak point out of reach so that way it could be quickly destroyed if it malfunctioned and went on a rampage. Ensuring that guards and officers with guns would be able to counter them in an emergency but a convict with a bludgeon or hammer or something wouldn't be able to do anything to them... But that still doesn't justify how absolutely underutilized they were and how obvious they made the hint. Like if you had some kind of schematic you had to look for, something where you had to read or analyze the situation then maybe it would work. In Dead Space cutting off the limbs works for all the enemies you encounter but because the necromorphs are so varied it does encourage you to mix up how you fight them which requires some problem solving. But Callisto protocol seems to have failed at that heavily. You know to cut the limbs off with the necromorphs but some like The Pregnant you need to be more selective otherwise they just release swarmers. You can cut off the head of a slasher but that just pisses them off. Against a Leaper, which limbs you target can depend on if you're in a ZeroG environment or not. They all have the same baseline method of fighting them but you need to make judgement calls based on which type your fighting and where and that requires problem solving.
@@CollinMcLean Or they could've tucked that info about their vulnerability as codex/lore piece you can find. Makes it more immersive while giving advantage to studious gamers.
Imagine if the game kept the ease of killing them but the *only* way to find out about it is to shoot them in the face, something you’re primed to believe is going to kill you. That would make the average player sneak but you could also discover it. realising you can do something by basically throwing a death is kinda movie ass shit games rarely accomplishes. You out of frustration once spotted open fire and you realise shooting it in the head can take it down. The game doesn’t mention it, you’re just left with a genuine feeling of having figured something out yourself. All that would need is that you remove the hint, no other change required.
Oh yeah, barely cognisant aggressive monsters with hardly any fine motor controls and covered in festering wounds and tumors. That certainly is the best future for humanity !
It's just such an overplayed concept. Dead Space had it too, but you knew it was either because the Marker made them think so or because they were just outright insane.
Nekos, the next tage in human evolution. Ther hould be way more comedy around that. I mean as long as the voiceactor and game have fun going ham with it.
When I got to the hidden labs and behind the cells, and read up on the logs on how they were actively infecting the prisoners to see what happens, I genuinely thought that the real twist would be something along the lines of how Jacob had actually been in the prison for months, maybe years, and the virus combined with the implant had just simply messed up with his perception. This would have made a lot more sense with the Warden too, as Jacob would be the actual subject alpha, yet still retain his humanity while being much stronger than anything else. But no, apparently telling the player that the prison wasn't good and Illuminati was behind it, was good enough. What a waste of time.
That...could work. Hell, it would even make Starkiller ranting about Jacob taking responsibility for his actions a lot more interesting: after presumably years of loyal service controlling the facility that has _successfully_ _achieved_ a replication of Subject Zero, the Warden/Illuminati stab him in the back in the name of their evolutionary Battle Royale. He was important, certainly, but not so important that he couldn't be casually discarded by the Illuminati just to eke out a little more information about Jacob and see if their Callisto Protocol idea had any merit now that Black Iron Prison has served its original purpose. But instead, they went with the 'twist' that's about as shocking as "We were in _space_ the whole time?!"
NGL as soon as Elija turned to Jacob and said "You have to take responsibility for what you do" I was dead certain the big twist was going to be that this was all a hallucination or something, and that Jacob was having a Jacob's Ladder moment or some shit because he was space driving space drunk and got his partner space killed or something. I would have taken "It was all a dream" over the nonsensical garbage the game actually went with.
There's precious little more frustrating than a story that delivers a staggeringly-obvious and stupid twist that you saw coming so far off that you didn't even think it was supposed to be a twist, and thinks it's being clever. Like Mr. X from Mega Man 6 turning out to be _...Dr. Wily! ...again!_
@@ZzVinniezZ I think they tried to incorporate The Last of Us melee combat to the game, but forgot that the guns in TLoU were powerful as hell so they were not as useless as in TCP. I would've prefered if they just copypasted the whole system and focused on having more enemy variety or fleshed out more the mutation system on them, instead of trying to combine in one the melee and the guns
The one thing that irritated SO much in this entire playthrough was how chill your guy was working with Danny. Like, the person responsible for your ship crashing in the first place and getting your best friend killed. All of that just is out the window and he really wants to be her BFF.
Yup. They even had a plot device to solve this by just give a reason to have them link and relive each others memories effectively becoming the other person also. But instead the lead treats her like she was his friend before any of that happens.
I've spoken to a dev who worked on the game, and they've told me that against all odds, all the crawling through vents and wall-shimmying added to the game wasn't due to them hiding load screens, but because that was their only way to meaningfully string level sections together. Apparently, the development was so troubled, they couldn't even properly finish the level design. I couldn't believe this at first, but it makes sense if you think about it.
Jesus Christ, this is why I hate when people try to push graphics to their limits, cus 9 times out of 10 they forget they're making a game, not a movie
That is so fucking astounding that I can't even begin to explain how humorously tragic that is. It's so interesting to me that the Dead Space Remake was, for It's faults, a good refinement of the original game, while Calisto is struggling to even understand the basics of game design.
Man, i wonder what happened to make fuckup this resonating. The only think that comes to mind was Dead Space remake coming out and that just pushing entire thing into beyond chaos? Still, that is fucked.
Wait, hold on. So, you're saying that they've reused same two headed guy as a miniboss 4 times, but a riot- and bulletproofed 2+m tall robots that disassembles biological enemies and armored protagonist with a single strike or punches right through steel walls that you meet only twice AREN'T boss fights?
Yeah, at the opening of the story the game established those robots as the most scary thing around and every time I encountered some stupid generic zombie dude I was like: "Huh...thank God robots are not really after me, that would be actually scary" 😄
@@ardour1587 They were so scary at first and then the game is like “now try shooting it in the face!” Once I found out how much money you get from them, I was straight up hunting them. Too bad there were only two in the whole game 😒
It would have been cool if they were boss fights. Each one dropped a different upgrade for your equipment. Optional but worth it, almost like nemesis in RE3
@@ZyroShadowPony I love how the fans keep coming up with great ideas that the devs should have already implemented. There’s so many great ideas to expand on that never happened… This game really had so much missed potential 😪
@@seanbrennan5192 I think the missed potential is that this isn't a Star Wars game. Think about it. droids, melee focused combat, telekinetic powers. It easily could've been a "Jedi does a prison break" the game
The worst thing about the audio log comparison is even IN THE CLIP that Mandalore used. He shows an audio log from System Shock, and what is he doing? Nothing. Not moving. He is engaged with the audio so much, that he set aside the game to focus on it. Make audio logs playable over gameplay, and then make them interesting. If they are interesting enough, the player will CHOOSE to stop gameplay to engage with them.
"Most of the moon is an abyssal ocean of alien terror, and I immediataly wished that Jacob's suit was a diving suit, and this was completely underwater, and a different game entirely." Mandalore, I think you may enjoy Barotrauma.
Honestly I think he was alluding to Subnautica. It was the only thing that came to mind when I thought about an immersive alien ocean world that slowly turns into a horror game the deeper you go.
I think he's shown clips from it before (in the Factorio Review, I think?), I'm surprised I didn't see a parallel brought up. Pretty sure one of those things sunk my crew's sub on more than one occasion.
So burnt out by the time I made it past habitat that I just turned it off. I've spent better money on bunk weed. Quite unfortunate given how good it could actually be with the right souls behind it. That said, my thoughts are, ",,!,, -_- ,,!,,"
It's really funny how a "stealth takedown" in this game is violently repeatedly stabbing the creature the death with both it and the player character grunting and screaming throughout.
The absurdity of stealth kills in the colony makes me wish the devs would add a special stealth kill where he just starts screaming at the top of his lungs occasionally
Man, that is a soul-shattering level of graphical fidelity and soundscape depth for "The Dead Space We Have At Home." Also, imagine if BioShock just straight up said "Try shooting this Big Daddy in the face!" the first time you see one.
That’s a perfect way to put it. I always play games with subtitles on and in games like system shock and Bioshock, I end up either just sitting in a corner and reading along with the vocals or doing busy work while listening, like buying from a vending machine or managing my inventory. That’s the sign of a good narrative, making you care about pressing play on a tape recorder.
Calisto and Cliffy B’s meltdown (as well as a certain individual who was never even on cribs) really solidified in me that big names are not what makes games good. It’s the team in the trenches putting in the effort.
This is how its always been, and almost all the time when a game comes out shit, the real people at fault are the higher ups rather than the people actually working on the game.
Honestly, I feel like that take still gives Callisto Protocol too much credit, considering that despite all its flaws and clear inferiority to its predecesors, Dead Space 3 is still an alright, fun game
For being a successor of DS3 this game severely lacks main gameplay feature: a shotgun with underbarrel shotgun. That's the thing that made DS3 [good] palatable. Having your own "pimp my gun" constructor with possibility for hilarious bastard children of shotgun-shotgun incest turns this game into unexpected comedy show.
@@quint3ssent1a I made a Plasma Cutter that shot so fast it looked like I was using a laser beam and the firing sounds overlapped ruclips.net/video/O2P8TPMElYE/видео.html
The Callisto Protocol was something we were all hyped up for because we loved Dead Space and it was being made by some of the old crew from Visceral Games, and then the Dead Space Remake was announced which made most of us feel hesitant and scared of how EA was going to butcher it. Funny how ironic it is now that the Dead Space Remake was a massive success that managed to breathe life into the franchise again and The Callisto Protocol was released... in the state that it was.
@@MandaloreGaming Mandy I wanted Dead Space tbh. What hurt so bad was knowing if I'd just waited like six weeks I could've spent my money on the real thing instead of this uninspiring knock off.
@@MandaloreGamingi tought i wanted somthing new, but actually i just wanted more dead space. Dead space 4 baby, they finish that iron man game and they need to make dead space 4.
The robot enemies in this game really remind me of the clockwork soldiers featured in Dishonored 2; except in that game shooting a clockwork’s head wasn’t an “I win” button, it meant the clockwork soldier could now only detect you by sound so you could reposition to take it down or leave it alone and let it start infighting. Makes me wish that’s how callisto’s robots worked, hell I could imagine it adding new tension if shooting the head didn’t destroy the robot but instead caused it to stop moving and start trying to detect you through sound alone
@@CRL_Oneespecially cuz I mean. Its a fuckin robot! Its not a machine that thinks, it's a bunch of tiny machines working together. You know, like how a real robotic welding arm can still technically work if it has some busted hydraulics, it just works wrong. Like they should have started glitching out when damaged, but not be able to correct for the mistakes, so they get clumsier or can't see you or something. Literally anything other than Big Fist Guy in space that dies if you shoot it a few times.
Shocking that they copy+pasted the Kinesis from dead space but removed any of the intriguing limb/object shooting elements and just let you pick the enemies up and toss em into spike walls
They didn't even put a timer on it... even mighty foot of Dark Messiah had a cooldown which prevented you from spamming it. Here you can just toss shit non-stop.
And the spike walls make no in universe sense for being there 95% of the time. Its immersion breaking and makes for extremely shallow gameplay that loses its appeal after the first few splats.
@@quint3ssent1a no you can’t At least play the game or see gameplay before speaking. You start off being able to use it like once every minute until you upgrade it
It’s crazy how System Shock and Bioshock made audio logs interesting and worthwhile to find. Then in this game you can’t play the game while listening to them
2k most likely employs narrative designers (people with writing/journalist education who know how to make a compelling story/dialogue), majority of gaming studios even large ones dont do this, so all the dialogue is in hands of people who dont really know how to make it interesting.
The dead space remake has a moment where you have to do a squeeze through with a necromorph crawling through a vent and a wall guardian waiting at the end to spook you. Only for you to turn back at the crevice and see a wall pustule that you pop and it turns into a "normal" hallway. That game managed to poke fun and subvert the squeeze through trick an had fun with it.
The absolute dedication to playing through a NG+ and then an NG++ so you could get all the upgrades for weapons when you already decided you didn't like the game is something else. Maybe that's the real space horror.
I'm really glad you keep mentioning the mobile version of Dead Space. I worked on it for a little while - doing gameplay testing - and I LOVED it. Great story for a mobile game, and solid gameplay for its time.
Anyone else think it's funny that the doctor who doesn't seemed bothered about brutally implanting a healthbar in us, and who's name is literally pronounced mauler, is actually the only member of the staff who tries to help you?
@@doodguytheblank2403 sorry but you're forgetting the time he admitted he has nextbot AI just for this purpose ruclips.net/video/M3Snf8E2y6g/видео.html Edit: changed it to the actual twitch clip
Incoming Essay 3 major plotpoints that would've made the story INFINITELY better, and were all hinted at by the game's own design: 1: The HUD-link. Dani was slowly decaying her mindspace by linking with dead bodies, dying corpses, other people, and countless other things. They could have made the ending twist be that Jacob isn't who he thinks he is, and that all those HUD-links he's been filching throughout the game are people he's come across. Big ending twist, he's just some random prisoner who woke up with Jacob's memories, because the REAL Jacob died on the operating table, and his HUD-link was reused on a different inmate. Would explain why Elias seems so familiar with us, and why at some points he's so confident we'll get along. It'd also explain why Dani recognizes us, because she HUD-link'd with us after the crash, and she sees us as Jacob, not *Random Inmate here*. Gives reason for the Warden being obsessed with us, because we've unlocked an alternative 'immortality' to compete with his genetic experiment immortality. Mind-swapping vs Genemodding. Big reveal, the mind-link at the end is us sending a piece of ourself with Dani, and Dani is the best of both worlds. 2: Eldritch Space Soup. Rather than the genetic horror monster being 1 dude who's kinda immortal, make it a gene-pattern. Whoever gets infected gets taken over by 'Patient Zero'. The original patient zero is a murderous psychopath with an unbearable will to live through anything, and a last-man-standing complex. Explains the sudden outbursts of all inmates, ultraviolence, and why the Prison Captain goes from 'semi-reasonable cut-dry guard' to 'violence for violence sake'. He's fighting the gene-imprint of patient zero, and only the doctor has realized. The HUD-link effect abates it because of mental decay caused by memory lapsing, which is why Dani can hold out for so long. However, the original inmate is just a gene-memory-pattern, and the real eldritch horror in the space soup is pushing up, because ex-galaxy conquering genophage. Any number of plotlines can spawn from the basic concept. 3: Secret Illuminati aren't actually the bad guys. They released the genophage, not because they're trying to create super-mutant space faring humans, but because there's something fucked out in the darkness, and they NEED something that can survive ANYTHING, so humanity doesn't explode on contact. Initial tests were showing good signs with patient zero, they tried a mass dispersal of a weaker strain, it super-murdered the colony, and they tried containment. Too bad, ipso facto, the genophage is already on a mass-outbreak on the colony testbed, and now it's causing infinite problems for them. They try containing it, but after a certain point there's signs that this might be what they need, so they let it run its course. Either everything wipes itself out, they try again in 100 years, and hope for the best, or their 'perfect subject' arises, and they now have what they need to survive whatever has them so freaked out. These are just 3 ideas built off what the game hints as being its direction, but all got washed out by a bland one-note story of 'look, it's Not Dead Space, but secretly Actually Is'. The game also seems to suffer from 'rushed story' effect. A lot of the better story elements just needed time to play out, to stew the player and immerse them. Instead, we get bite-sized chunks of what it wants to show us. 3 games worth of content, in a single game. Not enough enemy variety, because we kind of just rush from point A to point B, all in the span of what...like 18 hours? The game treats this as being months of survival, but all in the span of a single day. Characters aren't given enough time to play out their plot threads, with the only exception being Elias, and even his is cut short by a sudden death for plot sake. Also, it feels like the characters are given priority because they NEED it. Elias is killed off so Dani takes center stage, and they aren't competing for screen time. The Warden is barely shown so he can be Mysterious BBEG, but is also not given enough presence to make us care about why he's important outside of 'vague villain'. It's also never explained why he takes such an interest in Jacob from the second he survives the crash. In fact, it's never explained why Jacob is anything more than an Everyman. Elias trusts him because of minor agreements of mutual survival, almost implicitly. Dani hates him for reasons she never explains until the secret compartment section, and even then it's blaming the messenger for not knowing. The Warden obsesses over him LONG before the outbreak, and even then, he obsesses over him for reasons never explained. Farris gets a grudge for him off of....no real reason? Farris also feels super weak as a character. He goes from 'level-headed, fair guard who's just doing his job', to 'insufferable asshole for the sake of being a villain'. He falls down an infinite pit, and it's never explained how he survives. He develops an obsessive hate-boner for Jacob, despite the 'death' he suffered being of his own cause. He pops up as a jumpscare out of nowhere, with no buildup. Maybe if Jacob pushed him out the window himself, it'd be an analogy of reconciling with Elias of 'killed in self-defense', and Dani with 'Doing what he needs to so he can survive', by instead being a random guard that has Farris' face for Jacob, and a different one for Elias and Dani. A kind of 'the worms are in your head already' moment reveal later on, that Subject Alpha is just a random person, but the worms are causing them to see their greatest guilt manifested. I've kinda lost my train of thought. So to close: Game has a lot of potential, it just feels rushed, over-hyped, under-playtested, and pushed out for the sake of beating Dead Space Remake to the punch for the hopes of getting brownie points, rather than being its own idea that took minor inspiration from dead space and went in a different direction.
Like your 1 and 3 put together. They figured out, due to things found in space and/or Earth, that the universe is too dangerous for Humanity, and sooner or later, the red eyes at the tree line will look in our direction. They try to make something transhuman, maybe derived from whatever they found, and their experiments aren't quite working. It seems that certain people are more likely to become what they need, but the conditions are elusive, due to something some Illuminatis call "will", others call "soul" or even Dawkins-style "memeplexes". The mind-links are a way to try to define and spread this subjective requirement. Jacob could be the result of many "Battle Royales", and the culmination of several lineages of mind-linked people, creating a mind/personality with a will to survive strong enough to tame the disease into a set of benign mutations. Becoming "Subject One", the Illuminati bow to him, explain the situation, and appoint him their leader so he can create enough "Subjects" that Humanity stands a chance. ...Now that I typed all of it, it sorta sounds like Protector by Larry Niven, with a bit of Kojima mind-fuckery.
It seems these days that these developers are rushing stories and not thinking things through. You made great points and honestly everything you wrote could have been a trilogy and not this rushed game
These are really REALLY interesting plot points. I'd love someone try to go with these directions in some fan fiction, at least, because these are fantastic ideas to explore!
The Awkward moment you want to upstage a unused IP, you flop on arrival and the Game you wanted to upstage is steping on your body on their way to get celebrated by the Party.
"The kind of marketing speak you'd expect to see on a Star Citizen delay post" I think my favorite thing about Mandalore is how his jokes always catch me off guard.
Man knows how to flashbang us with his comedic stylings. On a recent episode of PST (Certified Barren), he explained how in Lord of the Rings the world is round for men but flat for elves, much to the surprise of the other lads on the call. Then the conversation gets into sandbags, World War 1, "guns that shoot fast", etc, and then Mandy casually slips in "but they couldn't shoot as far because the world is flat for Germans", and everyone falls into hysterics like a pack of coked-up hyenas. "Holy shit, Germans are elves?!" _-SirMeowMusic, still reeling from the flashbang_
Apparently Sam Witler's character is only in the game for 5 minutes roughly. Why did they bother getting a pretty big voice actor for 5 minutes of screentime?
@@valen9835 That pissed me off so much. You get one of the best shouty angry actors in the industry, and you barely let him go The Force Unleashed 2 levels or rage. That's like having Adam Driver in your movie and not having him rage! Why would you have him if not to do what he does best?!
And they got Gwendolin Christie for the audio book. Enough money to get Brienne of Tarth for a tie in audio book but not enough for mo cap and voice acting.
Imagine if you played Michael Ironside instead, or he was a sort of 'sanity supporting AI' that talked to your character and helped keep your character sane, warn about potential infection of whatever-is-going-on-with-the-totallynotzombies, etc. Also helps with avoiding the whole 'how is my character managing to stay calm and able to move forward with all the horrid shit he's seen and sofar survived through - well he got a nice AI with a 'gruff veteran soldier' attitude, etc.
@@darthgamer9861 In Rage you could still fool around, do your own thing you know. Sure, it was a tech demo and I would never play it again, but Ryse? Ough...
@@vespenegas261 Eh, I dunno. I liked Ryse. It's a pretty fun hack and slash game. The QTE's though, yeah not too big a fan of it. Especially when I'm just trying to execute enemies. Especially since I do it so often.
@@Khashmonet "Alright gents, time to christen our first ever extra-solar vessel! It will carry thousands of innocent colonists far from our home to distant stars to begin new lives!" "Let's call it the Icarus!" "No, no, call it the Albatross!" "Booooring! Name it Tartarus!" "Oh, oh, what if we just call it 'Mankind's Hubris'?"
@@Shenaldrac "Man's Hubris" sounds like something that would be the name of a ship in the Halo. Like the name of a super experimental ship that was rushed out as fast as possible with some new cutting edge weapon designed to win an ongoing war? I could totally see the UNSC naming their ship. "Man's Hubris" in a self-aware sort of way. Like this is a series with, off the top of my head, "Do You Feel Lucky?", "Fair Weather", "Ready or Not", Welcome to the Snipehunt", "Two for Flinching", "Point of No Return", "Wink of an Eye", "Walk of Shame", "Witch Bucket", as well as having more traditional "cool" names, like "Edge of Umbra" , "Eternity", "Infinity" or "Spirit of Fire" or being named after locations on Earth, people, or mythical figures. I wonder if it is a cultural thing that is never really explained, like if you talk to real world sailors they will have a name for their ship which is selected because of some form of superstition. I wonder if the UNSC has certain superstitions that sometimes govern these odd names. It could also just be a way to show that sometimes they're out of ideas for names and they just give it a dumb name to take the piss.
Dead Space: "You're approaching me?" Callisto: "I can't 'take inspiration' from you without getting closer." Dead Space: "Hoho! Then get as close as you like!"
14:01 Quick correction: There is a perfect dodge, and it happens when your screen goes slow-mo. From there, you can launch a counter-attack which breaks enemy combos. To get it, you have to tap, not hold, left or right, as soon as the enemy launches an attack, which should cause it to trigger most of the time. You managed to do it on accident here: 11:01. The game never explains this mechanic to you, unfortunately. Also, unrelated, but I find it amusing how Jacob can not only dodge punches from enemies all day long, but even attacks from non-humanoid enemies. In the game, you can dodge lunges and pounces from that one enemy on all fours, implying he could go toe to toe with a bear or a lion without breaking a sweat. Jacob has almost inhuman combat prowess in this game.
@@franzosisch5965 the original fighting was nice, i liked the swarming. I get it though. but yeah it was basically a cake walk. I'll still buy their next game though, I need to support this crew and not the souless Dead Space remake
I don't know if this annoyed anyone else, but one thing that got to me was apart from the main cast, the almost complete lack of any survivors in the prison. When shit starts to hit the fan you see an infinite loop of prisoners running around in the background of the cell block. You also see a bunch of prisoners being murdered by one of the robots in the opening of the game. You can hear the sound of an injured guard calling for help and catch a glimpse of him before he's killed. You hear a guy who's trapped in a room who you try to save but is ultimately killed offscreen. I just wish there were more encounters with survivors, but there doesn't appear to be any survivors. I feel like they missed something there, the idea of the prison falling into chaos, instead you get a cinematic opening and then pretty much post apocalyptic setting almost instantly
Late reply but they could play the Dead Rising card here and have the surviving inmates who got their hands on guards' equipment and/or jury-rigged their own gear serve as bosses. Maybe they'd split the prison up into their own little zombie-infested fiefdoms and you'd have to take down each Prison Wing King to proceed deeper?
Finally someone mentioned the glitching raytraced shadows. I felt like a madman all this time, it was like nobody had this problem, only me. Thank you for confirming I'm still sane, Mandalore, love your stuff.
@@dryued6874 running gag in Mandalore videos and even a few sseth videos. someone that's more of a hardcore Mandy fan than I could probably tell you the real origin behind it, but it's present in almost every video he can realistically fit it in.
Despite the fact that I don't think there were any sinister motivations involved in developing this, this game represents everything I don't want to see games become.
Yeah. If all you care about is making something that looks good then go make a painting or sculpture. If you're gonna make a video game, make sure the *game* part is fun and well developed. Don't expect players to be invested in your story and plot just because you, the developer are. You need to actually earn their investment.
I mean, it's just culmination of modern AAA game trends. And games aren't becoming something like that, there is plenty of good games. However you kinda have to choose - game with a good gameplay or game with good graphics as those two are mutually exclusive. But still you don't need to worry that games as a whole will be that way, it's just that main focus group are people who play just to fully chill so gameplay isn't that relevant.
I"m glad that Mandy started by talking about the hyperrealistic graphics, because so many of the game's other issues make sense in that context. It takes a _lot_ of work to make models, textures, animations, etc that detailed, _especially_ if you're specifically going for a realistic look. (The uncanny valley is your enemy, and it's going to be a constant struggle.) Increasing visual fidelity means increasing the workload of _everyone_ working on the game's visuals. There isn't much enemy variety? There probably weren't enough artist-hours to make all the assets needed to render and animate a wider variety of enemies. Limited weapon variety? Same deal-weapons are simpler, but they interact more with the player character (the least predictable part of every game). QTEs out the wazoo? Cutting down on player control of the camera and possible inputs makes animating that moment to the necessary level of fidelity simpler. The story is full of payoffs even though the setup was cut? Making cutscenes look this real is expensive, replacing all of that work would take a lot of development resources (read: artist-hours and the associated salaries). Not every problem fits into this mold, but a lot do. And more feel like an attempt to make the game marketable to a wider audience, beyond what a mere _Dead Space_ successor could attract, or to encourage players to keep playing long enough for DLC to drop-revenue-enhancing ploys that become more fiscally mandatory as a game's budget balloons. If you pour a hundred million dollars into developing the game and fifty million into marketing, and only sell 2.6 million copies, the men with money are going to be _very_ disappointed that they only got a 4% return on investment for years of work. And the money men are the ultimate arbiters of what your game can do, and who gets to lead development.
What gets me about this is that we've seen time and time again; gameplay trumps visuals. The most popular games at any given time tend to be the ones that are the most fun or interesting to play. Yet companies and devs keep pushing for bleeding edge graphics and visual tech, despite the fact that people will oooh and aaah over it for maybe a couple weeks, and then move on, but a less visually impressive but more fun gameplay experience will stick around for *years*. It's absolutely baffling to me. If they had less impressive graphics, but put more effort into the gameplay, we'd be having a completely different, probably more favorable conversation about this game.
@@senorsnout4417 Point 1: The people who care enough about video games as a medium to watch game analysis videos on RUclips are not representative of everyone who buys video games. Point 2: This sort of video game isn't just selling itself. No AAA video game can get funding that way-the return on investment is too low. Most games with uber-realistic graphics are also trying to sell the consoles they're played on. "Look at the sort of experience this hardware can provide!" the trailers scream. A lot of people go "Wow, that looks cool, I'll try that game when my next paycheck comes in"...and more go "Wow, that looks cool, I'll buy a [Playstation/XBox] when I get my bonus."
@@senorsnout4417 Many great and popular games throughout different generations had great graphics, but time and resources and BRAIN POWER to actually develop the rest of the game as well. Callisto has one of the most beautiful graphics ever made, but that's it. It has nothing more. Like a really nice car with no engine. I felt nothing playing it, just a sense of frustration in response to my stupidity for wasting 80 bucks in a mediocre interactive horror B movie.
@@senorsnout4417 Compare that to a game like the original The Last of Us which definitely is showing it's age after a decade but still has a great art design, fun gameplay, and great story that still make it replayable. Or the OG Dead Space from 2008 Or even the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time on the GameCube Fidelity ages but gameplay and design are eternal.
what's especially scuffed about the dull combat is the legit cool ideas it already has, following up attacks with other attacks like gun AND stomp, and the fact that you have to block to do actual counterattacks means your strongest moves demand a bit of sacrifice in either health or ammo, which is quid pro for a survival horror. "You have the technology, I can SEE IT. The solution isn't just within your reach, it's IN YOUR F U C K I N G HANDS"
8:18 Not only did Callisto Protocol reuse cut monster ideas from DS1, but the entire premise of the game is taken from the original Dead Space concept of it being a zombie outbreak on a prison planet called ‘rancid moon’. The original Dead Space team had one good idea and have been milking it for a decade.
To be fair that is a good idea it was just done really poorly here But yeah they have to go do something else... Its as if the original silenthill creator went to make "quiet town" isntead of the fresh slither head project
@@valletas I'd certainly be fine with them doing more lovecraftian space horror but Callisto Protocol just lacks so much flavor. Dead Space was a plate of blue ribbon BBQ and Callisto Protocol is boiled chicken...
I like the name rancid moon. You know how there's this weird saying from Wallace and Gromit where moon is supposedly made from cheese? That implies that moon was a giant ball of milk once. Now imagine expired celestial body of space milk.
@@HellecticMojo You know it's actually funny. In greek mythology the milky way galaxy was formed when Hera was breast feeding baby Heracles (goddess of motherhood and all that) and he bit her so when she flinched her breast milk sprayed all over and made the Milky Way... Hence why it's called the Milky Way... because the stars are breast milk...
The botched Japanese along with the extended Marv scream was pure gold lmao. Mandy going all in for an anime gag takes me back to that jab at K-on in the Shogo video. I wonder if that poisoned his mind because he had to intentionally go looking for that clip which iirc was half way through that seasons run time.
Callisto is another example of, "Hey don't get hyped for a game just cause they boast about it being from the creators of." Cause like back 4 blood was only a technicality cause it was like 3-5 people. There's always more then a handful of people that make a game as good as it was.
Years ago back when dead space 3 came out I’m sure if you told fans that EA would make a better dead space game in the form of a remake then the OG dead space devs who made a failure of a spiritual successor you probably would’ve been laughed at or punched in the face, but look at where we are now, ironic huh
...Okay, so I've seen Mandalore do some weird shit in his reviews. I saw animations. I saw him pay voice actors to deliver performances so fucking stellar for their voice overs I felt genuinely cheated when I realized Marathon didn't have a voiced Durandal. But I didn't expect him to read a japanese voice over for a jojo style comic for a fucking horror game. It feels like I've just stepped into an alternate timeline and I am ALL for it. You made my fucking day Mandalore, thank you.
That's all quite fine in comparison. What's up with that cult stuff at 20:56 - 21:07? It came out of nowhere and had nothing to do with the rest of the video.
@@roadent217 I don't remember if he did that in other videos, but it kind of remind me of Sseth's small sections about IRL stuff, like feeding a ceiling monster chicken or having motion sensors in his house.
@@roadent217 I think that's part foreshadowing for the cult elements in the plot (and also dead space), along with an explanation for where he got the index card from that he counted the scares on. It's a funny story that adds to what's otherwise a mundane segment. ...Or maybe I'm overthinking it and he just wanted an excuse to bring it up.
@@roadent217 You must be a little new here. He's done that a good handful of times, like in Blood Omen, Duskers, and when he's mentioned witches at his Barnes & Nobles.
28:32 "The health bar they installed can scramble your brain a bit" - this immediately caused me to check out of ALL of the remaining storytelling. It's so cheap to introduce a "it might all be imagination" rider to blanket EVERYTHING you're seeing for the rest of the game. I knew oh boy, there would be a weird thing I see that isn't there! Maybe it's up to me to decide what's real. Like they didn't even want to commit to choosing a plot so they tried to play multiple angles.
@@johndodo2062 But the marker is also a thing that is actively communicating to everyone and seriously affecting the mental state of everyone around it. It has real plot relevance, and something could be gleaned from whatever spooky visions it shows. Putting the marker in the same category as an oversized microchip that isn't as important to the plot is really weird, and makes me think you didn't pay any attention.
The story of Callisto Protocol feels like if someone read The Expanse, played Dead Space, and decided to write a fanfiction of the two. It's honestly shocking how uninspired the entire story is. Like, you'd think, in the years they were working on the title, someone would have came up with _something._
The Expanse is actually what I was thinking about the entire time as well. Alien virus, experiments on colonies, shady organizations, terrorists that turn out to be heroes. They could have made a decent fun Expanse cross-over videogame out of this. The PUBG connection on the other hand makes no sense to me, even after Mando has explained it.
Getting the voice of Darkseid, Sam Fisher and Ultra Magnus and only sticking him in the promotional material is a major L as the kids say. Not only that but Gwendoline Christie as well, how do you waste both Ultra Magnus and Brienne of Tarth???
6:09 "Generally gameplay that looks more realistic comes at the cost of how much control a player has over it." I've never heard such a succinct summary of the issue with "realistic" looking games before. Saving this quote.
Anyone who advocates for "realism" in gaming hates gaming and is pushing it exclusively for ideological reasons. "Realistic" games have always been a very specific niche specifically because they're not fun to most people, whether that's high level 4x strategy games, or milsim games.
@@nigeltheoutlaw it's kind of a natural byproduct of graphics getting more and more detailed. High graphical fidelity demands higher fidelity in everything else, which, in turn, has gameplay ramifications. When a game looks like Doom and there's no pushing button animation, who gives a shit? When every frame looks like a damn photo, on the other hand... Games that specifically aim for realism (aforementioned grand strategies and milsims) mostly look fifteen years behind, though.
@@nigeltheoutlaw Nah. Adding 'realism' can be good, and it can be bad, it just depends on what's done and how it's done. An example: supply routes in strategy games. You don't just have X amount of Y resource, you need to bring it from the whatever to a stockpile, and then distribute it from the stockpile to wherever it's used. This sort of system can be an excellent layer of strategy and resource management, or it can be an obnoxious mess.
I'm very glad that Callisto Protocol was made, it's fantastic to see a new game publisher taking risks on new projects, it's just incredibly ironic that this new high risk project was then given a game design that doesn't take any risks.
I'm not glad, because this dissuades the publishers from funding a new game. Hopefully they take the lessons and realize the reason this game didn't take off was BECAUSE it was an old game wearing a new game's skin. Hell - even remaking System Shock 2 with modern graphics would be better than this. People have been tired of these types of games since Dead Space 3 came out.
@@RazorsharpLTNo, all this says is that those financiers don’t know what they’re doing with the money they were managing. It’s common sense to know what you’re putting your money into.
It's actually common for high risks projects to be low risk in design. With so much money poured, suits try to make sure to have as many common denominators to get a larger audience and have an easier time turning a profit. It's why the big creative projects tend to be AA or indie. And why AAA or blockbuster films tend to be so generic and inoffensive.
Okay also since i have seen this spoiler: So they basically had the option to start with a space prison on a frozen hell planet while having plenty of alien fish beneath it. Underwater Dead Space would have been actually a dope setting.
Tbh I want it in real life. There is talk about missions to the frozen moons of gas giants, such as Enzelad, and it probably has an ocean beneath the crust of ice. Imagine what kind of life could live there. Some alien crabs which never, at no point in their evolution, saw anything even remotely similar to light... it's basically deep sea horror but IN SPACE!!!
@@quint3ssent1a The problem is that drilling down to see that alien life would endanger it and probably blow out any air pockets. Plus, there'd be no oxygenation in the water meaning no life. At least none that we know it as.
So i did some quick research and while europa seens to be the most suited to have an ocean its theorised that callisto has one as well even if the conditions to make one are less favorable then its european cousin
About learning to avoid the security robots. This stuff immediately reminded me of the similar thing done right - in Terminator: Resistance you have to hide from Terminators unless you have a huge amount of pipe bombs or a phased plasma rifle in 40 watt range. And hell, it worked. The scene in the hospital with patrolling Terminators was terrifyingly intense. And what was even more intense was the feeling of finally being able to destroy those terrifying machines after you got the guns capable of doing it.
Oh my God. The absurd spike walls and spinning meat grinders. They actually make narrative sense if it's PUBG. The meat grinder rooms were fun but so insanely immersion breaking. They actually work if they're part of an arena. It would still have been a bad story but it would have at least been internally consistent.
It might make sense if the prison was also an extension of the mining colony. Like they just decided to use the prisoners as a form of slave labor like we do in the US... You could then use the excuse that some of those things are mining equipment like for grinding rocks to extract valuable minerals or whatever. A lot of Callisto protocol feels like one of these deals where they decided on the shit they wanted first and then stitched the story together second to justify the elements.
Mandalore the more I hear about your personal life the more I'm convinced you're living in some kind of twilight zone episode. Witches, half your adventures involving Shammy, and now cults. Good lord man, when's the first season dropping?
17:55 Man, imagine how cool a game would be if enemies actually mutated to specifically counter your strategies as you played the game. They beef up places you tended to shoot, or become more resistant to your damage types. Something like a cross between the “intelligence” of the Alien in Isolation crossed with the Enemy Preparedness system from MGS:V would make for a great spin on the bog-standard “they’re mUtAtInG” script. But no, fuck you, you get more zombies.
MGS 5 has this with how the guards gear up to react to what you use most. Use the silenced tranq rifle, they start wearing helmets. Go in guns blazing, they get body armour. If you mostly attack under darkness, they get night vision goggles. Very cool system that i wish could be used in more games.
@@visassess8607 Yeah, I borrowed that gag from Mandalore himself, as he said it in some videos. I contemplated using "John Callisto Protocol" but it was a mouthful. Perhaps the infected could be "[name] Protocol"
Something about the robot design in this game and bo3 just tick the right boxes for me. They really show how scary a robot killing machine could be because they arent evil etc. they just follow programming. Even if that programming results in them tearing your limbs off bear handed. The way they are treated in the cutscenes is perfect in both as-well
I remember at one point this was inexplicably supposed to be set in the PUBG ‘universe’. That was probably an early warning sign that something was terribly amiss, and not just in the game narrative.
I wonder if high fidelity of assets forced them to pace the "story" so weirdly as well, skipping beats that would require more one-time-use environments. Watching a playthrough, I got a feeling that Dani was perhaps meant to be playable at one point. The intro on Europa just begged to be a tutorial level, instead of a cutscene, and that moment where you fall through half the moon, black out, and then Dani wakes you up immediately after, with your arms somehow still attached, also feels like a cut Dani segment.
I feel like im noticing a trend of original teams for projects trying to recreate their old sucess only to fail in some fundamental way. Back 4 Blood being another game that had this problem.
I feel it important to note that Back 4 Blood only had like 7 of the original L4D devs on the game, and none of them were in higher up positions. So essentially it was a marketing gimmick.
"Most of the moon is an abyssal ocean of alien terror, And I immediately wish that Jacob's suit was a diving suit and this was completely underwater in a different game entirely" I wonder if Mandalore has encountered the game Barotrauma because that would hit all the marks.
Everything I've seen about this game has "clearly rushed" written all over it. Obviously there were supposed to be attacks you could only block, obviously there was supposed to be more types of mutation so you wanted to switch to your gun to prevent the bad stuff, obviously they wanted more variety to the melee, obviously they didn't mean for some of the guns to be copy/paste jobs. They launched a game with about 4 enemies in it in 2023.
@@TheoreticalString I disagree, that level of polish for the graphics, environment, and sound is only accomplished by putting in the time. Time that should have gone into inventing better a better story and gameplay. Somebody high up had their priorities mixed up from the start. Otherwise I can't explain how the art and sound departments completely outperformed game design and writing staff.
@@TheoreticalString the story and design feel clearly rushed, the actual work put in everything else feels absolutely monumental. it makes me wonder if they decided to have a shorter preproduction to allow for a longer production
Now you made me wish for a game with a total badass hero, who tackles and beats up and rips apart scary monsters like Doom Slayer would but with combat akin to God Hand.
A bet a brutally honest documentary about the development would be fascinating. The fact that ancillary hype content with a Game of Thrones actor and Michael F'n Ironside was more interesting than the in-game story/cutscenes which costed millions to produce speaks to lackluster pre-production and planning.
oh man I was wondering how you'd work the electrified scream running gag into this one and then the anime scene absolutely delivered *and then some*. What a great review, every section had something interesting going for it and I think you did a great job balancing the serious with the funny so the video never felt like it was taking too long.
Oh boy Dark Messiah, would I love a sequel to that. Such a unique, fun game, even all the years later. We desperately need more FPP melee combat games.
the best description of the melee combat came from angryjoe's review: "The facility's collapsing OtherJoe we have to get out-what are you doing? *OtherJoe casually leaning left and right, dodging attacks* "this is so easy, I've been doing this for the past half-hour, wanna go?"
Imagine if Jacob was contaminated and start developing mutations and you the player have to choose the mutations, the more mutations the more twisted you become losing your humanity in the process and you have to choose "staying vanilla" or get geared on an Alien virus. That would explain the Warden and the dynamic with Ferris...
Uh yeah, there’s a game that already does what you’re describing: Prey (2017) Sure it’s an immersive sim vs horror 3PS but it does what you’re asking for and is awesome.
It wasn't a janky slide, it was a clever use of OG Deadspace's zero G mechanics. In the OG game you didn't float around, you looked at a spot and leapt to it, locking you into an animation until you landed. Then your mag boots kicked in when you hit the new surface and to stood up normally. Mandy just jumped to a different location on the same plane, so Isaac looked like he was belly sliding. It was a really clever use of the games old, limited mechanics.
Every time Dark Messiah is mentioned. I always wonder why no-one does another game where you can kick and/or push and/or force-push enemies into spikes or off ledges. There are few things more fun in gaming.
It baffles me to this day that it didn't spawn a darkmessiahlike genre and spawn a host of gameplay first rpg's with actually satisfying combat... but instead we get this.
@@livanbard I can't believe people forget about Bulletstorm, it's literally just "combo enemies into crazy shit until they die" simulator. It's awesome.
This is easily the best review on this game. Critical, but fair on it's mechanics and story, along going into better detail than most I've seen. I honestly enjoyed my time with Callisto, but completely understand it's flaws. It could've been so much more, but for what it is, I'm glad to try it for myself. ^^'
They literally had to use the same jump-scare ending that Dead Space 1 used. It was a slog to get through the 2nd half, part of me was slowly going insane, and the Marker wasn't even in the Callisto Protocol!
The game got an update you can now listen to audio logs outside of the menu but they decided to make the Action button to close the log so you’ll stop the log when opening a door or a chest
I don't understand how a development team could come together and say 'okay, we're making a zombie horror game. Let's implement a combat system from Punch-out'
@@MegaRazor619 In Gothic? The Sleeper. Maybe not in the most literal sense, considering the portal-thing, but the portal is beneath the mining colony (in the Orc territory), and the Sleeper is a big, angry monster emerging there.
@@gimok2k5 Yeah I know the sleeper is in the orc stronghold. Its just when I think of the prison I think of the old camp, but I guess the entire mining colony is considered the prison
"Completely underwater, a different game entirely, people morphing into bizarre deep-sea inspired creatures" I smell a Barotrauma video. I hope im right.
Mandalore has specifically stated before (in The Forest Review I think?) how he typically doesn't review games that are still in Early Access. However, Barotrauma is coming out of Early Access next week. It'd be nice to visit an alien ocean that actually lets you play around in it.
@ProjectXA3 it's the goofy cartoonish scream that's been sprinkled throughout mandalores work. It's a sound clip from the original home alone where Marvin (one of the wet bandits) is electrocuted by a homemade trap.
Narratively speaking, that would have been a bit confusing. There's a lot going on in the prison as is, and the bots don't seem capable of holding a grudge. Even if they had been assigned to track Jacob specifically, this still wouldn't make much sense.
40:33 well, I got some good news Mandy. When Skyrim got it's Anniversary Edition update/DLC, it made Necromancer builds actually viable. Before the build was next to non existent beyond summoning *an* skeleton or raising *an* corpse, if you ignore the Ritual Stone. Now, you got new drip, a heap of utility spells related to it, and you can summon a small army of varied undead, including an Undead golem that has a passive ability to let you summon even more undead.
It helps but mechanically it's still basically a flavor of the Daedra summon path. There's been other modded attempts, like the added necromancy content of Undeath or ordinator having perks that literally allow you to assemble skeletons from bones you find, but still.
@@gratuitouslurking8610 actually now that you mentioned it, I just now realized that by adding so much for Necromancy, Daedra summoning was left as it was in vanilla, even with the new Daedric Horse we can summon. So now it comes down to "want a small army of undead that you can buff whilst they buff you?" or "pick two."
You could always use the ritual stone with the aetherium crown exploit and beat god with a legion of undead and just resurrect them since it doesn’t turn the bodies to ash
Was working on this with parallel with the Dead Space video hence it being out faster.
UPDATE: With the Riot mode patch you can properly listen to audio logs while playing the game.
Your insistence on using Ghost Master OST has been edging me for like literal years. One day...
The madman promised the Callisto protocol and the madman delivered the Callisto protocol...
Praised be the madman.
No but seriously thank you for your effort for Dead Space + Callisto at once.
Good job reviewing both games back to back! I hope you play a rather bright game next time, these games are dark and spooky. But whatever it is, I'll be looking forward to your next review!
He speaks moon!?!?!?!?!? Nani?????
Oh I fully accepted that it was another meta reference. After Marathon I cant not see easter eggs in everything.
I’m not saying the Illuminati council chanting “winner winner chicken dinner” would have saved the story, but I would respect it for the audacity.
victor victor pullum prandium
It wouldn't be satisfying but it'd be intellectually honest
_"Winner"_
*_clap_*
_"Winner"_
*_clap_*
_"Chicken"_
*_clap_*
_"Dinner"_
*_clap_*
_"You are number 1 of this Playerunknown's Battlegrounds."_
@@willferrous8677 doesn't sound too shabby tbh
would cause the same damage as "It's All Dead Space!"
It still amazes me how many writers seem to think "the corporation is evil" still counts as a plot twist. IN CYBERPUNK STORIES NO LESS.
I mean it probably works for the character you play, but probably really not nessesary, for the player.
I think it'd actually be a better plot twist to have a large corporation *not* be evil, and actually be doing good things.
@@lordcommissarspartan Yeah, but that would clash with the realism...
@@marocat4749 or the player character could know it and be like, yeah, i know but i gotta make the ends meet and this shit pays the bills.
@@Magrior We can have our fantasies, lol. Not everything needs to be 100% realistic
I love how the "stealth" takedown makes so much goddamn noise
especially when enemies are blind and locate you by sound.
And you can chain them together when enemies are so close that the animation of one takedown causes the second enemy to stumble. It's insane.
@@electricbayonet2 Neat that the takedown animation doesn't just cause the enemy models to clip when they make contact though. I'm fishing for positives lol.
@@HeloisGevit Somebody thought of that and they made sure they don't clip but it never occurred to them that maybe the second enemy should also aggro.
WHAT WAS THAT?!!
DON'T KNOW, DON'T CARE!!
COO-AUGH!!
TAKE CARE MAN!!
re-watching this, i realized something else. the main character's name is Jacob. the most notable Biblical Jacob has a father... named Isaac.
That's probably the most interesting thing to come from this game.
I’m confused, what’s so interesting about that?
@@Naz-xk6hq Issac is the name of the main character of the Dead Space series. it's just another example of this game being locked in Dead Space's shadow
That's actually kinda neat, can't believe I never connected those dots lmao
binding of isaac
The designers were so dedicated to realism, they made sure everything eventually evolved into crabs
Like massive spiked walls in the sickbay. Seems like a clear indicator that they were running out of development time and copy/pasted spikes everywhere. So realism might not be the term I would use.
Honestly having a horror game on a space station above an eldritch ocean full of alien crabs and else would be awesome
THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT
@@hangebza6625 You just gave me a new idea. A new Slavjank game that is to Solaris what Stalker was to Roadside Picnic.
@@hangebza6625 Honestly if you want an undersea horror game with sim elements, just play Barotrauma. That game is way scarier than this.
I genuinely laughed out loud at the reveal that "The giant, prison-planet panopticon complete with kill-bots and forced implantation procedures is actually villainous!"
I had no idea it was supposed to be a reveal. I thought it was a given. That's like someone getting confused at Darth Vader's first entrance because they can't tell whether he's supposed to be the main character or the villain
that has a doctor who has to graft a stupid spine implant that seems to serve no goddamn purpose to the prison
@@diomedes7971 one microchiping like for a pet would probably be easier and two it kinda shows how shoddy everything is that a core feature has to be implied
I agree. At the very beginning, they know you're a pilot delivering supplies (as far as you are concerned as the player at that moment.) and they arrest you and drill shit into your skull. That right there makes it obvious the company is run by the villainous sort.
A more obfuscated twist would be if everything was a PUBG match and that it was for the entertainment of sick and demented trillionaires. Where the reward was a few survivors of each game being tossed in a cryopod to be one of the new colonists, while still against their will, because society in the Sol System is near collapse. A kind of "Only the strong are deserving" thing. Then they wouldn't have needed to drop the PUBG connection, simply expanded on it.
Still a silly connection though. I mean wtf?!
Darth vader is 100% the main character of Star Wars. The first 6 movies revolve entirely around him and his actions and his character arc. Sure in the ot he’s technically the villain, but he’s secretly the main character of the whole franchise even then.
@@maxryan9052 yes but he's also clearly the villian
I like that you showed The Order 1886 gameplay since both games clearly suffer from the problem of making the environment so detailed they forgot they were supposed to be making a videogame.
I loved the order…still own the copy. Then again I expected and wanted gameplay like that….I don’t always need to play the bestest games…and currently playing red dead 2 and Metroid prime…yet I want to play a cheesy game like Callisto right now.
@@TheL1arL1ar Needs more ellipses.
Or that the game needed a story you actually cared about in order to get sequels.
Yeah they have a lot of weird similarities like the repeat boss fights, cliffhanger ending, etc. It was on my mind a lot.
@@TheL1arL1ar it’s not cheesy, it’s just bad. Why would you want to play bad games so much?
Those badass looking security robots being taken down by 3 headshots each for a grand total of 30 seconds of gameplay is actually criminal. Incredible.
god it's so fucking upsetting that the first genuinely cool and horrifying looking corporate swat bot I've seen in a game is literally less durable than the trash enemies in the game.
@@chaoko99 From a logical standpoint you could explain it as, because the prison staff would have firearms but not the prisoners you could give it an easy to shoot weak point out of reach so that way it could be quickly destroyed if it malfunctioned and went on a rampage. Ensuring that guards and officers with guns would be able to counter them in an emergency but a convict with a bludgeon or hammer or something wouldn't be able to do anything to them...
But that still doesn't justify how absolutely underutilized they were and how obvious they made the hint. Like if you had some kind of schematic you had to look for, something where you had to read or analyze the situation then maybe it would work.
In Dead Space cutting off the limbs works for all the enemies you encounter but because the necromorphs are so varied it does encourage you to mix up how you fight them which requires some problem solving. But Callisto protocol seems to have failed at that heavily.
You know to cut the limbs off with the necromorphs but some like The Pregnant you need to be more selective otherwise they just release swarmers. You can cut off the head of a slasher but that just pisses them off. Against a Leaper, which limbs you target can depend on if you're in a ZeroG environment or not. They all have the same baseline method of fighting them but you need to make judgement calls based on which type your fighting and where and that requires problem solving.
@@CollinMcLean Or they could've tucked that info about their vulnerability as codex/lore piece you can find. Makes it more immersive while giving advantage to studious gamers.
Imagine if the game kept the ease of killing them but the *only* way to find out about it is to shoot them in the face, something you’re primed to believe is going to kill you.
That would make the average player sneak but you could also discover it. realising you can do something by basically throwing a death is kinda movie ass shit games rarely accomplishes. You out of frustration once spotted open fire and you realise shooting it in the head can take it down. The game doesn’t mention it, you’re just left with a genuine feeling of having figured something out yourself.
All that would need is that you remove the hint, no other change required.
@@setlerking i love that idea, that could really bring a spin to the common "Big enemy who is obviously meant as an enviromental hazard" trope
Any mention of “the next stage in human evolution” in any sci fi always makes me roll my eyes so hard.
Same, and why is it always death cults that do that?
Oh yeah, barely cognisant aggressive monsters with hardly any fine motor controls and covered in festering wounds and tumors.
That certainly is the best future for humanity !
It's just such an overplayed concept. Dead Space had it too, but you knew it was either because the Marker made them think so or because they were just outright insane.
Nekos, the next tage in human evolution. Ther hould be way more comedy around that.
I mean as long as the voiceactor and game have fun going ham with it.
I really want a story where the bad guys actually do elevate mankind to its “next stage” only to realize they evolved the wrong way.
When I got to the hidden labs and behind the cells, and read up on the logs on how they were actively infecting the prisoners to see what happens, I genuinely thought that the real twist would be something along the lines of how Jacob had actually been in the prison for months, maybe years, and the virus combined with the implant had just simply messed up with his perception. This would have made a lot more sense with the Warden too, as Jacob would be the actual subject alpha, yet still retain his humanity while being much stronger than anything else. But no, apparently telling the player that the prison wasn't good and Illuminati was behind it, was good enough. What a waste of time.
Okay that actually would've been a much more interesting twist tbh...
That...could work. Hell, it would even make Starkiller ranting about Jacob taking responsibility for his actions a lot more interesting: after presumably years of loyal service controlling the facility that has _successfully_ _achieved_ a replication of Subject Zero, the Warden/Illuminati stab him in the back in the name of their evolutionary Battle Royale. He was important, certainly, but not so important that he couldn't be casually discarded by the Illuminati just to eke out a little more information about Jacob and see if their Callisto Protocol idea had any merit now that Black Iron Prison has served its original purpose.
But instead, they went with the 'twist' that's about as shocking as "We were in _space_ the whole time?!"
NGL as soon as Elija turned to Jacob and said "You have to take responsibility for what you do" I was dead certain the big twist was going to be that this was all a hallucination or something, and that Jacob was having a Jacob's Ladder moment or some shit because he was space driving space drunk and got his partner space killed or something.
I would have taken "It was all a dream" over the nonsensical garbage the game actually went with.
There's precious little more frustrating than a story that delivers a staggeringly-obvious and stupid twist that you saw coming so far off that you didn't even think it was supposed to be a twist, and thinks it's being clever. Like Mr. X from Mega Man 6 turning out to be _...Dr. Wily! ...again!_
That story has been told many many times before.
It baffles me that a melee-focused combat system gives you 1 melee weapon and like 6 different guns.
And 3 of them are redundant lel
And like, 3 commands of which one is block hwich is mostly useless
And a final boss that requires force throwing and during the rest of the game barely give you anything to throw...
plus the 3rd person camera is not suitable for melee focus kind of gameplay but more of gun play...yet 70% of the time in this game is melee.
@@ZzVinniezZ I think they tried to incorporate The Last of Us melee combat to the game, but forgot that the guns in TLoU were powerful as hell so they were not as useless as in TCP. I would've prefered if they just copypasted the whole system and focused on having more enemy variety or fleshed out more the mutation system on them, instead of trying to combine in one the melee and the guns
The one thing that irritated SO much in this entire playthrough was how chill your guy was working with Danny. Like, the person responsible for your ship crashing in the first place and getting your best friend killed. All of that just is out the window and he really wants to be her BFF.
They assume everyone would instantly forgive her because she is a woman(means you can put your penis in her)
@IronThreads Absolutely spot-on.
Yup. They even had a plot device to solve this by just give a reason to have them link and relive each others memories effectively becoming the other person also. But instead the lead treats her like she was his friend before any of that happens.
Even in shitty horror games, the writers simping for villainous female characters overrides their ability to write a natural, organic plot line.
What simping does to an mf
God, the alien ocean is such a missed opportunity that it makes my heart ache.
Subnautica?
bro Subnautica exists
Subnautica and Barotrauma (in a weird way)
play iron lung and enjoy please and you are welcome
ehh subnautica is too much of a casual walk in tropical park
I've spoken to a dev who worked on the game, and they've told me that against all odds, all the crawling through vents and wall-shimmying added to the game wasn't due to them hiding load screens, but because that was their only way to meaningfully string level sections together. Apparently, the development was so troubled, they couldn't even properly finish the level design. I couldn't believe this at first, but it makes sense if you think about it.
Jesus Christ, this is why I hate when people try to push graphics to their limits, cus 9 times out of 10 they forget they're making a game, not a movie
That is so fucking astounding that I can't even begin to explain how humorously tragic that is.
It's so interesting to me that the Dead Space Remake was, for It's faults, a good refinement of the original game, while Calisto is struggling to even understand the basics of game design.
actually makes sense because hardware today should easily be able to handle such games.
@@tezwoacz They should have stuck with next gen :/ Dead Space remake was so successful because of it
Man, i wonder what happened to make fuckup this resonating. The only think that comes to mind was Dead Space remake coming out and that just pushing entire thing into beyond chaos? Still, that is fucked.
Wait, hold on. So, you're saying that they've reused same two headed guy as a miniboss 4 times, but a riot- and bulletproofed 2+m tall robots that disassembles biological enemies and armored protagonist with a single strike or punches right through steel walls that you meet only twice AREN'T boss fights?
Yeah, at the opening of the story the game established those robots as the most scary thing around and every time I encountered some stupid generic zombie dude I was like: "Huh...thank God robots are not really after me, that would be actually scary" 😄
@@ardour1587 They were so scary at first and then the game is like “now try shooting it in the face!” Once I found out how much money you get from them, I was straight up hunting them. Too bad there were only two in the whole game 😒
It would have been cool if they were boss fights. Each one dropped a different upgrade for your equipment. Optional but worth it, almost like nemesis in RE3
@@ZyroShadowPony I love how the fans keep coming up with great ideas that the devs should have already implemented. There’s so many great ideas to expand on that never happened… This game really had so much missed potential 😪
@@seanbrennan5192 I think the missed potential is that this isn't a Star Wars game.
Think about it. droids, melee focused combat, telekinetic powers. It easily could've been a "Jedi does a prison break" the game
The worst thing about the audio log comparison is even IN THE CLIP that Mandalore used. He shows an audio log from System Shock, and what is he doing? Nothing. Not moving. He is engaged with the audio so much, that he set aside the game to focus on it.
Make audio logs playable over gameplay, and then make them interesting. If they are interesting enough, the player will CHOOSE to stop gameplay to engage with them.
I truly appreciate that you were willing to manufacture a scenario in which you are reasonably able to use the Marv scream
"Most of the moon is an abyssal ocean of alien terror, and I immediataly wished that Jacob's suit was a diving suit, and this was completely underwater, and a different game entirely."
Mandalore, I think you may enjoy Barotrauma.
Well I think he play it with Seth once
There's a lot of weird overlap with the 2 games that I was thinking about the whole time
Honestly I think he was alluding to Subnautica. It was the only thing that came to mind when I thought about an immersive alien ocean world that slowly turns into a horror game the deeper you go.
I think he's shown clips from it before (in the Factorio Review, I think?), I'm surprised I didn't see a parallel brought up. Pretty sure one of those things sunk my crew's sub on more than one occasion.
So burnt out by the time I made it past habitat that I just turned it off. I've spent better money on bunk weed. Quite unfortunate given how good it could actually be with the right souls behind it. That said, my thoughts are, ",,!,, -_- ,,!,,"
It's really funny how a "stealth takedown" in this game is violently repeatedly stabbing the creature the death with both it and the player character grunting and screaming throughout.
And the monster right next to it is so barely aware of the noise that the player can chain takedown it as well.
I'm just imagining Issac's profanity stomp as a "stealth takedown" XD
The absurdity of stealth kills in the colony makes me wish the devs would add a special stealth kill where he just starts screaming at the top of his lungs occasionally
@@seifeir6951 "How to open velcro without being heard"
That's my problem with Sekiro... Stealh master ninja go "BLANG! SLASH! STAB"
Man, that is a soul-shattering level of graphical fidelity and soundscape depth for "The Dead Space We Have At Home." Also, imagine if BioShock just straight up said "Try shooting this Big Daddy in the face!" the first time you see one.
Like Fallout 4 throwing Power Armor and a Deathclaw at you in literally the first mission of the game. Way to trivialize your own game.
A clear sign of whether the audio tapes are good or not, is when the player can move while listening to them, but chooses not to.
That’s a perfect way to put it.
I always play games with subtitles on and in games like system shock and Bioshock, I end up either just sitting in a corner and reading along with the vocals or doing busy work while listening, like buying from a vending machine or managing my inventory.
That’s the sign of a good narrative, making you care about pressing play on a tape recorder.
That is fully accurate if they are really good I’ll just listen and then only continue after I’ve finished them
Calisto and Cliffy B’s meltdown (as well as a certain individual who was never even on cribs) really solidified in me that big names are not what makes games good. It’s the team in the trenches putting in the effort.
I’m out of the loop. What did cliffy do?
Damn straight.
@@denisonsmock5456 lawbreakers probably
"... _big names are not what makes games good. It’s the team in the trenches putting in the effort_ "
Always has been.
This is how its always been, and almost all the time when a game comes out shit, the real people at fault are the higher ups rather than the people actually working on the game.
For a survival horror game it's crazy that the biggest jumpscare in this video was an audio glitch
Survival horror shouldn't be relying on jump scares anyhow.
Audio glitch made me think my tv was dying bro, shit was scary
desinc moment
@@Draffut2003 Fr.
Thanks for letting me hear it again.
They could have saved this game by calling the protagonist “Cole Listo”
That's for the sequel where he goes into hiding and changes his name. For now, he's proto-Cole.
Cole Listo, Pro to Call!
@@publiusventidiusbassus1232that’s what’s on his business card
Ligma Protocol, starring Cole Listo
Ever heard of Jacob’s Ladder, with the titular-character’s father being Isaac?
I saw a meme once that "when they said it's a sucessor for Dead Space, we didn't expected to be a sucessor for Dead Space 3"
That right, Dead Space 3 and Callisto Protocol have a lot snow
Honestly, I feel like that take still gives Callisto Protocol too much credit, considering that despite all its flaws and clear inferiority to its predecesors, Dead Space 3 is still an alright, fun game
For being a successor of DS3 this game severely lacks main gameplay feature: a shotgun with underbarrel shotgun. That's the thing that made DS3 [good] palatable. Having your own "pimp my gun" constructor with possibility for hilarious bastard children of shotgun-shotgun incest turns this game into unexpected comedy show.
@@quint3ssent1a
I made a Plasma Cutter that shot so fast it looked like I was using a laser beam and the firing sounds overlapped
ruclips.net/video/O2P8TPMElYE/видео.html
Fun meme, but also an insult to DS3 which is a fun game. Callisto is boring, and that's about the worst thing a video game can be imo.
The "midtown" sign in the intro really tells everything about the game.
I don't even want to watch the rest of the video now. I feel like I already know everything there is to know.
What is it about that midtown sign? Is it a reference to something?
@@Al1987ac It's nu-zoomer speak. Safely assume anyone saying it has less braincells than letters in their tiktoq account name.
@@Al1987ac In contemporary slang, "mid" means not good
@@Al1987acthe game is mid as fuck
The Callisto Protocol was something we were all hyped up for because we loved Dead Space and it was being made by some of the old crew from Visceral Games, and then the Dead Space Remake was announced which made most of us feel hesitant and scared of how EA was going to butcher it. Funny how ironic it is now that the Dead Space Remake was a massive success that managed to breathe life into the franchise again and The Callisto Protocol was released... in the state that it was.
I think everyone who was big into Dead Space wanted something new in the same vein rather than a retread, but we are where we are now.
@@MandaloreGaming Mandy I wanted Dead Space tbh. What hurt so bad was knowing if I'd just waited like six weeks I could've spent my money on the real thing instead of this uninspiring knock off.
@@MandaloreGaming i just wanted to eat hot chip and stomp
@@MandaloreGamingi tought i wanted somthing new, but actually i just wanted more dead space. Dead space 4 baby, they finish that iron man game and they need to make dead space 4.
@@MandaloreGaming I'd point out, if the remake sells well it could very well lead to new games.
The robot enemies in this game really remind me of the clockwork soldiers featured in Dishonored 2; except in that game shooting a clockwork’s head wasn’t an “I win” button, it meant the clockwork soldier could now only detect you by sound so you could reposition to take it down or leave it alone and let it start infighting.
Makes me wish that’s how callisto’s robots worked, hell I could imagine it adding new tension if shooting the head didn’t destroy the robot but instead caused it to stop moving and start trying to detect you through sound alone
😂😂9😂😂😂9😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😅you 9gag 😅😅😅the 😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅your 😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅your 😅will 😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅the 😅😅
Yeah, the whole concept of robots having all their "brains" in the head is incredibly stupid. Doubly so when the head have barely any protection.
@@CRL_Oneespecially cuz I mean. Its a fuckin robot! Its not a machine that thinks, it's a bunch of tiny machines working together. You know, like how a real robotic welding arm can still technically work if it has some busted hydraulics, it just works wrong. Like they should have started glitching out when damaged, but not be able to correct for the mistakes, so they get clumsier or can't see you or something.
Literally anything other than Big Fist Guy in space that dies if you shoot it a few times.
Shocking that they copy+pasted the Kinesis from dead space but removed any of the intriguing limb/object shooting elements and just let you pick the enemies up and toss em into spike walls
They didn't even put a timer on it... even mighty foot of Dark Messiah had a cooldown which prevented you from spamming it. Here you can just toss shit non-stop.
And the spike walls make no in universe sense for being there 95% of the time. Its immersion breaking and makes for extremely shallow gameplay that loses its appeal after the first few splats.
I love how you can just plop an enemy down out of bounds, and the enemy immediately ragdolls.
It was amazing in HL2. If only more games did that and more so did that properly.
@@quint3ssent1a no you can’t
At least play the game or see gameplay before speaking. You start off being able to use it like once every minute until you upgrade it
It’s crazy how System Shock and Bioshock made audio logs interesting and worthwhile to find. Then in this game you can’t play the game while listening to them
2k most likely employs narrative designers (people with writing/journalist education who know how to make a compelling story/dialogue), majority of gaming studios even large ones dont do this, so all the dialogue is in hands of people who dont really know how to make it interesting.
That's sadly not as rare as it should be.
You could, actually, but somehow they "patched" it…
Doom 3 has that as well. It’s dope.
The dead space remake has a moment where you have to do a squeeze through with a necromorph crawling through a vent and a wall guardian waiting at the end to spook you. Only for you to turn back at the crevice and see a wall pustule that you pop and it turns into a "normal" hallway. That game managed to poke fun and subvert the squeeze through trick an had fun with it.
When I played the remake I got there and was like “oh no not this crap” but when I saw it turn into a normal entrance I was like “oh that’s neat.”
The absolute dedication to playing through a NG+ and then an NG++ so you could get all the upgrades for weapons when you already decided you didn't like the game is something else. Maybe that's the real space horror.
A feeling of pride and accomplishment. With shame.
The real survival horror were the upgrades we had to pay for along the way
New game plus was a blast to play. Just using ar, and explosives to anilate your way through
@@forrestdalpiaz284 NG+ also makes you see how little there is between boss fights.
It's a good thing the devs told the players to aim at the head of the robot, because gamers would never have thought of that...
I'm really glad you keep mentioning the mobile version of Dead Space. I worked on it for a little while - doing gameplay testing - and I LOVED it. Great story for a mobile game, and solid gameplay for its time.
It was absolutely amazing
It was an incredible game, surprisingly.
That was my introduction to Dead Space. I was too young to play the main games but my parents never knew what I was doing on my ipod touch lol.
I love the opening shot where Jacob walks up to the sign that says "Mid Town." Well Played Mandalore
I dont get it :(
@@DiesNahts6969 Lately people have taken to referring to mediocre/bad things as "Mid."
@@ironeleven oh yeah I've heard that I thought the whole word Midtown was a reference to one of his videos or a different game :D
@@tallesttree4863 Interesting, it only really caught on in my friend groups in the past couple months.
Anyone else think it's funny that the doctor who doesn't seemed bothered about brutally implanting a healthbar in us, and who's name is literally pronounced mauler, is actually the only member of the staff who tries to help you?
longman good
@@dimas3829 Hey, I understood that reference
Dr. life ender is a complex person who ultimately wants to do the right thing
Kinda similar but not at all is Dr. Chakwas from Mass Effect, whose name is an anagram for "hacksaw."
@@BeefMeisterSupreme You're reading too much into this, she just reached a breaking point and went "fuck it."
"I can't believe they're not zombies" is the best possible way you couldve described the enemies in this game. That got me so hard hahaha
It's of the same brand as 'I can't believe it's not butter'.
@@kinagrill excellent detective word
@@maxh4651 word~
@@kinagrill you’re a good detective you can deduce that i meant “work”
@@kinagrill maybe the bullies were in the right when it came to what they did to you
Mandy speaking japanese Is the equivalent of seeing jerma outside: both surreal and Fever dream inducing
Run
@@doodguytheblank2403 you really think that would make a difference?
@@doodguytheblank2403 jerma radiates so much chaotic Energy, you would feel weak in his vicinity
@@doodguytheblank2403 sorry but you're forgetting the time he admitted he has nextbot AI just for this purpose
ruclips.net/video/M3Snf8E2y6g/видео.html
Edit: changed it to the actual twitch clip
@@tts_aboleth7823 what's a jerma?
Hearing mandalore do JoJo impressions in the middle of a horror review is why I love this channel
A JoJo reference in MY Mandalore video? It's more likely than you think.
Personally, I come for the Marvin electrocution audio bit.
@@axelord4ever And the ocassional Gachimuchi soundbytes
OHHH SHOKUSHU!
Its was great 😁
Incoming Essay
3 major plotpoints that would've made the story INFINITELY better, and were all hinted at by the game's own design:
1: The HUD-link. Dani was slowly decaying her mindspace by linking with dead bodies, dying corpses, other people, and countless other things. They could have made the ending twist be that Jacob isn't who he thinks he is, and that all those HUD-links he's been filching throughout the game are people he's come across. Big ending twist, he's just some random prisoner who woke up with Jacob's memories, because the REAL Jacob died on the operating table, and his HUD-link was reused on a different inmate. Would explain why Elias seems so familiar with us, and why at some points he's so confident we'll get along. It'd also explain why Dani recognizes us, because she HUD-link'd with us after the crash, and she sees us as Jacob, not *Random Inmate here*. Gives reason for the Warden being obsessed with us, because we've unlocked an alternative 'immortality' to compete with his genetic experiment immortality. Mind-swapping vs Genemodding. Big reveal, the mind-link at the end is us sending a piece of ourself with Dani, and Dani is the best of both worlds.
2: Eldritch Space Soup. Rather than the genetic horror monster being 1 dude who's kinda immortal, make it a gene-pattern. Whoever gets infected gets taken over by 'Patient Zero'. The original patient zero is a murderous psychopath with an unbearable will to live through anything, and a last-man-standing complex. Explains the sudden outbursts of all inmates, ultraviolence, and why the Prison Captain goes from 'semi-reasonable cut-dry guard' to 'violence for violence sake'. He's fighting the gene-imprint of patient zero, and only the doctor has realized. The HUD-link effect abates it because of mental decay caused by memory lapsing, which is why Dani can hold out for so long. However, the original inmate is just a gene-memory-pattern, and the real eldritch horror in the space soup is pushing up, because ex-galaxy conquering genophage. Any number of plotlines can spawn from the basic concept.
3: Secret Illuminati aren't actually the bad guys. They released the genophage, not because they're trying to create super-mutant space faring humans, but because there's something fucked out in the darkness, and they NEED something that can survive ANYTHING, so humanity doesn't explode on contact. Initial tests were showing good signs with patient zero, they tried a mass dispersal of a weaker strain, it super-murdered the colony, and they tried containment. Too bad, ipso facto, the genophage is already on a mass-outbreak on the colony testbed, and now it's causing infinite problems for them. They try containing it, but after a certain point there's signs that this might be what they need, so they let it run its course. Either everything wipes itself out, they try again in 100 years, and hope for the best, or their 'perfect subject' arises, and they now have what they need to survive whatever has them so freaked out.
These are just 3 ideas built off what the game hints as being its direction, but all got washed out by a bland one-note story of 'look, it's Not Dead Space, but secretly Actually Is'.
The game also seems to suffer from 'rushed story' effect. A lot of the better story elements just needed time to play out, to stew the player and immerse them. Instead, we get bite-sized chunks of what it wants to show us. 3 games worth of content, in a single game. Not enough enemy variety, because we kind of just rush from point A to point B, all in the span of what...like 18 hours? The game treats this as being months of survival, but all in the span of a single day. Characters aren't given enough time to play out their plot threads, with the only exception being Elias, and even his is cut short by a sudden death for plot sake.
Also, it feels like the characters are given priority because they NEED it. Elias is killed off so Dani takes center stage, and they aren't competing for screen time. The Warden is barely shown so he can be Mysterious BBEG, but is also not given enough presence to make us care about why he's important outside of 'vague villain'. It's also never explained why he takes such an interest in Jacob from the second he survives the crash.
In fact, it's never explained why Jacob is anything more than an Everyman. Elias trusts him because of minor agreements of mutual survival, almost implicitly. Dani hates him for reasons she never explains until the secret compartment section, and even then it's blaming the messenger for not knowing. The Warden obsesses over him LONG before the outbreak, and even then, he obsesses over him for reasons never explained. Farris gets a grudge for him off of....no real reason?
Farris also feels super weak as a character. He goes from 'level-headed, fair guard who's just doing his job', to 'insufferable asshole for the sake of being a villain'. He falls down an infinite pit, and it's never explained how he survives. He develops an obsessive hate-boner for Jacob, despite the 'death' he suffered being of his own cause. He pops up as a jumpscare out of nowhere, with no buildup. Maybe if Jacob pushed him out the window himself, it'd be an analogy of reconciling with Elias of 'killed in self-defense', and Dani with 'Doing what he needs to so he can survive', by instead being a random guard that has Farris' face for Jacob, and a different one for Elias and Dani. A kind of 'the worms are in your head already' moment reveal later on, that Subject Alpha is just a random person, but the worms are causing them to see their greatest guilt manifested.
I've kinda lost my train of thought. So to close: Game has a lot of potential, it just feels rushed, over-hyped, under-playtested, and pushed out for the sake of beating Dead Space Remake to the punch for the hopes of getting brownie points, rather than being its own idea that took minor inspiration from dead space and went in a different direction.
All nice plotpoints, thanks for sharing
Like your 1 and 3 put together. They figured out, due to things found in space and/or Earth, that the universe is too dangerous for Humanity, and sooner or later, the red eyes at the tree line will look in our direction. They try to make something transhuman, maybe derived from whatever they found, and their experiments aren't quite working. It seems that certain people are more likely to become what they need, but the conditions are elusive, due to something some Illuminatis call "will", others call "soul" or even Dawkins-style "memeplexes". The mind-links are a way to try to define and spread this subjective requirement. Jacob could be the result of many "Battle Royales", and the culmination of several lineages of mind-linked people, creating a mind/personality with a will to survive strong enough to tame the disease into a set of benign mutations. Becoming "Subject One", the Illuminati bow to him, explain the situation, and appoint him their leader so he can create enough "Subjects" that Humanity stands a chance.
...Now that I typed all of it, it sorta sounds like Protector by Larry Niven, with a bit of Kojima mind-fuckery.
It seems these days that these developers are rushing stories and not thinking things through. You made great points and honestly everything you wrote could have been a trilogy and not this rushed game
These are really REALLY interesting plot points. I'd love someone try to go with these directions in some fan fiction, at least, because these are fantastic ideas to explore!
Your ideas are so much better than the actual story
This game really leaves a dead space in your memory.
Really hit you hard right in the Protocol
The Awkward moment you want to upstage a unused IP, you flop on arrival and the Game you wanted to upstage is steping on your body on their way to get celebrated by the Party.
Boo!!!
ww,@@half.blight went 22z,
@@plinfan6541 Lmao, that mental image was as funny as it was accurate...
"The kind of marketing speak you'd expect to see on a Star Citizen delay post"
I think my favorite thing about Mandalore is how his jokes always catch me off guard.
It's always Star Citizen, EYE divine cybermancy, or Detective Halligan.
@@CollinMcLean Don't forget horny killer haze!
Man knows how to flashbang us with his comedic stylings. On a recent episode of PST (Certified Barren), he explained how in Lord of the Rings the world is round for men but flat for elves, much to the surprise of the other lads on the call. Then the conversation gets into sandbags, World War 1, "guns that shoot fast", etc, and then Mandy casually slips in "but they couldn't shoot as far because the world is flat for Germans", and everyone falls into hysterics like a pack of coked-up hyenas.
"Holy shit, Germans are elves?!" _-SirMeowMusic, still reeling from the flashbang_
@@CollinMcLean You forgot about "Limbo of the lost"
@@zogwort1522 I think that's why I love his videos so much. Because I always have the same dry delivery with my own humor.
"Wait, you had Michael Ironside?" What a perfect summation of everything wrong with this game.
Whats worse is you could very clearly hear Michael channel the darkseid personality when reading the lines.
Truly a robbery in broad daylight
Apparently Sam Witler's character is only in the game for 5 minutes roughly.
Why did they bother getting a pretty big voice actor for 5 minutes of screentime?
@@valen9835 That pissed me off so much. You get one of the best shouty angry actors in the industry, and you barely let him go The Force Unleashed 2 levels or rage. That's like having Adam Driver in your movie and not having him rage! Why would you have him if not to do what he does best?!
And they got Gwendolin Christie for the audio book. Enough money to get Brienne of Tarth for a tie in audio book but not enough for mo cap and voice acting.
Imagine if you played Michael Ironside instead, or he was a sort of 'sanity supporting AI' that talked to your character and helped keep your character sane, warn about potential infection of whatever-is-going-on-with-the-totallynotzombies, etc. Also helps with avoiding the whole 'how is my character managing to stay calm and able to move forward with all the horrid shit he's seen and sofar survived through - well he got a nice AI with a 'gruff veteran soldier' attitude, etc.
"This game looks expensive" feels like a very backhanded compliment on a game's graphics 😂 One that I think I would apply to a lot of games.
The last time I thought smth like that was Ryse: Son of QTE. What a dissapointment that was...
or Hell, how about Rage?
@@darthgamer9861 In Rage you could still fool around, do your own thing you know. Sure, it was a tech demo and I would never play it again, but Ryse? Ough...
@@vespenegas261 Eh, I dunno. I liked Ryse. It's a pretty fun hack and slash game.
The QTE's though, yeah not too big a fan of it. Especially when I'm just trying to execute enemies. Especially since I do it so often.
@@OrionDawn15 It's like watching Gladiator and your VHS keeps jamming every 15 seconds
The ship being called “Charon” is probably a reference to how this game is dead in the water.
I always find it weird when a game names their ship something like "Pequod". It's like they're just asking for trouble.
No, its Dead in Space
@ponroko630 no this is patrick
@@Khashmonet "Alright gents, time to christen our first ever extra-solar vessel! It will carry thousands of innocent colonists far from our home to distant stars to begin new lives!"
"Let's call it the Icarus!"
"No, no, call it the Albatross!"
"Booooring! Name it Tartarus!"
"Oh, oh, what if we just call it 'Mankind's Hubris'?"
@@Shenaldrac "Man's Hubris" sounds like something that would be the name of a ship in the Halo. Like the name of a super experimental ship that was rushed out as fast as possible with some new cutting edge weapon designed to win an ongoing war? I could totally see the UNSC naming their ship. "Man's Hubris" in a self-aware sort of way. Like this is a series with, off the top of my head, "Do You Feel Lucky?", "Fair Weather", "Ready or Not", Welcome to the Snipehunt", "Two for Flinching", "Point of No Return", "Wink of an Eye", "Walk of Shame", "Witch Bucket", as well as having more traditional "cool" names, like "Edge of Umbra" , "Eternity", "Infinity" or "Spirit of Fire" or being named after locations on Earth, people, or mythical figures.
I wonder if it is a cultural thing that is never really explained, like if you talk to real world sailors they will have a name for their ship which is selected because of some form of superstition. I wonder if the UNSC has certain superstitions that sometimes govern these odd names. It could also just be a way to show that sometimes they're out of ideas for names and they just give it a dumb name to take the piss.
Dead Space: "You're approaching me?"
Callisto: "I can't 'take inspiration' from you without getting closer."
Dead Space: "Hoho! Then get as close as you like!"
Next scene is Callisto Protocol flying into a water tower with a hole in its abdomen
The moment he said "it's Callistin' time!" I got goosebumps
@@auroraace6156
“C-CALLISTO!!!!”
Growing up, Callisto Protocol had no friends…
@@Nigua and then he callistoed all over them, truly one of the moments in gaming history
Me looking at dead space… hey don’t try to be the thing!!! And resident evil those are wayyyy better than you’ll ever be!
14:01 Quick correction: There is a perfect dodge, and it happens when your screen goes slow-mo. From there, you can launch a counter-attack which breaks enemy combos. To get it, you have to tap, not hold, left or right, as soon as the enemy launches an attack, which should cause it to trigger most of the time. You managed to do it on accident here: 11:01.
The game never explains this mechanic to you, unfortunately.
Also, unrelated, but I find it amusing how Jacob can not only dodge punches from enemies all day long, but even attacks from non-humanoid enemies. In the game, you can dodge lunges and pounces from that one enemy on all fours, implying he could go toe to toe with a bear or a lion without breaking a sweat. Jacob has almost inhuman combat prowess in this game.
It is. You are told about it. But it’s not explained how. I played this game 3 times and NEVER got the perfect
Making it completely useless to do. What's the point waiting to perfect dodge when just doing it normally is the same for practically the same time.
@@franzosisch5965 would of been better if you got a damage increase. For when the enemies swarmed you. Now they just go one by one
@@dimsumboy22 Or even just making it instantly break a limb. Anything would have been better than the nothing they gave us.
@@franzosisch5965 the original fighting was nice, i liked the swarming. I get it though. but yeah it was basically a cake walk.
I'll still buy their next game though, I need to support this crew and not the souless Dead Space remake
I don't know if this annoyed anyone else, but one thing that got to me was apart from the main cast, the almost complete lack of any survivors in the prison.
When shit starts to hit the fan you see an infinite loop of prisoners running around in the background of the cell block. You also see a bunch of prisoners being murdered by one of the robots in the opening of the game. You can hear the sound of an injured guard calling for help and catch a glimpse of him before he's killed. You hear a guy who's trapped in a room who you try to save but is ultimately killed offscreen.
I just wish there were more encounters with survivors, but there doesn't appear to be any survivors. I feel like they missed something there, the idea of the prison falling into chaos, instead you get a cinematic opening and then pretty much post apocalyptic setting almost instantly
Late reply but they could play the Dead Rising card here and have the surviving inmates who got their hands on guards' equipment and/or jury-rigged their own gear serve as bosses. Maybe they'd split the prison up into their own little zombie-infested fiefdoms and you'd have to take down each Prison Wing King to proceed deeper?
Finally someone mentioned the glitching raytraced shadows. I felt like a madman all this time, it was like nobody had this problem, only me. Thank you for confirming I'm still sane, Mandalore, love your stuff.
It always amazes me, how often the Electrocuted sound effect have a solid spot in these videos.
I keep noticing it - why is it a thing?
@@dryued6874 running gag in Mandalore videos and even a few sseth videos. someone that's more of a hardcore Mandy fan than I could probably tell you the real origin behind it, but it's present in almost every video he can realistically fit it in.
@@kylejack1169 It's from Home Alone 2 I believe, the part where Marv gets electrocuted.
@@no-barknoonan1335 Yep, and it's been a running gag since one of his first reviews, or maybe his very first.
Despite the fact that I don't think there were any sinister motivations involved in developing this, this game represents everything I don't want to see games become.
This game is the "games are better the more realistic it is" crowd made manifest.
Hyper-Definitive, complete slough, dull, and brown.
Yeah. If all you care about is making something that looks good then go make a painting or sculpture. If you're gonna make a video game, make sure the *game* part is fun and well developed. Don't expect players to be invested in your story and plot just because you, the developer are. You need to actually earn their investment.
Realism gamers are a cancer
Looks beautiful but lacks any semblance of soul
I mean, it's just culmination of modern AAA game trends.
And games aren't becoming something like that, there is plenty of good games. However you kinda have to choose - game with a good gameplay or game with good graphics as those two are mutually exclusive.
But still you don't need to worry that games as a whole will be that way, it's just that main focus group are people who play just to fully chill so gameplay isn't that relevant.
I"m glad that Mandy started by talking about the hyperrealistic graphics, because so many of the game's other issues make sense in that context.
It takes a _lot_ of work to make models, textures, animations, etc that detailed, _especially_ if you're specifically going for a realistic look. (The uncanny valley is your enemy, and it's going to be a constant struggle.) Increasing visual fidelity means increasing the workload of _everyone_ working on the game's visuals.
There isn't much enemy variety? There probably weren't enough artist-hours to make all the assets needed to render and animate a wider variety of enemies. Limited weapon variety? Same deal-weapons are simpler, but they interact more with the player character (the least predictable part of every game). QTEs out the wazoo? Cutting down on player control of the camera and possible inputs makes animating that moment to the necessary level of fidelity simpler. The story is full of payoffs even though the setup was cut? Making cutscenes look this real is expensive, replacing all of that work would take a lot of development resources (read: artist-hours and the associated salaries).
Not every problem fits into this mold, but a lot do. And more feel like an attempt to make the game marketable to a wider audience, beyond what a mere _Dead Space_ successor could attract, or to encourage players to keep playing long enough for DLC to drop-revenue-enhancing ploys that become more fiscally mandatory as a game's budget balloons.
If you pour a hundred million dollars into developing the game and fifty million into marketing, and only sell 2.6 million copies, the men with money are going to be _very_ disappointed that they only got a 4% return on investment for years of work. And the money men are the ultimate arbiters of what your game can do, and who gets to lead development.
What gets me about this is that we've seen time and time again; gameplay trumps visuals. The most popular games at any given time tend to be the ones that are the most fun or interesting to play. Yet companies and devs keep pushing for bleeding edge graphics and visual tech, despite the fact that people will oooh and aaah over it for maybe a couple weeks, and then move on, but a less visually impressive but more fun gameplay experience will stick around for *years*.
It's absolutely baffling to me. If they had less impressive graphics, but put more effort into the gameplay, we'd be having a completely different, probably more favorable conversation about this game.
@@senorsnout4417 Point 1: The people who care enough about video games as a medium to watch game analysis videos on RUclips are not representative of everyone who buys video games.
Point 2: This sort of video game isn't just selling itself. No AAA video game can get funding that way-the return on investment is too low. Most games with uber-realistic graphics are also trying to sell the consoles they're played on. "Look at the sort of experience this hardware can provide!" the trailers scream. A lot of people go "Wow, that looks cool, I'll try that game when my next paycheck comes in"...and more go "Wow, that looks cool, I'll buy a [Playstation/XBox] when I get my bonus."
@@senorsnout4417 Many great and popular games throughout different generations had great graphics, but time and resources and BRAIN POWER to actually develop the rest of the game as well. Callisto has one of the most beautiful graphics ever made, but that's it. It has nothing more. Like a really nice car with no engine. I felt nothing playing it, just a sense of frustration in response to my stupidity for wasting 80 bucks in a mediocre interactive horror B movie.
@@senorsnout4417 Compare that to a game like the original The Last of Us which definitely is showing it's age after a decade but still has a great art design, fun gameplay, and great story that still make it replayable.
Or the OG Dead Space from 2008
Or even the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time on the GameCube
Fidelity ages but gameplay and design are eternal.
@@CollinMcLeanhow dare you forget about bioshock.
what's especially scuffed about the dull combat is the legit cool ideas it already has, following up attacks with other attacks like gun AND stomp, and the fact that you have to block to do actual counterattacks means your strongest moves demand a bit of sacrifice in either health or ammo, which is quid pro for a survival horror.
"You have the technology, I can SEE IT. The solution isn't just within your reach, it's IN YOUR F U C K I N G HANDS"
Adding like a perfect parry to negate damage on block would make it so much better
"Stop holding the knife by the sharp end you idiots!"
What’s that quote from, it’s so familiar!
@@nathanielhaven3453 a Shammy video, paladins maybe?
@@adam-ft2ny There is a perfect parry is the thing. It does almost nothing
8:18 Not only did Callisto Protocol reuse cut monster ideas from DS1, but the entire premise of the game is taken from the original Dead Space concept of it being a zombie outbreak on a prison planet called ‘rancid moon’. The original Dead Space team had one good idea and have been milking it for a decade.
Don't blame them. Most people alive amount for zero good ideas. If I had one as good as their I would milk 20 years minimum.
To be fair that is a good idea it was just done really poorly here
But yeah they have to go do something else... Its as if the original silenthill creator went to make "quiet town" isntead of the fresh slither head project
@@valletas I'd certainly be fine with them doing more lovecraftian space horror but Callisto Protocol just lacks so much flavor. Dead Space was a plate of blue ribbon BBQ and Callisto Protocol is boiled chicken...
I like the name rancid moon.
You know how there's this weird saying from Wallace and Gromit where moon is supposedly made from cheese? That implies that moon was a giant ball of milk once.
Now imagine expired celestial body of space milk.
@@HellecticMojo You know it's actually funny. In greek mythology the milky way galaxy was formed when Hera was breast feeding baby Heracles (goddess of motherhood and all that) and he bit her so when she flinched her breast milk sprayed all over and made the Milky Way...
Hence why it's called the Milky Way... because the stars are breast milk...
The botched Japanese along with the extended Marv scream was pure gold lmao. Mandy going all in for an anime gag takes me back to that jab at K-on in the Shogo video. I wonder if that poisoned his mind because he had to intentionally go looking for that clip which iirc was half way through that seasons run time.
Callisto is another example of, "Hey don't get hyped for a game just cause they boast about it being from the creators of." Cause like back 4 blood was only a technicality cause it was like 3-5 people. There's always more then a handful of people that make a game as good as it was.
petty marketing at its finest
Years ago back when dead space 3 came out I’m sure if you told fans that EA would make a better dead space game in the form of a remake then the OG dead space devs who made a failure of a spiritual successor you probably would’ve been laughed at or punched in the face, but look at where we are now, ironic huh
@@2bdaqueen268 EA's interference played a big part in why DS 3 was as bad as it was, and EA had nothing to do with how good the DS 1 remake was.
"From the creators of..." is an instant red flag.
Kojima & a number of indie darlings would disagree
...Okay, so I've seen Mandalore do some weird shit in his reviews. I saw animations. I saw him pay voice actors to deliver performances so fucking stellar for their voice overs I felt genuinely cheated when I realized Marathon didn't have a voiced Durandal. But I didn't expect him to read a japanese voice over for a jojo style comic for a fucking horror game. It feels like I've just stepped into an alternate timeline and I am ALL for it. You made my fucking day Mandalore, thank you.
That's all quite fine in comparison.
What's up with that cult stuff at 20:56 - 21:07? It came out of nowhere and had nothing to do with the rest of the video.
@@roadent217 I don't remember if he did that in other videos, but it kind of remind me of Sseth's small sections about IRL stuff, like feeding a ceiling monster chicken or having motion sensors in his house.
@@playwars3037 Yeah, I guess. I can see why their communities had the whole "Sseth is Mandalore on meds / Mandalore is Sseth off his meds" joke.
@@roadent217 I think that's part foreshadowing for the cult elements in the plot (and also dead space), along with an explanation for where he got the index card from that he counted the scares on. It's a funny story that adds to what's otherwise a mundane segment.
...Or maybe I'm overthinking it and he just wanted an excuse to bring it up.
@@roadent217 You must be a little new here. He's done that a good handful of times, like in Blood Omen, Duskers, and when he's mentioned witches at his Barnes & Nobles.
28:32 "The health bar they installed can scramble your brain a bit" - this immediately caused me to check out of ALL of the remaining storytelling. It's so cheap to introduce a "it might all be imagination" rider to blanket EVERYTHING you're seeing for the rest of the game. I knew oh boy, there would be a weird thing I see that isn't there! Maybe it's up to me to decide what's real. Like they didn't even want to commit to choosing a plot so they tried to play multiple angles.
Dead space quote literally does the exact same thing. The marker serves that same purpose chief
@@johndodo2062 But the marker is also a thing that is actively communicating to everyone and seriously affecting the mental state of everyone around it. It has real plot relevance, and something could be gleaned from whatever spooky visions it shows. Putting the marker in the same category as an oversized microchip that isn't as important to the plot is really weird, and makes me think you didn't pay any attention.
You’ll never guess what happens in the DLC.
The story of Callisto Protocol feels like if someone read The Expanse, played Dead Space, and decided to write a fanfiction of the two.
It's honestly shocking how uninspired the entire story is. Like, you'd think, in the years they were working on the title, someone would have came up with _something._
The Expanse is actually what I was thinking about the entire time as well. Alien virus, experiments on colonies, shady organizations, terrorists that turn out to be heroes. They could have made a decent fun Expanse cross-over videogame out of this.
The PUBG connection on the other hand makes no sense to me, even after Mando has explained it.
All you had to say to convince me Callisto was the inferior game was "They had Michael Ironside, but didn't use him."
I know right? Sam Fischer and Ultra freaking Magnus and they did nothing with that.
Getting the voice of Darkseid, Sam Fisher and Ultra Magnus and only sticking him in the promotional material is a major L as the kids say. Not only that but Gwendoline Christie as well, how do you waste both Ultra Magnus and Brienne of Tarth???
6:09 "Generally gameplay that looks more realistic comes at the cost of how much control a player has over it."
I've never heard such a succinct summary of the issue with "realistic" looking games before. Saving this quote.
This could also be said for photo realistic graphics too. Hopefully once we reach the peak REALIZUM people will stop. :/
Anyone who advocates for "realism" in gaming hates gaming and is pushing it exclusively for ideological reasons. "Realistic" games have always been a very specific niche specifically because they're not fun to most people, whether that's high level 4x strategy games, or milsim games.
@@nigeltheoutlaw it's kind of a natural byproduct of graphics getting more and more detailed. High graphical fidelity demands higher fidelity in everything else, which, in turn, has gameplay ramifications.
When a game looks like Doom and there's no pushing button animation, who gives a shit? When every frame looks like a damn photo, on the other hand...
Games that specifically aim for realism (aforementioned grand strategies and milsims) mostly look fifteen years behind, though.
@@nigeltheoutlaw you sure like the word ideological without knowing what it means
@@nigeltheoutlaw Nah. Adding 'realism' can be good, and it can be bad, it just depends on what's done and how it's done.
An example: supply routes in strategy games. You don't just have X amount of Y resource, you need to bring it from the whatever to a stockpile, and then distribute it from the stockpile to wherever it's used. This sort of system can be an excellent layer of strategy and resource management, or it can be an obnoxious mess.
I'm very glad that Callisto Protocol was made, it's fantastic to see a new game publisher taking risks on new projects, it's just incredibly ironic that this new high risk project was then given a game design that doesn't take any risks.
I'm not glad, because this dissuades the publishers from funding a new game.
Hopefully they take the lessons and realize the reason this game didn't take off was BECAUSE it was an old game wearing a new game's skin.
Hell - even remaking System Shock 2 with modern graphics would be better than this. People have been tired of these types of games since Dead Space 3 came out.
@@RazorsharpLTNo, all this says is that those financiers don’t know what they’re doing with the money they were managing. It’s common sense to know what you’re putting your money into.
It's actually common for high risks projects to be low risk in design. With so much money poured, suits try to make sure to have as many common denominators to get a larger audience and have an easier time turning a profit.
It's why the big creative projects tend to be AA or indie. And why AAA or blockbuster films tend to be so generic and inoffensive.
I feel like the melee system was at least ‘out of the box’, though a bit of a mess
@@tioseba7 This guy gets it.
Okay also since i have seen this spoiler:
So they basically had the option to start with a space prison on a frozen hell planet while having plenty of alien fish beneath it. Underwater Dead Space would have been actually a dope setting.
Tbh I want it in real life. There is talk about missions to the frozen moons of gas giants, such as Enzelad, and it probably has an ocean beneath the crust of ice. Imagine what kind of life could live there. Some alien crabs which never, at no point in their evolution, saw anything even remotely similar to light... it's basically deep sea horror but IN SPACE!!!
@@quint3ssent1a
You might like Barotrauma
Now if you want a terrifying concept it'd be Barotrauma in 3D
Seriously, they should have gone the Iron Lung route with cosmic horrors from the deep oceans of Jupiter's moons.
@@quint3ssent1a The problem is that drilling down to see that alien life would endanger it and probably blow out any air pockets. Plus, there'd be no oxygenation in the water meaning no life. At least none that we know it as.
@@SomeKindaSpy anoxic life exists even on earth... although probably there's just a whole ocean of NOTHING.
>the environment outside is frigid
>below the surface is a giant ocean
...did they confuse Callisto with Europa?
Callisto is covered in Ice and it is suspected to have a subterranean ocean.
So i did some quick research and while europa seens to be the most suited to have an ocean its theorised that callisto has one as well even if the conditions to make one are less favorable then its european cousin
@@valletas the more you know
Europa Protocol doesn't sound as marketable
@@hokeypoke557 yeah you're right, it sounds like a nutjob conspiracy theory
... shit, maybe Europa Protocol could work, given the plot of the game
"Not since Dark Messiah have there been as many spike walls." Bulletstorm says hello.
Lotta spike walls in Dying Light too.
Would have been better if they just made Bulletstorm But Horror honestly.
About learning to avoid the security robots.
This stuff immediately reminded me of the similar thing done right - in Terminator: Resistance you have to hide from Terminators unless you have a huge amount of pipe bombs or a phased plasma rifle in 40 watt range.
And hell, it worked. The scene in the hospital with patrolling Terminators was terrifyingly intense. And what was even more intense was the feeling of finally being able to destroy those terrifying machines after you got the guns capable of doing it.
I can’t believe Mandy hired an artist, animated and voiced a jojo meme comic only for a Marv screaming bit.
5/4 dogs!!!
jojo and BAKI
I didn’t like it
You _can't_ believe that?
It seems very on-brand to me.
@@Hyperlink1337weak
Oh my God. The absurd spike walls and spinning meat grinders. They actually make narrative sense if it's PUBG.
The meat grinder rooms were fun but so insanely immersion breaking. They actually work if they're part of an arena.
It would still have been a bad story but it would have at least been internally consistent.
It might make sense if the prison was also an extension of the mining colony. Like they just decided to use the prisoners as a form of slave labor like we do in the US... You could then use the excuse that some of those things are mining equipment like for grinding rocks to extract valuable minerals or whatever.
A lot of Callisto protocol feels like one of these deals where they decided on the shit they wanted first and then stitched the story together second to justify the elements.
Mandalore the more I hear about your personal life the more I'm convinced you're living in some kind of twilight zone episode. Witches, half your adventures involving Shammy, and now cults. Good lord man, when's the first season dropping?
Don't forget the coyotes!
And then there's Dusty and Jimmy.
Did him an Shammy make up? If so, that’s great.
@@TuShan18 wait what happened between them?
@@TuShan18 yeah?
17:55
Man, imagine how cool a game would be if enemies actually mutated to specifically counter your strategies as you played the game. They beef up places you tended to shoot, or become more resistant to your damage types. Something like a cross between the “intelligence” of the Alien in Isolation crossed with the Enemy Preparedness system from MGS:V would make for a great spin on the bog-standard “they’re mUtAtInG” script.
But no, fuck you, you get more zombies.
MGS 5 has this with how the guards gear up to react to what you use most. Use the silenced tranq rifle, they start wearing helmets. Go in guns blazing, they get body armour. If you mostly attack under darkness, they get night vision goggles. Very cool system that i wish could be used in more games.
You're describing Shadow of Mordor/War
Damage type resistance sounds cool, its like sentients from warframe
22:06 was the best bit I've ever seen, hands down.
John Callisto facing down horrors from space, like the finest specimen of humanity there is.
I know you meant Jotaro Callisto
@@adidascuc Jotaro Callisjo*
I don't know why but calling characters John is always funny to me. Like John Halo or John Doom.
@@visassess8607 Yeah, I borrowed that gag from Mandalore himself, as he said it in some videos.
I contemplated using "John Callisto Protocol" but it was a mouthful.
Perhaps the infected could be "[name] Protocol"
Something about the robot design in this game and bo3 just tick the right boxes for me. They really show how scary a robot killing machine could be because they arent evil etc. they just follow programming. Even if that programming results in them tearing your limbs off bear handed. The way they are treated in the cutscenes is perfect in both as-well
Bots were the coolest things. Bummed that there wasn't a boss version of one. Instead we fight a 4 timed multi-head dude monster bro. lol
I remember at one point this was inexplicably supposed to be set in the PUBG ‘universe’. That was probably an early warning sign that something was terribly amiss, and not just in the game narrative.
Didn't even know PUBG had lore.
@@niallreid7664 Yeah, what's next? The new Resident Evil like in Fortnite lore?
It was on learning the PUBG connection that I noped out
@@niallreid7664 there's actually a comic on we toon about PUBG lore that is really good
I wonder if high fidelity of assets forced them to pace the "story" so weirdly as well, skipping beats that would require more one-time-use environments. Watching a playthrough, I got a feeling that Dani was perhaps meant to be playable at one point. The intro on Europa just begged to be a tutorial level, instead of a cutscene, and that moment where you fall through half the moon, black out, and then Dani wakes you up immediately after, with your arms somehow still attached, also feels like a cut Dani segment.
I feel like im noticing a trend of original teams for projects trying to recreate their old sucess only to fail in some fundamental way. Back 4 Blood being another game that had this problem.
I feel it important to note that Back 4 Blood only had like 7 of the original L4D devs on the game, and none of them were in higher up positions. So essentially it was a marketing gimmick.
"Most of the moon is an abyssal ocean of alien terror, And I immediately wish that Jacob's suit was a diving suit and this was completely underwater in a different game entirely"
I wonder if Mandalore has encountered the game Barotrauma because that would hit all the marks.
The combat is so baffling. I can only imagine they intended simplicity for accessibility, but that only led to it being unengaging
Everything I've seen about this game has "clearly rushed" written all over it. Obviously there were supposed to be attacks you could only block, obviously there was supposed to be more types of mutation so you wanted to switch to your gun to prevent the bad stuff, obviously they wanted more variety to the melee, obviously they didn't mean for some of the guns to be copy/paste jobs.
They launched a game with about 4 enemies in it in 2023.
The game made me appreciate The Surge way more, now that actually feels like a melee focused Dead Space clone.
@@TheoreticalString I disagree, that level of polish for the graphics, environment, and sound is only accomplished by putting in the time. Time that should have gone into inventing better a better story and gameplay. Somebody high up had their priorities mixed up from the start. Otherwise I can't explain how the art and sound departments completely outperformed game design and writing staff.
@@TheoreticalString the story and design feel clearly rushed, the actual work put in everything else feels absolutely monumental.
it makes me wonder if they decided to have a shorter preproduction to allow for a longer production
New Mandalore review is always a sign of a good day!
My god, 2 Mandalore videos so close together... am I death? is this heaven?
Heaven, my friend. Heaven.
There is also the Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising Review by ThunderPsyker coming out at 20:00 CET. So yeah, must be heaven indeed.
No you are not death. I don't think death watches youtube videos about horror games.
@@Marduk1813 Wait, the guy is continuing his game reviews?!
@@silkdust8069 I dunno, gotta do something while eternity passes.
The security robots were such an missed opportunity for a boss fight
I love stealth takedowns. They never seem stealth in time, sound, efficiency or being stealthy.
Might as well just rugby tackle them.
Now you made me wish for a game with a total badass hero, who tackles and beats up and rips apart scary monsters like Doom Slayer would but with combat akin to God Hand.
I think the best takedowns ive ever seen in a game was Splinter Cell Blacklist. So much work was put in that.
@@TheHalogen131 well there was a resident evil 7 dlc where you sucker punch mutant crocodiles. Mold zombies and the swamp thing
@@TheHalogen131
Jake from RE 6 kind of plays like that
@@mysteryman4915 Blacklist was excellent. Sad to see the series go, but it was great to have it leave on a high note. Fuck Ubisoft.
A bet a brutally honest documentary about the development would be fascinating. The fact that ancillary hype content with a Game of Thrones actor and Michael F'n Ironside was more interesting than the in-game story/cutscenes which costed millions to produce speaks to lackluster pre-production and planning.
oh man I was wondering how you'd work the electrified scream running gag into this one and then the anime scene absolutely delivered *and then some*. What a great review, every section had something interesting going for it and I think you did a great job balancing the serious with the funny so the video never felt like it was taking too long.
Oh boy Dark Messiah, would I love a sequel to that. Such a unique, fun game, even all the years later. We desperately need more FPP melee combat games.
the best description of the melee combat came from angryjoe's review:
"The facility's collapsing OtherJoe we have to get out-what are you doing?
*OtherJoe casually leaning left and right, dodging attacks* "this is so easy, I've been doing this for the past half-hour, wanna go?"
Imagine if Jacob was contaminated and start developing mutations and you the player have to choose the mutations, the more mutations the more twisted you become losing your humanity in the process and you have to choose "staying vanilla" or get geared on an Alien virus. That would explain the Warden and the dynamic with Ferris...
Uh yeah, there’s a game that already does what you’re describing:
Prey (2017)
Sure it’s an immersive sim vs horror 3PS but it does what you’re asking for and is awesome.
@@NathanCassidy721also the Last Stand Aftermath does that too
I love the "let's slide back to dead space for a moment" with a shot of Issac doing a janky slide.
It wasn't a janky slide, it was a clever use of OG Deadspace's zero G mechanics. In the OG game you didn't float around, you looked at a spot and leapt to it, locking you into an animation until you landed. Then your mag boots kicked in when you hit the new surface and to stood up normally. Mandy just jumped to a different location on the same plane, so Isaac looked like he was belly sliding. It was a really clever use of the games old, limited mechanics.
@@Deadsnake989 its a janky g space slide!
Every time Dark Messiah is mentioned. I always wonder why no-one does another game where you can kick and/or push and/or force-push enemies into spikes or off ledges. There are few things more fun in gaming.
The Dying Light games have that mechanic!
It baffles me to this day that it didn't spawn a darkmessiahlike genre and spawn a host of gameplay first rpg's with actually satisfying combat... but instead we get this.
Broke: "Darkmessiah-like"
Woke: "This is Sparta Simulators"
Control is this too.
@@livanbard I can't believe people forget about Bulletstorm, it's literally just "combo enemies into crazy shit until they die" simulator. It's awesome.
This is easily the best review on this game. Critical, but fair on it's mechanics and story, along going into better detail than most I've seen.
I honestly enjoyed my time with Callisto, but completely understand it's flaws. It could've been so much more, but for what it is, I'm glad to try it for myself. ^^'
They literally had to use the same jump-scare ending that Dead Space 1 used.
It was a slog to get through the 2nd half, part of me was slowly going insane, and the Marker wasn't even in the Callisto Protocol!
"so few games get necromancers right"
THANK YOU! SOMEONE FINALLY SAID IT!
The game got an update you can now listen to audio logs outside of the menu but they decided to make the Action button to close the log so you’ll stop the log when opening a door or a chest
That....how do you even describe that
I don't understand how a development team could come together and say 'okay, we're making a zombie horror game. Let's implement a combat system from Punch-out'
The setting comparison to Gothic was spot on Mandy. I laughed so hard at that!
Except Gothic have a monster beneath its prison. And is a good game.
It's Gothic, except not so interesting in it's social commentary or world...
@@danieladamczyk4024 it did? I dont remember that
@@MegaRazor619 In Gothic? The Sleeper. Maybe not in the most literal sense, considering the portal-thing, but the portal is beneath the mining colony (in the Orc territory), and the Sleeper is a big, angry monster emerging there.
@@gimok2k5 Yeah I know the sleeper is in the orc stronghold. Its just when I think of the prison I think of the old camp, but I guess the entire mining colony is considered the prison
"Completely underwater, a different game entirely, people morphing into bizarre deep-sea inspired creatures" I smell a Barotrauma video. I hope im right.
Mandalore has specifically stated before (in The Forest Review I think?) how he typically doesn't review games that are still in Early Access. However, Barotrauma is coming out of Early Access next week. It'd be nice to visit an alien ocean that actually lets you play around in it.
Soma maybe?
I freaking love it when you talk about the sound design in games man.
it's always my favourite part. your subtle editing is key. it's a joy to watch
I live for that Marvin getting electrocuted sound clip. The OG heavy lifter in Mandaloreverse
that and the guardsman saying IT'S QUIET
What's the origin on that, anyway? Where's it come in?
@@ProjectXA3 home alone
@ProjectXA3 it's the goofy cartoonish scream that's been sprinkled throughout mandalores work. It's a sound clip from the original home alone where Marvin (one of the wet bandits) is electrocuted by a homemade trap.
They could've made 1 robot, just a single invincible robot that you had to avoid or incapacitate for a few seconds, and chased you through the game.
People are kinda sick of that trend now.
That would have worked if it just showed up occasionally. Having a Mr.X expy follow you through an entire mediocre game would just be frustrating.
@@StatisticColt it would've been better than 2 robots that you kill in 3-5 shots
Narratively speaking, that would have been a bit confusing. There's a lot going on in the prison as is, and the bots don't seem capable of holding a grudge. Even if they had been assigned to track Jacob specifically, this still wouldn't make much sense.
40:33 well, I got some good news Mandy. When Skyrim got it's Anniversary Edition update/DLC, it made Necromancer builds actually viable. Before the build was next to non existent beyond summoning *an* skeleton or raising *an* corpse, if you ignore the Ritual Stone. Now, you got new drip, a heap of utility spells related to it, and you can summon a small army of varied undead, including an Undead golem that has a passive ability to let you summon even more undead.
It helps but mechanically it's still basically a flavor of the Daedra summon path. There's been other modded attempts, like the added necromancy content of Undeath or ordinator having perks that literally allow you to assemble skeletons from bones you find, but still.
@@gratuitouslurking8610 actually now that you mentioned it, I just now realized that by adding so much for Necromancy, Daedra summoning was left as it was in vanilla, even with the new Daedric Horse we can summon.
So now it comes down to "want a small army of undead that you can buff whilst they buff you?" or "pick two."
You could always use the ritual stone with the aetherium crown exploit and beat god with a legion of undead and just resurrect them since it doesn’t turn the bodies to ash