The Callisto Protocol has been updated with a New Game + mode, which after patching will be available to all players who’ve already finished the game. The mode allows players to carry over their progression into an even tougher runthrough, with all their previous gear collectable at the first Reforge station.
There’s also a minor gameplay tweak that will see players no longer take damage when vaulting over obstacles. The vault is a very slow animation, so you get hit a lot while doing it, and being on the other side of things is often the best way to not get destroyed by monsters. Interestingly enough this is how Resident Evil 4, the game that is the north star for Dead Space and the Callisto Protocol, implements vaulting, with Leon enjoying a brief period of invincibility that often saves his ass.
The changes come alongside a bunch of specific fixes to things like a glitch that has been around for a while, and produced some amusing videos, which sees poor Jacob fall through the scenery at certain points. One fix however, per player reports, hasn’t quite taken. Striking Distance says it’s fixed an issue with a sought-after achievement that wasn’t popping for some players (‘The Protocol is About Life’). It appears to still have issues.
PC-specific fixes include fixing a scene that was causing crashes for some players, a remapping of the ‘skip cinematics’ button, getting rid of a long hitch that happened when enabling ray-traced shadows, and our old friend “general performance optimizations”.
We liked the Callisto Protocol well enough in our review, calling it “engaging, linear sci-fi horror”. Not everyone was a fan on PC though thanks to endemic stuttering issues at launch (long since fixed) and the relentless nature of seeing your avatar killed over and over again in drawn-out grisly death sequences (which can now be skipped). The game’s future plans may also be scaled-down somewhat, because although it’s sold over two million copies it still failed to meet its publisher’s absurdly high expectations. And if you’re a fan, it’s worth a look at the official webpage, which contains a bunch of documentaries and an audio series.
