Introduction:

I held off on posting this review until I’d wrapped up both games; it took me a couple of weeks to finish the Dead Space remake, but, with its myriad of fleshy horrors safely in the rearview mirror, here’s a double review no one asked for. Honestly, it’s so one-sided that it isn’t much of a ‘showdown,’ but I’ve already established the nomenclature, and I’m the kind of guy who stands by his decisions, unless they have consequences I don’t like.

Also, shoutout to Zandor for the help with the jokes on this one.[1]

Setting:

Creepy space prison or creepy mining spaceship…who ya got?

At the end of the day, they’re both creepy, but Dead Space’s doomed ship, the Ishimura, is a more engaging setting. The Ishimura really feels like a singular location, whereas Black Iron feels like a bunch of video game levels stitched together without much in the way of connective tissue. I’ll admit that Callisto’s levels show off a broader color palette, but I never felt like I was exploring a plausible space, just a series of rooms I’d probably get murdered in.

As other reviewers have noted, the sheer number of spiky walls present in Callisto’s Black Iron Penitentiary boggles the mind: this shit is like Joel Madden’s head circa 2002, or a Punji pit circa 1971 (whichever one you find more erotic). The big fans, drills, and industrial grinders make a lot more sense in the context of Dead Space’s industrial mining ship, the USG Ishimura, given that space mining probably entails the use of sharp objects.

Story & Characters:

Would you ever guess that bad things happen when people tamper with alien artifacts they don’t understand?

The aforementioned bad things happen in both games. Ultimately, Dead Space’s story feels more immersive – partially because of a specific feature of gameplay (audio logs playing while you play, as opposed to making you sit in one place to listen). It’s also a bit more fleshed-out, in-game-universe-wise, which (I think) is a function of the series’ decade-plus history (including films and a tie-in novel[2]).

I won’t spell out the specifics, but it bears mentioning that both titles end on jump scares; Dead Space’s feels earned, but Callisto’s is just obnoxious, and made me feel like the developers were just using the ending as bait for a DLC story expansion. Boo.

The Callisto Protocol makes use of eerily lifelike facial animation to bring its cast to life; actors like Josh Duhamel and Karen Fukuhara are easily recognizable, and do a good job of acting appropriately panicked and/or pissed off, as the situation demands. Unfortunately, their characters have minimal depth and their arcs progress in predictable directions. On top of that, the villains are paper-thin, with generic motivations and forgettable monologues. Seriously, these are the most forgettable bad-guy speeches since Spectre… which, I mean, come on, a guy named Blofeld explaining how he’s going to slowly drill James Bond in the head? Freud would be spinning in his grave…but I digress.

Dead Space puts a bit less of an emphasis on direct character interaction, with main character Isaac watching holograms, listening to audio logs and having phone conversations much more frequently than he ever speaks to another character in person. The remake gives Isaac a voice (he didn’t speak in the original 2008 release), but his new voice lines are unintrusive thanks to how sparingly they’re included. The cast is also a bit unpredictable, given that several of them are actively losing their sanity as the game progresses; you don’t see this kind of psychological horror in Callisto, and that’s a real shame.

Exploration & Puzzles:

The Dead Space remake adopts some light Metroidvania elements, with Isaac gaining higher levels of security clearance as the player progresses that permit access to previously inaccessible areas of the Ishimura. The story naturally encourages backtracking, which means that it’s never too much of a pain in the ass to check out that locked storage room you noticed five hours ago.

The Callisto Protocol is a much more linear experience, almost to a fault. You’ll stumble across the occasional optional side path, which usually lead to valuable loot – but you’re rarely tipped off as to which paths are mandatory and which are optional. This means that the player will often unintentionally progress far enough down the main path that they lock themselves out of optional areas they might have wanted to explore. It’s like when you’re out late and you’re really vibing with someone at a bar, but then you find out they’re in a relationship, so you go home alone and flog the dolphin like you’re an angry Japanese fisherman until the pain goes away.

Wait, what were we talking about?

Neither title boasts any puzzles to write home about – they’re primarily matters of timing button-presses and using telekinesis on various types of sci-fi equipment (this is less exciting than you might think). A decent break from combat, but not a lot more.

Combat & Survival:

Combat is a crucial element of any survival horror game, and it’s predictably central to both titles. That said, the games handle combat mechanics quite differently: Dead Space maintains a focus on ranged weaponry, while Callisto balances short-ranged gunplay with brutal (and brutally repetitive) melee combat. That’s not to say that Dead Space’s melee combat isn’t brutal – just that it’s deemphasized in favor of chopping off enemies’ limbs at a range of 10-15 feet with a variety of sci-fi engineering tools. It reminds me of my buddy Sean’s brother’s bachelor party, where we repurposed a drill and a pneumatic hammer to…you know what, never mind.  

“Survival” is a nebulous term, I know, but here I’m primarily talking about inventory management – the tug-of-war between game and player over crucial items like health packs and ammo. Both Callisto and Dead Space adjust item spawns and frequency based on the selected difficulty level…which leads to a necessary aside.

I played Dead Space on normal difficulty and found it to be well-balanced (if perhaps slightly profligate with how much ammunition I picked up from enemies); conversely, I cranked Callisto Protocol down to easy about an hour in and never looked back. The difficulty drop meant that I didn’t die very often, but it also made my weapons feel moderately effective (and gave me a metric fuckton of bullets to load them with).  On normal mode, melee combat felt like using a pool noodle to bash a pinata full of wet sponges.

Back to the review…

Dead Space wins on both counts here – the combat loop of dismembering necromorphs (taking out their legs to slow them down, for example) is much more interesting than Callisto’s “bash ‘em a bunch and then maybe shoot them when the prompt comes up” approach. On top of that, Dead Space presents the player with more tools to use and more ways to upgrade their effectiveness, making every hard-earned damage increase or health boost feel meaningful. The Callisto Protocol’s comparatively meager offerings aren’t helped by the fact that a number of upgrades are effectively mandatory, keeping the player from spending their resources on things they might find more interesting.

Graphics & Visual Design:

On the graphics front, Callisto takes the win; Dead Space is extremely good-looking in its own right, but Callisto has much more impressively animated characters – almost crossing the uncanny valley – and some impressive graphical flourishes that the competition doesn’t match. Both games make great use of lighting; don’t play them in the dark unless you’re OK with shitting through your couch.

When it comes to visual design, however, Dead Space is the easy winner; Callisto’s generic zombie enemies can’t hold a candle to Dead Space’s necromorphs, whose design leans more Cronenberg than Giger but evinces the influence of both. And, sure, Callisto might be a bit more colorful at times, but Dead Space boasts a much more coherent visual style, which I quite appreciated.

Scares (and Gore):

Callisto doesn’t have many effective scares (all of which are of the jump variety), and many of them feel like they’re arbitrarily punishing the player (hello for the seventeenth time, horrible grabby monster hiding in a locker). It does have some really, really grotesque death animations that (when I played it pre-patch) you were forced to sit through every time you made the mistake of trying to get think outside the box during combat. These were, I must admit, memorably creative, albeit in an extraordinarily disturbing way – like John Wayne Gacy’s novel use of crawlspace storage.

Dead Space has some crazy gore, too, but you probably won’t see as much of it because you’ll be too busy soiling yourself in terror. This is a better balance, I think: gory details should be used to support the horror, not be the horror. Then it’s just gross.

TL;DR: Dead Space is so much fucking better.

---

[1] If you haven’t already, check out his review of “The Final Girl Support Group,” available here: https://scrubreport.com/2022/08/17/the-final-girl-support-group-a-zandor-review/

[2] I’m honestly fascinated by the idea of a tie-in novel for fucking Dead Space. Might have to read it and do a book report…