The Callisto Protocol (Zero Punctuation) 

Better late than never!

I'm confused, why was Callisto Protocol reuploaded on the website and at the same day the next game should have?

@@durpson This

@@durpson yahtzee is on a break, there arent supposed to be another episode coming out this week

@@durpson the reupload might have been a mistake, it happens to the best of us

You're aware they go public on youtube a week later? This was up on the Escapist last week, or on youtube if you're a paid subscriber to the Escapist youtube channel.

It varies. Sometimes if he’s aware everyone else has already shit all over a game he’ll go easier on it out of pity. Clearly not this time though.

The Wagon Wheel looked weird. Like it’s blue which should be jammy but it’s a different shade.

@@Mopman43 Relax homie

@@Mopman43 In their defence last week would still have made Yahtzee one of the last reviewers to check this one off. but of course a good roasting is never too late.

EXACTLY.

I’m fucking dying 😂😂😂😂

This should be the top pinned comment. Maybe it'll convince more people to play System Shock or Prey... 😏

I like the game and I'm still chuckling at that, have an upvote!

I disagree, sometimes a long death animation can be interesting/thematic. Now, if you're not making them skippable so the player can chose "I'm tired of this one, I'll pass" , that's unforgivable

@@enriquejoseantequerasanche6180 you can't disagree with him while agreeing with him. That's illegal! (psst, skippable death scenes = not slower than quitting to menu)

Careful, rather than make the animations quicker, they'll just make it take longer to reload. :D

Too Human did it better!

The exception, of course, is games where the death animations are the core content. Like in most porn rpgs where after getting beaten by the flower monster, your reward is getting to snuggle up with the flower monster and have its babies.

Medusa heads are that for me

@@appelofdoom8211 Good choice. For me, it’s the Primal Aspids from Hollow Knight

If anyone genuinely hates these moments in TCP, consider using the telekinesis ability that the game provided you with for free.

@@Farowlol If the developers make an upgrade that totally side steps a mechanic of the game, then it is very likely that said mechanic is a bad one, and they should change it, instead of making players choose between it, and other upgrades.

@@Zurie I have no idea what you're talking about, it's not an upgrade you choose over anything, it's an ability that is forced upon you much like Kinesis from Dead Space. Removing the block button from fighting games because it exists to sidestep the attack button is a funny concept, though. I'm starting to think people are getting paid to hate on this game, I have never witnessed such brainrot.

The healing in particular is such a bizarre design choice. In Dead Space 1, you pressed a quick heal button and you got healed on the go, no hassle. That's because they realized that you almost certainly would have to heal in the middle of a tense firefight and if recovering took any longer than "Right the heck now!" you were probably going to be reloading a checkpoint. How is it that the folks who made this game forgot that simple point?

@@blastinus3714 They were trying to make it like The Last of Us, but I think healing in that game takes half the time it does in Callisto. It also explains the melee combat. TLoU did it too.

​@@Ckoz2829 the reason it works in The Last of Us, besides being faster (And being able to upgrade to faster still), is that the level design and enemy ai allows you to get away and hide in cover to do the long heal. Whereas the Callisto Protocol is all tight rooms/corridors with very aggressive enemies.

All of the patches that have been released have improved things so they aren't as bad (though the game definitely was poorly optimized on PC and playing on the PS5 is strongly encouraged). Yahtzee tried them out during the Post-ZP stream last week so it might lift the game from being on his Worst of 2022 list to Bland of 2022 list. I think what really hurt this game is how much it was anticipated to be a spiritual successor to Dead Space yet Callisto Protocol plays completely different from it.

@@jcohasset23 I saw, the sped up healing and tweaked a few things. I’ll play it again when NG+ comes out. I thought the game as it was was only ok. Even with these improvements, I’m thinking it’ll still be average, but a little polish never hurts.

Go in a bit back on the weapons, all the weapons felt and sounded great, very punchy. Each weapon felt like they had their use but never felt like a bad idea to bring.

@@meloncholy428 I love the line gun for that reason - I don’t know how damaging it really is, but the weapon has some heft and great sound.

The elevator thing only happens twice in the whole series. Doesn’t mean that I don’t sit in the corner aiming across in every single elevator in the whole series.

@@meloncholy428 And like the OP said, they were unique, cus lot of them were mostly power tools on a planet cracker mining ship. The plasma cutter: meant for engineers to cut through softer minerals. Supercollider Contact Beam: Engineering tool meant to pound and soften hardened minerals Ore Cutter Line Gun: a more heavy-duty plasma cutter for cutting rock and ore into bits and pieces Graviton Accelerator: Meant to shatter rocks, move rocks in low gravity to other miners, or deflect dangerous debris One major acceptation is the pulse gun which is used by security

@@DizzyScorpia Exactly! You don't need a ambush in every elevator, just make it feel you CAN be ambushed is enough to put you on edge.

well i am

Gottem

Wait, why were you slicing meatballs? They are meat balls, not meat hemispheres

@@seokkyunhong8812 They were too large to fit into the wrap without being cut up

@@sasukesarutobi3862 go to the store and get larger wraps. Do not compromise the ball!

That’s the most damning indictment of this game possible.

That's a sick fucking burn, but both Callisto Protocol and B4B deserve it because they are disgraces.

B4b is fun for different people then l4d. Being able to customize your character and how you play is more fun for some than everyone is pretty much playing the same thing but different skins like in L4D. Personally I enjoy both . They are Both are great for different reasons.

@@Radicalbeast the issue for b4b is the same as the callisto protocol: they were both touted as spiritual successors to their respective forebears, when they clearly aren't.

@@sunderedsoul6495 "Misery loves company" is an adage for reason. That said, the world could have gone without at least one of them since it was already full crappy talentless "spiritual successors" just in the game department even recently between stuff like _Balan Wonderworld_ compared to _NiGHTS_ and _Mighty No. 9_ compared to _Mega Man_ (the Classic series). To say nothing of all the _Doom_ and _Dark Souls_ clones if we're including "spiritual successors" for series that aren't even dead or in limbo. In fact, I have to wonder if at this point there aren't already more bad games than even bad films that would be examples of this even with all those crappy Friedberg and Seltzer movies that "spun off" from the _Scary Movie_ series. Hmmm....

The more he is pissed off, the better

Yes, and that makes dodging really easy, but the game did not explain it really good. So it took me 2000 deaths to get it. 😅

The problem is that seems random. I've done the dodge left and then right and still gotten hit.

@@demonintellect9834 It's not necessarily random, but more so a secondary problem with the dodge mechanic, which is that it doesn't have i-frames. Therefore, even though they intend for it to be automatic regardless of which direction you hold, some of the enemies have attacks that are bigger than the dodge...

I hope everyone likes playing Mike Tyson's punch out

Callisto Protocol combat: press left. Then press right. Then press left. Then press right. Then press left. Then press right. Oh, and mash the attack button when you have the chance. Also it doesn't work in any way whatsoever when you get attacked by more than one enemy at a time, which is a lot of the time. Jesus fucking wept, how did this system even get through alpha without someone pointing out "Hey, this combat system kinda sucks big hairy balls"?

Nice burn

Oof, that's a... Fwoosh. Take my like, buddy

Now that's not fair... to Lords of the Fallen. At least it was just a bland, boring, badly-balanced rip-off of Dark Souls. It wasn't completely and utterly inept on every level like The Callisto Protocol.

As an avid gamer of three decades with no development experience at all, I would agree that animations have a great effect on the experience players get in the end product. Whether a game feels fluid and dynamic, or like trying to find a 3rd on a knackered old gearbox that should have been binned off fifteen years back, is often a direct consequence of how it is animated.

The thing is, the animations themselves are not actually the issue in this game: the animation work is actually fantastic, i.e. everything in the game moves in a natural and "weighty" manner that properly conveys what the subject is. The problem is the devs wanting to highlight said animations so much that they ensure the players can't skip them, or making them so long just to highlight how good the animations are. Hell, the devs are on record as being proud of the animations, and indeed they have extra death animations as a selling point of their DLC season pass. As an example of how badly their focus on the animation compromised their gameplay and vice versa, when they released their most recent patch that increased the speed at which the player now heals, the animation now looks strange because it's been sped up unnaturally. The original long and slow animation was meant for gameplay in which the player needs to sit down and heal for a long time.

Too much focus on realistic animation is why I hate Red Dead 2.

2:11 Yahtzee Omnomnom Button

@@ThatDamnRaccoon EEE! Omnomnomnom Thanks for the timestamp

:3

:3

Hee-hee-hee, free damage for me~

Seems like video games rarely improve

@@CBRN-115 I'd argue they've gotten worse than ever before. If it keeps going this way, people will just stop playing games. A lot of other recreational hobbies like Lego and boardgames saw a huge rise in popularity during the pandemic, but not video games. They are at peak saturation of society right now, and everything comes to an end some day.

@@VitZ9 They've only gotten worse if you only focus on Triple A games and nothing else. INdie scene is full of wonder and invoative games. You're also getting older.

@@crushycrawfishy1765 Getting older probably has something to do with it, i'm 32 and I recently moved to a new house and it's been about 3 months and I haven't hooked up any of my consoles, the only game I really play anymore is Legenda Of Runeterra. My consoles are sitting behind me in the same box I packed them in when I moved.

​@@crushycrawfishy1765you know just as well as me that the indie market is just as bad as AAA. The only difference is there's so much shite with si little advertising for each game that most people will only hear about the good ones

It seems you’re more likely to get what you want if the game was made by people who _played_ and _inspired_ by the original rather than the people who were actually involved. I guess in some weird way that makes sense. The people who played it know why they love it better than people who created it, because the creators already had a vested interest (their idea/work) versus a player that doesn’t automatically have that investment, and has to be convinced from nothing.

@@mrshmuga9 Inspired has been pretty iffy too. I mean inspired just means "this looks similar to the thing I'm doing so it is kinda inspiring". I will say any games being created from the MODDERS of a game is almost destined to be pure gold though as they loved the game so much to work for free on it and took ideas from the community, which devs just do not ever do.

@@setcheck67 Fallout: The Frontier though...

@@mrshmuga9 Sounds good, until you realize that Glenn Schofield and his team (the people who created Dead Space) are literally the same ones who made Callisto. When EA shut down their development studio, they left to make their own studio, which is the one who made Callisto Protocol, with Glenn at the helm. It might not be 1-1 all the same people, but it's definitely the majority including the creator himself.

@@setcheck67 Not necessarily. Plenty of indie devs are making games that _are_ genuinely like the game they were inspired by. Most prominently are the Paper Mario-inspired games. There's so many that they even came together to make their own "Paperverse Direct" to showcase them all. The broadened the term for what they show (typically RPG's or paper-aesthetic games), but it started because there were/are a bunch of PM-inspired games and people wanted to know what's available. Games like: Bug Fables, Born of Bread, The Outbound Ghost, Flynt Buckler Wakes the Sleepy Castle, Seahorse Saga, Tale Feathers, and so on. They all are RPG's, with action commands, and partners that help you in battle with their own moves. Some are still in development, but regardless they are emulating the originals better than what the actual studio putting out. Because the people in charge of Paper Mario for the last decade wanted to make it into something completely different.

"Gun-Tor accepts your sacrifice! Om nom nom nom. You have been granted a boon of six more dead cunts!"

:3

The dodge is indeed tricky. For example if you want to avoid swing after swing you have to hit left-right-left-right (or vice versa) as the game states "Evade the second attack in the opposite direction of the first dodge" This usually works but sometimes the dodge starts unexpectedly (I had the dodge animation while i was pushing the block button). Also I played on Pc which seems to be easier controlwise then on consoles

You would love love "just bad games" by rerez. They tear down the worst of the worst ever.

I watched SkillUp's (completely negative) review, and when he explained how the dodge is automated based on the enemy's attacks, meaning you don't actually have any CONTROL over how your character dodges and also it completely breaks whenever you're being attacked by more than one enemy at a time (which happens a lot) I was just _flabbergasted_ that such an obviously-incompetent system managed to make it all the way through development. It's clearly a system that was designed with being "cinematic" in mind, rather than minor irrelevancies like being "playable".

@@ArcaneAzmadi it "got away" for the simple reason it was "cinematic". a word we had forgotten, but was all the rage back when the third dead space yeeted fan desire for the series out of the air lock. ironically, DS3 is a far FAR more enjoyable game than calisto, by a wide margin.

Exactly I heard ftom shillup that you only need to hold one direction and as long as you are holding it you are practically invincible since you automatically dodge everything and nothing can hit you. Maybe the confusion is that people think you need to time it precisely vs just hold the direction?

Doesn't help that the enemies just aren't as scary as the Necromorphs from Dead Space

jump scares arent scary when you expect a jumpscare it can be a bit tense waiting for the jumpscare you know is going to happen, but it doesnt scare you horror comes from the unexpected, from knowing there is something bad around the corner, but not what it is, from knowing there is danger, but not from where the moment you understand the danger it stops being scary, you know when you open the door something will jump at you, thats not scary its the same reason i find pretty much every "you cant kill the monster only run away" game to not be scary, cos after a certain point you are just going through the motions, oh the monsters here so i better run into this room and stand in a cupboard for a minute until it leaves, oh look its here again, hello cupboard my friend, it becomes frustrating, it becomes tedium jumpscares are the same, im of the opinion jumpscares are cheep horror to begin with, they arent necesary and good horror doesnt use them at all, but if you MUST use them, sprinkle them in, if theres a new one every 2 minutes they have no impact at all

I believe that jump-scares can never be truly scary. If there's no buildup, them the audience's reaction isn't fear; it's just momentary shock. But the whole point of a jump-scare is that it jumps out of nowhere with no buildup. Incidentally, this is also the reason I strongly dislike mimic enemies in video games; they're not scary, they're just annoying.

True. All "scary" games I've played (not many) Doom 3, Dead Space, Dead Space 2 we're just filled with monster jumping out of nowhere to the point you just don't get scared anymore, it's more annoying than anything. Two steps look around to see if you trigged a spawn, two steps, look around pick up some ammo, two steps, SPAWN TRIGGERED, SHOT AT EVERYTHING. Repeat until you finished the game.

@@jlev1028 I have never played Dead Space 1. In any case, I'm not saying that jump scares can't be good; I'm just saying that they can't instill real fear.

What's the joke? Can you explain it?

Oh darn, I love Jason Lee and I thought he did the character

The deputy Rector at my high school was the cousin of actor Kevin Smith, who starred in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess and Young Hercules.

@@sapientunderground Yep. I'm not talking about the director.

@@sapientunderground but is he saying that the protagonist looks like Jason Lee? Because that never crossed my mind and even after the intro I dont see it.

Try the Awakened DLC. That's not a cliffhanger, it's The End.

@@BTVagrant I think that might be what their talking about. I've heard a lot of people say Awakened ended on a cliffhanger, them apparently not realising that they were playing a horror game and good endings are optional.

@@chrisvisser-fee2631they were hoping that it would lead to a Dead Space 4 where you’d be fighting more of those Moon Zombies, but EA cancelled the game because it didn’t make EA’s ridiculous sales goal

@@chrisvisser-fee2631 You've got it all wrong. Spoiler warning ahead: The moon you destroy in DS3 has brothers. When it reawaken or when we kill it, it sent a signal to it's brothers. Basically, Ellie is the one giving away the coordinates to Earth because she's the first one to leave in the aftermath. Also, a lot of the Unitologist left in the aftermath. So by the time Clark and Carver warp back to Earth, it's already too late, the moons are feeding off of Earth. Oh and everywhere where there are markers. Humans built markers everywhere. It's the end for humanity in that universe.

@@addi543 I heard they wanted to make Ellie the new protagonist and that she'd be looking for Isaac or something.

Like why couldn't I be some guy put there because i was literally in a goddamn space truck crash? Like put me in a med ward, i want THAT perspective.

@@ARStudios2000 the "fancy HUD" still works as a medical tracker too

@@almightyk11 See? Its totally possible! So many perspectives can be achieved in a prison

Unfortunately that conflicts with every devs need to make a pov protagonist a voiceless blank slate. Closest your going to get is Parasite Eve but Aya stays in control through the whole thing.

i mean isn't that kind of dead space 2 lol

Condemned: Criminal Origins

It's not survival horror but that's 100% the arch of Jason Brody in Far Cry 3, probably why it's so many peoples favorite of the series

Prey is entirely this. The game begins with you having very few ways to handle threats and having to stealth to avoid most enemies. By the end, you've terraformed the space station into your own playground of murder and no matter what is sent after you, you can easily destroy it so much so that you have become the monster on the space station.

I diddnt even realise they were for that untill like chapter 6

What an amazing game Signalis is. Costs 1/4 of Callisto and is 100x more of a survival horror. Everyone, please try Signalis.

@@BTVagrant i don't quite agree with the high praise for Signalis but its definitely better than Calisto Protocol. The honeymoon period for that game was over almost immediately whilst people continue to recommend Signalis. That should tell you everything. Rather have a simple and sort-of neat throwback to the old resident evils rather than something that is trying to piggyback off "from the creators of the original Dead Space"

I only saw a couple of minutes of gameplay on twitch and thought people were really into Deadspace again but nobody seemed to be enjoying themselves. Glad to see that is generally the feel of the game. lol

You also have to alternate sides to which you dodge if I remember correctly after each attack

That's good. Though why didn't they just do that in the first place? Anyways, at least they listened to to criticism and fixed the problem. That's good to hear

@@CBRN-115 There were a lot of things they should have done in the first place, that they are doing now. Like shader compilation on PC. When the game shipped, there were none, which was the number one problem with the performance. They added shader compilation days later, but it was too late for me, I already had refunded the game. The worst part is, apperently the game didn't ship with shader compilation because of a mistake made by a single developer. Pretty costly mistake if you ask me

They should be listening to their QA department before releasing the game, though: Except then they would have to pay them, rather than having customers pay for the privilege of beta-testing. When you can just patch something in later, it's a lot more profitable to release a broken or unfinished product than it is to miss a deadline. They're not listening to criticism because the care, but because they don't have to pay these people for the work they put in. Same reason why every website or app now wants you to leave a review: It saves on the expense of market research.

It’s worth it to at least install it and admire how powerful your graphics card is. The one thing Callisto has going for it is that it’s a great looking game. And if you don’t like it, no loss! Just uninstall it and hide it away forever.

I've seen LPs - it's as bad as he says. It *looks* really juicy and visceral, but people were dying every twenty seconds because the enemies group up on you and get behind you and you can't respond to it well.

@@imakegames770 ...but if you just max out your stasis power then the game is a walk in the park. The game is very cheesable and there are plenty of areas where you can just pick enemies up, chuck them to spiked walls that are for some reason scattered around this prison or just throw them off ledges. UnerHaxorNova did a whole playthtough where he beat this "super difficult game" on the hardest difficulty while just finding cheesy ways to take out enemies. The game is not hard if you think about how to fight your enemies and don't just run in guns blazing, wasting all your ammo...

@@weaponizedlizardmen360 The point of survival horror is to have the player's survival be in a precarious yet achievable state, but by your very description, it sounds as if Callisto Protocol is just as incapable of realising that balance as it is at balancing its gameplay.

Listen harder. The gameplay is _abominable._

@@weaponizedlizardmen360 I'm talking about like the very first part of the game. Before stasis. Before gun.

Art imitates life. Seriously, does getting rich makes people inherently evil? Or is it the evil ones that tends to be rich?

@@CBRN-115 it's the corruption and seeking of power, of which some have so much of, that they may not realize how much power they already have, and they start to crave more