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.

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.

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.

re-watching this, i realized something else. the main character's name is Jacob. the most notable Biblical Jacob has a father... named Isaac.

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.

The designers were so dedicated to realism, they made sure everything eventually evolved into crabs

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.

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?

God, the alien ocean is such a missed opportunity that it makes my heart ache.

It baffles me that a melee-focused combat system gives you 1 melee weapon and like 6 different guns.

Any mention of “the next stage in human evolution” in any sci fi always makes me roll my eyes so hard.

They could have saved this game by calling the protagonist “Cole Listo”

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.

I love how the "stealth" takedown makes so much goddamn noise

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

"Wait, you had Michael Ironside?" What a perfect summation of everything wrong with this 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.

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.

Mandy speaking japanese Is the equivalent of seeing jerma outside: both surreal and Fever dream inducing

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?

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.

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.

"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.

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...

All you had to say to convince me Callisto was the inferior game was "They had Michael Ironside, but didn't use him."

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"

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 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.

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

The ship being called “Charon” is probably a reference to how this game is dead in the water.

For a survival horror game it's crazy that the biggest jumpscare in this video was an audio glitch

>the environment outside is frigid >below the surface is a giant ocean ...did they confuse Callisto with Europa?

"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.

This game really leaves a dead space in your memory.

The "midtown" sign in the intro really tells everything about the game.

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.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

I can’t believe Mandy hired an artist, animated and voiced a jojo meme comic only for a Marv screaming bit. 5/4 dogs!!!

"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

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

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.

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.

I truly appreciate that you were willing to manufacture a scenario in which you are reasonably able to use the Marv scream

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

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.

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

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

Hearing mandalore do JoJo impressions in the middle of a horror review is why I love this channel

I love the opening shot where Jacob walks up to the sign that says "Mid Town." Well Played Mandalore

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...

The security robots were such an missed opportunity for a boss fight

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.

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.

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

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.

"Not since Dark Messiah have there been as many spike walls." Bulletstorm says hello.

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.

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.

"hordes of I can't believe they are not zombies" is a hilarious line

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.

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"

I really couldn't help but laugh when the entire holographic "larger-than-life" evil council starts chanting sinister sounding Latin Phrases. I half expected them to be wearing hoods and drinking red wine from gargoyle goblets while sacrificing a space-goat.

18:58, Someone in this game's lore, programed the security bot to heel turn after stomping a skull in.

It always amazes me, how often the Electrocuted sound effect have a solid spot in these videos.

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.

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 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

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.

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._

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.

8:10 You just know that Mandy was sick to death of these things at this point because he quick drawed on it without a second thought, lol

"Completely underwater, a different game entirely, people morphing into bizarre deep-sea inspired creatures" I smell a Barotrauma video. I hope im right.

22:10 Oh you're approaching me? That shitpost is 10/10. Especially when Mandy speaks Japanese and we got Marv's scream

Dunno why but when this game was announced for some reason i thought it was gonna be a rogue lite co-op version of deadspace. You play as a prisoner, try to beat the game, die and the next prisoner has some stuff unlocked/done in the next run. The idea that you are not the hero that solves the problem you are trying to be the dude that survives to tell the problem exists kinda deal.

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.

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.

Mandalore, I don’t know if it’s the niche jokes, the sound of your voice, the clips you use, or the points you make, but your videos have so much replayability for me, it’s crazy.

How did the DLC for this game somehow make the ending even worse?

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.

I think the audiologs being directly accessible in gameplay of SS2 works really well because it could be fascinating to listen to, but also distract you from the sounds of enemies, as the game won't ever pause when you listen to them.

I was watching a playthrough of this game around launch and I remember being able to predict every single one of the big bad chairman guy's lines with perfect accuracy. That is probably the only thing I'll ever remember about it.

The combat is so baffling. I can only imagine they intended simplicity for accessibility, but that only led to it being unengaging

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.

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

My favorite part was when Jacob put the cooking pan on his head and said, *"it's time to Protocol those Callistos"*

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.

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?

hey, the PUBG connections actually finally explains WHY is there all that korean text everywhere

I actually thought they were suggesting that Jacob was a violent prisoner and that the implant scrambled his memory and that is why he takes to the violence so easily. There are many audio logs where they say "its in my head!" and some vague references to a violent inmate that I assumed was you. As cliched as this is, I think it would have been more interesting than thr actual story...

My god, 2 Mandalore videos so close together... am I death? is this heaven?

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.

I like how Mandalore's references to old reviews mirrors the game's references to Dead Space.

My by big gripe with the game is they wanted the diagetic/immersive HUD of Dead Space, ala the health bar. However, they just stick you with a sci-fi cross hair and called it a day. It bugs me more than it should.

One of the only youtubers who will subtitle their videos at the same time of upload. I'm glad you know the importance of them, audiences like myself are hard of hearing and it's great that you're very thoughtful of your viewers.