Vidjama Gmaes Work

PlayStation Plus trials are a little funny to me specifically because they aren’t planned experiences. You take a normal game demo and there’s a set start and a set end to the action. The dev knows both of these points, and in fact tunes it specifically. For instance, Final Fantasy XVI’s demo got me to rent the game because I knew the progress would carry over and because the devs knew exactly where to end it to the fullest effect.

But PS+ trials are a set time and then the game shuts off. Doesn’t matter if you’re in a lull, doesn’t matter if you’re halfway through getting a zombie’s fist shoved up your ass. The game blanks out and kicks you back to the home screen in a move that feels both jarring and moderately rude. Like if the moment the clock struck 10 at Target you were teleported outside despite being in the middle of dropping a log in the bathroom.

The Callisto Protocol trial did not sell me on the full game, either in buying it or renting it. And no, I’m not a die-hard Dead Space fan upset that this isn’t Dead Space. In fact I never beat the first game and didn’t play the sequels at all. I’m just not a fan of the torture porn game over sequences. I will say the first game did sell me on its atmosphere and gameplay and I have plans (“plans”) to one day clear it from my backlog. The same promise I give the rest of my backlog before piling on more games my shitty work structure will let me get to.

But Callisto Protocol isn’t a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. You play as Jacob Lee, a pilot who gets arrested and put on an off-world planet for some crime or something. I don’t know, it’s made pretty clear that you were specifically targeted because you’re special, but that’s no doubt a twist much later in the story. As happens with off-world space prison colonies, all hell breaks loose when a parasitic virus spreads around turning everyone into monsters and do the normal monster havoc; eating all the pizza rolls, farting on the warden’s pillow, and putting the toilet roll on backwards. Real sick shit.

I actually had a lot of fun during the opening fights. The Callisto Protocol is heavily melee focused with some gunplay thrown in for good measure. It’s a very basic dance of using the left joystick to automatically dodge and block punches until you get your opening and just whoop some ass. Once you get your gun even get opportunity shots where Jacob whips out his pistol like a cowboy and blows off a limb. There’s limb damage, you can cut off and break arms and legs, it’s just great if a little stilted.

And then a couple of fights in the game threw me up against two dudes and that’s where the game lost me. Fights against multiple enemies are really, really frustrating in my experience. The combat is based on constant dodging and attacking in an opening, so if you have two or three enemies attacking at once they just beat the shit out of you. Dodging doesn’t feel rewarding or give feedback since you’re just holding the joystick and not even timing it.

I’m aware that the game eventually lets you unlock upgrades to deal with these frustrations of melee combat. The problem is you won’t get that far in the trial and there’s no indication that they exist. Maybe if the trial was two hours long it could have gotten that far. I only know about it because I researched the game online. Most people aren’t going to do that, they’ll just finish the hour and think “well that was annoying. The full game is probably just more of that.”

I think an hour is too short for a game trial. You immediately lose the people who won’t even download the game because it takes longer to download than it does to actually play. These trials should be two hours long, it gives the player enough time to get used to things and see more of the game without constantly thinking about how much time they have left. It also lets the developer show more of the game to the potential customer. Because that’s literally why this system exists; to lure in people thinking about buying the game.

And it didn’t work on me, even to rent. I might check it out one day when it’s $10 and I have nothing else to play. Good luck with that.