After a few years within the making, Lifeless Area religious successor The Callisto Protocol launched and… wasn’t fairly the slam dunk we have been hoping for. Our assessment discovered it to be “partaking, linear sci-fi survival horror” (opens in new tab), even when fairly traumatic, however a much bigger subject was that the sport launched on Steam with extreme stuttering points for a lot of customers (opens in new tab) (now fastened, and which Glen Schofield, CEO of developer Putting Distance Studios, blamed on “freakin error (opens in new tab)“)
Efficiency stuff apart, there’s additionally been a typical theme amongst these on the crew who’ve performed it. I cherished Lifeless Area however the sheer oppressiveness of this typically feels a bit a lot and, whereas I take pleasure in grisly loss of life animation, the protagonist right here actually does get ripped aside in horrifically detailed and gory style. You could not skip previous these and a few of them genuinely make you wince. It may possibly attain some extent the place, as our Fraser stated, they begin to damage the general expertise (opens in new tab).
A brand new patch has streamlined some parts of the sport’s fight system, and added the power to skip the loss of life animations (severely: a few of these issues really feel like they take minutes). The primary in-game tweak is that therapeutic is now quicker. Jacob heals by jabbing his neck with a stim and the animation at launch was gradual sufficient that it was exhausting to heal mid-fight: which was clearly intentional, however clearly the studio felt they’d been somewhat bit too imply.
Along with this, weapon-switching is now faster. So the final vibe is making fight a tiny bit much less traumatic, suggesting a lot of gamers had been dying and had perhaps had sufficient of seeing Jacob slowly filleted fifty methods afterwards.
The patch notes do not go into element however learn (opens in new tab): “Search for fight enhancements, efficiency and stability fixes, localization optimizations, and basic high quality of life adjustments. We’re listening and grateful on your suggestions. Extra to come back”. Putting Distance Studios additionally guarantees additional PC-specific optimizations are “within the works”.