Recent reviews by iivs

Overview
Despite some technical quirks and minor drawbacks, the game ultimately delivers a satisfying experience. It manages to create a truly immersive and terrifying atmosphere that keeps you on edge throughout.

Positives
The game's atmosphere is genuinely creepy. The combination of intricate decorations, eerie rooms, cleverly placed monsters and camera angles, strategic lighting, and intense music creates a sense of dread. The use of low light and limited visibility amplifies the tension, making every corner potentially dangerous.

The weapons seems balanced. Ammo is neither overly abundant nor too scarce, providing just enough firepower to keep the action intense. Healing follows a similar philosophy, requiring you to manage your resources carefully. Manual, limited saves add a layer of challenge, while the character’s narration during these moments adds a nice touch.

Although the game features only a few jump scares, each one is executed effectively, and the constant need for a light source adds another level of danger. As you progress, the monsters become increasingly tougher. While there isn’t a wide variety of enemies, the unpredictability of an unseen threat lurking in the dark heightens the sense of panic and urgency.

Negatives
There are a few issues that detract from the overall experience. The camera occasionally jerks, creating disorienting transitions that can make it difficult to track action between frames. Monsters can attack from unexpected angles and distances, which adds to the chaos rather than the intended suspense.

Combat can feel clunky at times. For instance, when you ready your weapon, the game arbitrarily decides if you can aim, leading to moments where you’re prevented from targeting your enemy when you need it most. Additionally, the puzzles are too cryptic. At least for my personal taste. I often found my self reading a walkthrough to progress.

The map system is another weak point. It doesn’t update when an area is fully explored, fails to show your exact position within a room, and doesn’t automatically adjust to your current floor. Later in the game, some areas lack a map entirely, which, combined with the confusing camera angles and low light, can leave you feeling lost.

Another minor issue is with the persistent “stalker” monster. Although its presence is intended to add tension, you can easily bypass it by exiting and re-entering a room. Its predictable behavior, combined with loud and intense music whenever it appears, somewhat diminishes the fear factor.

Lastly, the time travel and supernatural elements felt out of place. The biggest complaint is the lack of an option to rebind keys. It forced me to use external tools like AutoHotkey. Character animations also fall short, as there are no mouth movements to the dialogue.

Conclusion
Despite these drawbacks, the game remains an engaging and intense experience. Its atmospheric design and unique gameplay mechanics are enough to recommend it.

If you hate yourself, this game is perfect for you. It's a great time-waster - full of bugs and frustrating game design. Expect to be annoyed for hours.

Graphically, it looks decent. There aren't many customization options, but it's fine. Unfortunately, that's where the positives end, and I don't even know where to begin with the rest.

Most areas seem procedurally generated, while some static zones serve as mandatory transition points to the next area. But there are far too many flaws. Sometimes, I'm not even sure if an object I need didn't spawn at all, spawned outside the boundaries, or if I just missed it - perhaps even an intentional design choice. Adding to the frustration, the game features invisible walls. It appears as if you can walk freely through wide, open areas, only to be abruptly stopped by an unseen barrier - a relic from a bygone era of game design.

Loot is abundant, but you never really know what you need because of the convoluted crafting system. So, you just grab everything and hope you have the right materials when you reach a crafting bench. Some loot is completely inaccessible - either because it's outside the border or blocked by obstacles. Due to the heavy reliance on procedural generation, zombies may spawn on top of trees, fences, or even in the sky. But worst of all, they can spawn underground. They can attack you, but you can't see them, and they will kill you. There's no way to escape.

Sometimes, you get stuck on nothing and end up swarmed because you couldn't move. Some runs are so poorly balanced that you'll randomly find all kinds of weapons but no ammo. Other times, you'll be loaded with ammo but have no healing items. Some areas are overwhelmed with large, heavily armored zombies - so much so that even a grenade launcher won't help. And because they sprint at you, you'll likely kill yourself with the explosion, even at full health.

Leveling up feels completely worthless. I have no idea what it even does. What actually matters is the knowledge you gain through looting. But even with a +100% bonus on some skill or stat, you won't notice any difference. Enemies can still kill you almost instantly because in late game you have less health than when you started with.

Some areas become inaccessible due to randomness. Fire hazards, for example, can make progression impossible. Even if you max out your skills and resistances, you'll still burn to death in seconds. Some monsters are bullet sponges but mysteriously weak to melee attacks. There's no way to tell which ones. You also can't shoot downward. If an enemy is crawling, you simply can't shoot it. The same applies to downward slopes and knocked-over barrels.

Speaking of barrels, they're placed in ways that should let you take out groups of zombies—but they're useless. You might think you can kick a barrel into a horde, but no, you can't. You can't even shoot it properly. If you accidentally knock it over, or if a zombie bumps into it, it's as good as gone. Like I said you can't shoot downward.

Crafting is another mess. The game doesn't tell you how much damage a crafted weapon will do. Stamina is a constant problem. Every single action consumes it, and when you're out, the screen becomes desaturated - not quite black and white, but annoying enough to make visibility terrible.

When you clear an area, the game claims you can skip certain stopping points to travel faster. But in reality, you can't - because you'll never have enough fuel. So, you still have to stop at nearly every single location.

And of course, there are the dumb things. Your car can drive through a fence without even damaging it. You can melee zombies through fences, but they can't get back in, and you can't loot them. Zombies can also spot fire inside a house from absurd distances.

There are just too many frustrating and illogical mechanics. I can't recommend this game.

TL;DR: Just go play Dead Space.

As much as I respect Glen Schofield, I can't say the same about The Callisto Protocol. According to interview I saw, the game was shipped prematurely, and he couldn’t stop it. The lack of polish is evident throughout, and the story feels incomplete. The final cinematic — and especially the last few minutes — suggests that the full story requires a €15 DLC. A cliffhanger ending that you have to pay extra to resolve is just outrageous.

The combat is dull and repetitive: dodge, melee, dodge, melee — rinse and repeat. It quickly becomes tedious, and the dodging mechanic is frustrating. One wrong move, and you’re dead. I lost count of how many times I was one-shot because the system felt unforgiving.

There’s no map. The level design is linear and sometimes pretends to offer exploration. You’ll find side rooms, but there’s always only one way forward. Worse, it’s not clear which path progresses the story and which is just a dead-end detour. In most cases there will be an autosave indicating that you're now progressing the story, but that will not always be the case. Additionally you will have no space to carry the loot you find in those extra rooms. The environment feel repetitive — everything looks the same. I sometimes got lost, unsure what to do or which object to interact with to progress. And with no objective reminders or prompts, I often forgot what I was supposed to be doing after a break from the game.

Autosaves are terrible. Manual saves are pointless because the game always reverts to the autosave. These saves often happen at the worst moments, killing any sense of pacing. They also scream, "Something big is about to happen!" I’d much prefer save stations like in Dead Space.

The balancing of health and ammo is a mess. Sometimes you’re drowning in resources which cannot carry back because the door is locked behind you, other times you have nothing at all. Just your melee weapon. Maximum ammo capacity is limited, and picking up a new weapon adds another ammo type to juggle. Healing items come in two forms, but the slower one is useless because enemies can interrupt you mid-heal. Why even bother carrying it?

The game’s reflective surfaces are misleading. They often shine like item pickups, leading me to chase phantom loot. Breakable windows and environmental hazards like cysts respawn if you revisit areas, which is ridiculous. Simple things like opening a box can be fatal if your health is low.
The flashlight is another head-scratcher. Its light source seems to come from some tiny, invisible dot on the suit, and it doesn’t even glow. And there is no indication from where the inventory is displayed in front of your character. In Dead Space you at least had a screen built-in front of your suit.

Outfits are lackluster, and inventory space tied to them feels restrictive. The one story-mandated upgrade doesn’t compensate for this. Every chapter transition is interrupted by a black loading screen, shattering immersion.
The intro scene is particularly bad — your character immediately adopts a generic "ready to get jumped" pose, even when there’s no danger. Everyone looks perpetually sweaty, like they’ve run a marathon. Holograms randomly pop up without input, which raises questions: Is there a motion sensor activating these things? Were they turning on every time someone walked by when the station was alive?

The kinesis module (or GRP, as the game calls it) has no clear recharge system. It blinks when it’s low but gives no gradual feedback. You’re stuck waiting around when it’s empty, doing absolutely nothing. Similarly, the inventory system is unnecessarily split into two categories for weapons and then gadgets, ammo and health.

The game is riddled with immersion-breaking bugs. One standout was a giant 2D rat silhouette sliding across the environment. Silent kills are anything but silent, yet enemies remain oblivious even when you kill their buddies right next to them. However, stand up from crouching, and they’ll instantly hear you.

All the weapons look and feel the same. Switching between them is confusing, as you can’t tell what you’re holding. Swapping weapons is painfully slow, and the absence of something as simple as number keys for quick selection is baffling.

The music is almost non-existent. Was this supposed to build tension? If so, it failed. The game isn’t scary. Not once did I feel a moment of fear or suspense, and I’m pretty jumpy.

The difficulty settings are unclear. “Maximum Security” sounded like an option for a safe and secure experience. Nope — it’s just prison terminology.

The Callisto Protocol had potential but squandered it with poor mechanics and uninspired design. I don't see my self playing New Game+ mode. Maybe if the DLC is on discount, I'll revisit the game once again, but I hear the DLC is even worse that the main game.

This game is so bad that I couldn't wait for it to end. The main protagonist is an emotional wreck, and the child companion is downright annoying. Your main character is either screaming, doing ASMR, or whimpering.
Story is absolute cringe. The gameplay is minimal, with chapter after chapter consisting mostly of cutscenes and painfully slow walking sequences. The last four or five chapters are laughably short, about a tenth the length of the earlier ones. I thought I was halfway through the game, only to find myself suddenly at the final chapter.
Combat is mediocre. However, skills are upgraded depending on how you play, which feels restrictive and frustrating. The guards are as brain-dead as in any game, but it's particularly bad here. Side characters blatantly run outside the tall grass or directly in front of enemies, yet somehow remain unseen. Some scripted fights have infinite spawning arrows, which feels cheap. On top of that, the game constantly showers you with resources, making it feel overly hand-holdy. And don't even get me started on the invincible mode — who is this game even designed for?
The world design is another issue. Everything is smeared with white paint to tell you what's interactable. You can't jump on a ledge unless it's marked with the magical white smear. But when it comes to jumping down? That's a different story. I managed to soft-lock myself because I jumped down somewhere the game didn't want me to. And obstacles like tiny little baskets, you could step over, are blocking your path? Instead of moving them, you're forced to find another route.
The camera controls are abysmal. Move the mouse slowly, and the camera crawls. Move it even slightly faster, and it spins around like crazy. That gave me a headache. To make matters worse, the game froze and crashed three times, forcing me to replay sections.
In the end, this game felt more like a chore than entertainment. I had to play it and finish it, because I played the first one. And after several chapters I was already invested and wanted to know what's going to happen next. But I can't recommend this game. You can probably find a good play-through on YouTube, if you're just interested in the story.

The is not a masterpiece as people claim. It's not a bad game, but it's simply good enough to earn a positive review. This game runs perfectly fine on 7800X3D with RTX 4090 on ultra settings. CPU usage typically stays below 50% and GPU around 97%. And I got like 80-90 FPS. The only time the CPU will go up to 100%, is when the game will build shaders. After that, it's all smooth sailing.

The story begins with a strong setup but abruptly jumps ahead 20 years. That's a significant time skip, and the events during that period are barely explained. I would have loved to see a gradual collapse of society and how the world transformed over time. Even the origins of the apocalypse are unclear.

The acting is excellent, and the seamless transitions between cutscenes and gameplay are impressive. The environment looks visually stunning, but it feels lifeless and empty. I know it's a post-apocalyptic world, but there should be at least some presense of life. While I understand it's a post-apocalyptic world, there should still be more signs of life. You'll encounter the occasional rat, bird, or other animal, but the world remains oddly sterile, despite being overgrown with greenery. It's as if everything was cleaned up after the collapse — no rotten food, no cockroaches, no maggots, no spiderwebs, and no flies buzzing around corpses or abandoned food. Even the burned-out and collapsed buildings feel unnaturally tidy.

The gameplay is highly linear, with little room for meaningful exploration. Straying off the main path yields no rewards — no loot, secrets, or files to uncover. After a while even the sneaking around gets a bit tedious. Carrying capacity is limited, but where's always plenty of ammo and weapons to choose from. One immersion-breaking detail is how enemies fail to notice side characters blatantly running in front of them while you're trying to stealth. There are also other odd design choices: for example, unlocking a dialogue option only to miss it because you were too far away or turned back too late. Upgrading weapons at workbenches is a nice touch, but some upgrades feel unintentionally funny — like how cleaning a gun with a rag magically increases its ammo capacity.

The game has its fair share of annoyances too. The kid who's supposed to be around 14 sounds like he's 30. Your character can get stuck when side characters block the way and just stare at you instead of moving. Several times, I noticed my health refilled after major cutscenes or chapter transitions, which felt like the game was holding my hand. And while I played on Hard, I still found it too easy at times. Exploration can also be frustrating. Want to move faster to search for loot? Too bad — the game limits your movement speed unless it deems running appropriate, and sometimes you can't even jog. And how does the character magically know which areas have breathable air and which don't, often just a few steps apart?

There are few seasonal changes at one point, indicating that about three months have passed each time. Yet the characters look almost identical each time, save for minor clothing changes. Hairstyles remain the same, and the game gives no indication of what transpired during those months. The Left Behind section (likely a built-in DLC) provides a small playable snippet of off-screen events, but it's not enough to fill the gaps.

After completing the game, you unlock cheats like infinite ammo and explosive arrows, but these don't add much replay value. Additionally, there are no achievements for finishing on higher difficulties, which further discourages replaying the game.

The game becomes boring and repetitive very quickly. Initially, it was a bit challenging to get things going, but once I reached a certain point, paid off the loans, and the money started coming in rapidly, I lost interest in pursuing the goals the game presented. It felt like there was no reason to continue playing. Additionally, I got stuck at one point because I couldn't build certain objects, and the game offered no explanation for this.

I tried to enjoy this game, but I just couldn’t. It’s boring, buggy, and sometimes even stutters on an RTX 4090. The only redeeming quality is probably David Harbour, who plays Edward Carnby. As for the other actress — she comes across as somewhat off-putting.

The story? I couldn’t make sense of it. Every other character speaks as if they’re delivering a poetic monologue before a dramatic death. And all the voodoo mumbo jumbo only gave me a headache. None of the characters are memorable — they smoke, they drink, and they ramble nonsensically. Your main character constantly teleports to bizarre locations with no map to guide you. The secondary character, whom you meet a few times, seems to think you’re an idiot. The two characters have entirely disconnected stories.

The enemy design is uninspired. Some enemies appear out of thin air, while others spawn inside walls, boxes, or doors. While this can work in your favor (since they’re stuck), it’s a terrible look for the game. The enemies are either so dumb you can stand right in front of them without issue, or they’re hyper-aware, spotting you from a distance and charging at you — even when you’re crouched with your flashlight off. It feels like their behavior is scripted.

The default controls are atrocious. It’s as if the developers have never used a keyboard and mouse. Distractions using throwable objects rarely work, as enemies don’t react to the sounds. Sometimes, you’ll hit an invisible wall, make a noise, and end up alerting the enemy nearby.

The puzzles? Mediocre at best. Most involve rearranging blocks to create a picture. Couldn’t they have put more effort into this? Some locks can even be brute-forced, which just feels lazy.

The weapons are equally disappointing. While you find plenty of ammo, you can’t stockpile it — it’s heavily limited. Melee weapons break quickly, sometimes before you can even kill a basic enemy. On the plus side, you can pick up a new melee weapon and “refresh” your old one by swapping back and forth, which fully restores its durability. Although the melee weapons look different, they feel identical.

The dodge mechanic is a joke. In narrow corridors, you can’t sneak past enemies, and the dodge only works forward. This means you end up lunging directly into enemies and getting hit anyway. Sometimes, when you do take damage, there’s no visual feedback. Later, you’ll notice your health is gone without realizing when it happened. To top it off, you can even get stuck on invisible obstacles — this happened to me multiple times.

The audio design is terrible. It sounds like everything is drenched in reverb, and sounds often originate from the wrong direction. Wooden stairs might sound like metal ladders. It’s yet another example of how buggy this game is.

Autosaves trigger constantly whenever you pass certain points. But manual saves are almost pointless because loading them just sends you back to the nearest autosave checkpoint. Sometimes, items you collected before saving are missing, so you have to go back and pick them up again after reloading.

The last chapter? It’s not even a chapter — it’s just a boss fight. The boss can one-shot you, and the combat is so clunky that it made me want to play something else entirely.

And finally, there’s no achievement for completing the game on hard difficulty without hints. Honestly, don’t bother.

I wish you could hear my eyes roll, is how bad and cringe this game is. Even worse than the first one. I'm not sure why I even bought it in the first place.

The story is boring, uninteresting and just dumb. No huge secret, nothing interesting about it. And what's worse, how the story is told. There's too much stuff to read. I got bored after reading a few logs and just stopped reading them. They could've added like audio or video logs with few interesting messages to find out what happened and what where the people that lived there. But no. Just text, text, text and more text with names and actions that make no sense. It's like starting to read a book in the middle of it and trying to make sense of it.

Every object in the world you look at is just bunch of text. The characters you play as, can't inspect them or say anything about them. This made the world boring, uninteresting to look at. Just a bunch of icons clogging up the screen for no reason. However instead, in almost every room the characters interrupt your movement and actions by trying to say some generic things. The characters you play as are just plain boring. Their backstory is also generic garbage.

The voice acting is the worst I've seen in years. I can't listen to it. The voices are annoying to listen to. It's just heavy breathing followed my a pause and more heavy breathing. And they talk only for the sake of talking. Nothing important. Just filler words and long pauses. Nobody talks like that in real life. And every few minutes you're interrupted with more and more talking and heavy breathing. And the robotic voices are ridiculous. Sounds like sound FX I made back in the 90s.

No point in making characters with unique abilities while they can simply pass items to one another in seconds where ever they are, how deep underwater they are and how apart they are with magical sci-fi materializing things (teleporting?) out of thin air. It's just stupid. And when they stand next to each other, they talk like they are speaking on the radio, not like they're next to each other.

The puzzles didn't make any sense to me. So cryptic that I lost interest. Once I though I did a puzzle just by closely listening to sound, but it didn't work. Turns out I had to use an item and then repeat the same stuff. Only then in worked. The items you find, the things you interact with make no sense. Most of them at least. I had to use a walkthrough. And even with the whole walkthrough on my side monitor, I was really confused where to go and what to do. Had to read it 4x times and had to still run back and forth clicking on every single thing.

The movies are zoomed in. Almost all the of the time I can't understand what's going on. It's like those selfies where a person is just a face with minimal background. And all cutscenes are like that. I have no sense of where they are, what's happening to them, where are they going, where are they falling etc. It's just dumb.

At some point in game, they give each character some flashbacks, but those too are worthless time wasters, because they don't give any valuable information what so ever. They don't make characters more interesting or story more interesting.

Graphical settings are bad. At least the default ones. I had to use accessibility options. Made me feel like a disabled person. I mean they could've made it graphically stunning, but no. Not even visuals are good.

I remember the first game was a horror game. This one is not. It's just a bad point & click game.

The game tries to be a combination of BioShock and Fallout.
The names are hard to remember and often times I keep wondering who is who when a person is mentioned in a conversation. And the conversations quickly become political, which I just really don't like. Only at the very end the story got interesting and suddenly it was over. I'm not sure if that was the true ending or not. I got two. I see I have many more unfinished achievements, but I don't know if those are in main game or DLC, which I don't want to buy.
Combat becomes boring after some time. Especially outdoors. There enemies are repaired all the time. You're constantly under attack non-stop. After some time it just gets annoying not be able to explore. The world seems big, but many areas hold nothing of value. Some random enemies patrolling around pretending to guard something, when in reality nothing is there. Most of my time I spent underground solving jumping puzzles. I imagine the main story like could be finished really fast.
The is a lot to loot, but there are so many materials and ammo even on hard difficulty that you don't even need all of it. Weapon comparison is non-existent. And trying to figure out which upgrade module to use and each weapon gave me a headache.
I like to imaging that I'm the main character in game, but the main protagonist seemed always angry and annoyed. This didn't make me feel related at all. Everything felt meaningless.
I like the theme of soviet union being modern with robots and stuff, I remember some of the songs they played in background and the cartoon on TV, but that's just nostalgia for me. I just can't recommend this as good game. I'd give this 4/10.

I don't know why, but I just can't stop playing it. I like every single thing about the game.
I like the way how story is told. All characters are fleshed out and fully voice acted. For a very long time it seems like they are not repeating same thing over and over. It always feels like there is something new to be heard, some new conversation to be had, maybe a new quest or secret. It's just fun to walk up to some character and be curios what it will say.
The combat is fast and fun. Even for an old man like me. I never though that a game can have so much replay value. Every run is different and somewhat random. You can affect the randomness a little bit. The enemy encounters are shot. You can play the game for a few minutes and if you have to go, you can quit and then return to where you were.
Character progression is also very well paced. The upgrades you get and not super powerful, but you do feel like you are a bit stronger over time. And then you can slowly increase difficulty each time.
The bosses are fun and challenging. The levels, the artwork, the music... like I said, I like everything about this game. Sometimes I want to play just 10 minutes, but I find my self playing the game for 3 hours.
Absolutely recommend this game.