Reviews
‘The Callisto Protocol’ DLC Review – “The Final Transmission” Fails to Improve on a Flawed Base Game
In Thomas Wilde’s review of the Callisto Protocol last December, he wrote that the game could have used more time in development to reach the full potential of what developer Striking Distance was going for. In the last seven months, the game has received patches fixing bugs and adding new game modes, including New Game+ and a combat-focused Riot Mode, culminating with its last piece of content, a story DLC called “The Final Transmission.”
Unfortunately, even with the extra time, the core problems of the base game still plague this expansion, highlighting the fundamental flaws in the game’s design. “The Final Transmission” takes place after the events of the main game, following Jacob (Josh Duhamel), under the orders of Dr. Caitlyn Mahler (Louise Barnes), in his efforts to escape Black Iron Prison with data about the nefarious experiments taking place. Aside from the additional story content, the game adds a new weapon and enemy type. The Biobot enemies are a neat idea, combining the big robot guards with the mutated Biophages, which is important to the narrative of the DLC. The added Kinetic Hammer weapon gives you an additional area of effect attack that can damage crowds while also granting you the extra oomph you need to take out the Biobots.
Despite these additions, combat feels similar to the base game, which to me, was very flawed. The core mechanic of alternating holding left and right to dodge attacks remains uncompelling, especially since so much is out of your hands and mostly handled by the game’s autotargeting. The melee, while viscerally satisfying to watch due to some very chunky animation, never feels like it has the nuance to be the focal point of the combat. The enemy variety isn’t robust enough to make the encounter design interesting, just throwing larger numbers at you in ways that don’t feel like you can mitigate cleverly.
The area of effect attack from the Kinetic Hammer does seem to work towards alleviating that concern, but the charge-up for it felt like it made it useless when you’re at your most overwhelmed. An instant slam with a cooldown would probably have made it a lot more tactically interesting, making you think carefully about when you want to use it. Guns in the game are entirely unchanged, which is to say there are too many to justify, given the game’s emphasis on melee. I would much rather have them work like Bloodborne’s guns, where they are something to stagger an enemy or break its attack animation in a pinch, instead of just a mechanical carryover from the game’s Dead Space roots.
Much like the encounter design, the level design in “The Final Transmission” doesn’t have any new tricks up its sleeve. It’s primarily hallways that lead you to the next encounter arena mixed in with some bland mazes that got me turned around frequently. There were lots of dead ends that had resources in them, but usually, it was just ammo or batteries to recharge your telekinesis, so it was rarely anything that felt worthwhile. At times I could only tell that I was going down the right branch of a maze by seeing the autosave symbol appear in the corner, which isn’t the greatest sign for a feeling of meaningful progression.
Jacob now experiences hallucinations as you explore the new areas of Black Iron Prison. Still, to me, he’s never really had enough depth as a character to have these be emotionally impactful. There are some cool moments where it plays with the geography of the space, looping things back on you, but it never really feels like it goes anywhere with the concept. On the Resident Evil to Silent Hill spectrum of horror styles, The Callisto Protocol always felt way more Resident Evil to me, so they feel out of place here, perhaps again, another attempt to add something from the Dead Space series.
The hallucinations are explained through the narrative, which, once again, isn’t that much to write home about. The actual actions of the game are a lot of unlocking doors with fuses to progress, and the lore you discover that sheds light on what’s going on at Black Iron never really goes beyond early Resident Evil-levels of ‘bad people doing experiments with viruses.’ I wish the game had used the prison planet setting to say something clever or exciting, fully integrating it into its theming, like the PlayStation 2 game The Suffering, rather than just using it as a grimy and bleak backdrop for the action. The two to three-hour narrative definitely wraps things up for the story of The Callisto Protocol while also having one of the most bizarre post-credits sequences I’ve ever seen in a game. Still, it doesn’t leave me in a place where I’m dying to return to that universe.
One thing “The Final Transmission” does is maintain the base game’s high visual quality. While most areas are still bland stone or metal hallways that are occasionally covered in gross-looking goo, every once in a while, I’d come across an image that would immediately make me jump into photo mode. The game’s stellar lighting allowed me to frame some truly great screenshots. It’s some of the highest visual polish I’ve seen in a game and shines as the game’s strongest element. That said, even when it’s at its best, it’s still borrowing from better series like Aliens or Dead Space without adding much personality of its own.
Despite all my complaints about The Callisto Protocol, there’s still something there that made me want to give the DLC a shot. There’s a certain late-night movie appeal to the simplicity of its setup and the crunchy and brutal nature of its combat that is satisfying when you’re in the right mindset. I just wish it was a game that took some risk to establish a stronger identity rather than just trying to be a more cinematic and modern version of Dead Space. I wish I could say “The Final Transmission” was the strongest part of the game that improved on the flaws, but it’s more of the same. I’m very curious to see what’s next for Striking Distance, as they clearly have a talented group of people there who can visually realize a world in striking (no pun intended) detail. Hopefully, they can move out of the shadow of Dead Space and find a way to forge their own path into something unique.
The Final Transmission DLC code was provided by the publisher. The Callisto Protocol is out now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam.
There’s a layer of the mythic in everything Cynthia Pelayo writes, whether she’s charting the little-known history of her home city of Chicago or digging deep into the pool of shared stories that’s served humanity since ancient times. Regardless of subject matter or narrative, Pelayo reads like a writer constantly in search of the threads of legend and myth that bind us all together and keep us awake at night.
It Came From Neverland, Pelayo’s latest novel, takes that search and applies it to one of the most famous children’s stories ever conceived, J.M. Barrie’s beloved and oft-adapted tale of the Boy Who Never Grew Up. But this is not just a Peter Pan retelling, or a Peter Pan meta-sequel. Through gorgeous prose, finely drawn characters, and an iron grip on the themes that drive the story, Pelayo crafts It Came From Neverland into one of the year’s must-read genre novels, both a horrifying spin on Peter Pan and a luminous dark fantasy about the search for salvation in a cold, brutal world.
In Pelayo’s version of events, Wendy Darling and her brothers John and Michael really did travel to Neverland when they were children, drawn there by a charismatic and irresistible figure called Peter Pan. But this Neverland is far from the Disney version, and after fighting to survive in that ageless place, the children made their way home and shut Peter Pan out of their lives, refusing to so much as utter his name, lest he find them again.
Flash forward to 1914, where Wendy’s working as a schoolteacher at Marigold House, a London orphanage growing increasingly crowded amid the outbreak of World War I. By day, she teaches and volunteers at a local hospital, reading to the war wounded, and by night, she remembers to check every window latch and keep an eye on every shadow. But lately those shadows seem to behave strangely again. Crows caw all around her. And worst of all, children are disappearing again. Peter Pan is back, and faced with memories of how no one believed her the first time, Wendy prepares to face him one more time.
This is a remarkably well-suited atmosphere for moments of classic, chill-inducing terror, and Pelayo wastes no time weaving a world in which every bird call, every stray thought from the mouth of a child, could be evidence that this monstrous Peter Pan is near. Wendy lives a haunted existence, and as the chaos of war grips London, old fears grip her while new ones fight for position. If you come to this novel looking for something like Stephen King’s IT by way of J.M. Barrie, you’re going to get it, through flashbacks and dark lore and wonderfully well-timed scares, but Pelayo’s not done.
This version of Wendy Darling, through whom we see most of the narrative, cares for children in adulthood because she did not receive the care she needed herself as a child in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. She considers it her duty to listen to them, to protect them, to understand them in a world that still views them not as human beings, but as potential locked up in tiny bodies.
Setting the book in 1914, when young men across Europe were signing up to go and die in a war they didn’t quite understand, underscores this beautifully. Children are grist for the mill in the world of It Came From Neverland, their eager spirits waiting to be crushed by a machine of war and empire and capitalism that will not relent even if an armistice eventually arrives. It’s a wider, more existential layer of horror than the storybook monster, which gets us to open the book in the first place, but the real brilliance at work here is how Pelayo ties it all together.
At the core of all of this, the beating, icy heart of It Came From Neverland‘s horror and its search for meaning amid the narratives of war, children’s fiction, collective memory, and more, Pelayo is most interested in what it really means to never grow up. It means retaining a sense of play, yes, but it also means a refusal to move on, to embrace not just the responsibilities of aging, but the moral burdens of it.
Peter Pan is a monster not because he likes to play, but because he does not consider consequences, mortality, or even the needs and desires of others. The same is true of the leaders of Europe sending young men off to die in a war, and the same is true of leaders now, playing dice with human lives amid the rise and fall of the stock market. To never grow up is to lose something essential about being human, and Pelayo depicts that loss as both existentially terrifying and heartbreaking. That terror and heartbreak drive the novel, but Wendy’s efforts to escape that terror and to mend her broken heart make it fly.
It Came From Neverland is available June 9 wherever books are sold.
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