Shimmy Simulator

The clear visor and internal helmet lighting are there
so you don't accidentally mistake Jacob for Riddick

Callisto Protocol (A.K.A. Splatterhouse meets Super Punch-Out) is basically the original concept for Dead Space.  Set on the titular moon of Jupiter, gameplay consists of linear third-person exploration and combat.  The latter of those two is further broken down into a fairly even mix of ranged and melee fighting.  In a way it reminds me a lot of the Condemned duology.  Like that pair of games, the sound design is second to none.  Aside from setting the mood, various audio cues are used to convey important information to the player ranging from the location and types of nearby enemies to the effect an attack is having on said enemies.  Graphics are also impressive from a technical perspective, but (in terms of art direction) are painfully bland.

What do get when you combine the common elements of every grim space sci-fi movie and television series from "Moon 44" to "The Expanse"?  It turns out you get Callisto Protocol in all it's generic glory.  Don't get me wrong...the game looks very genre appropriate.  It's just there is a severe lack of distinctive setting material.  The original Dead Space (for how derivative that game was) at least had a few things that made it standout; examples include Unitology, The Markers and Planet Cracking.  Here, though there really isn't anything unique.  Even stuff that could have been special, such as the exotic location, is made a lot more ordinary than it should be.  

Here's where it all began...

To demonstrate my point look at the moon of Callisto itself.  In real life, it's a big frozen ball with no atmosphere. The surface is nearly as ancient as the solar system itself and has almost one-hundred percent crater saturation.  In layman terms this means every new asteroid impact happens on top of an already existing one.  Underneath all that pockmarked terrain is the possibility of a subsurface ocean.  Imagine digging down through the permafrost only to emerge into some kind of cold underwater abyss roofed in ice with god-knows-what dwelling down in the dark depths.  It's a thalassophobic nightmare, that the game designers obviously had no interest in letting the player experience.  Instead, that terrifying encounter is only mentioned in passing and (as a substitute) we get a bunch of boring zombie mutants hanging out around what is definitely not OSHA approved industrial machinery.  Worse yet partial terraforming of Callisto has transformed the "dead moon" into basically Antarctica, complete with clouds, wind and snow.  I'm not sure why opening an airlock would suck people out if there's an atmosphere, but the game's creator (Glen Schofield) has a reputation for pointless scientific inaccuracies.  Case in point, Callisto (despite being a rather huge moon) only has 12.6 percent the surface gravity of Earth.  This seems to come into play a bit during one scripted sequence when the protagonist slowly falls down the side of a building.  The devs could have made up some excuse like "magnetic boots" to explain why low gravity isn't an issue onboard space ships or inside the prison complex, but once your out on the surface this fact should have really come into play.  Specifically, having to navigate around chasms and fences should have been trivial since you character can vault over them with ease.  It could have been an interesting change of pace from a gameplay standpoint...more of an open sandbox arena...also, zombies coming flying at our hero through the snowstorm would have been absolutely unnerving.

Speaking of the hero of this story, he fits the Dude McGuy roll perfectly in that he is a short-haired scruffy thirty-something that has little in the way of personality and no motivation beyond immediate survival.  I get that they were going for the everyman protagonist here, but give him a lisp, a tic, a phobia; make him religious or superstitious...something that the actor can work with! As is, his female counterpart would have made a far more interesting main character given that she has a backstory that could have shed some much needed light on the underdeveloped plot.  It's weird that known profession actors were hired to play the various character roles when they were given so little to do.  The real kicker though has got to be the ending.  Just as the story feels like it's starting to go somewhere the credits roll on a sequel-bate cliffhanger...got to justify that season pass, I guess.

To anyone on the fence about getting this game, I would recommend waiting until it's on sale in a bundle that includes all the DLC plus (as of now much needed) performance patches.  Only then will it be worth playing.  Unless you're in Japan, of course, in which case it's simply not available because it was deemed too violent.  To everyone else...well...you've already made up your mind, haven't you?