If you've had necromantic dreams about the sequel to The Callisto Protocol, I'm afraid the monkey's paw finger didn't just curl up — it jammed up to your nose and drew an FU on your hypothalamus. Developers Striking Distance and publisher Krafton explained [REDACTED]A sci-fi roguelike dungeon crawler set in the same universe.
The brackets are part of the title, yes, and also they call it “punk rock”—a combination of factors that fill me with such destructive rage that I can barely register the announcement trailer below. It's a machine-gun montage of comic book panels and sizzling melee arcs and quips like “there's a lot of jerks standing between you and the sweet taste of freedom.” I didn't even like The Callisto Protocol that much, but still, what did they do to you, kid? Where did the whole horror game go?
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Inside [REDACTED]you're a lone security guard trying to escape Black Iron Prison, the Jupiter correctional facility of the original game. In The Callisto Protocol, you crawl and sneak through cramped, dark corridors to fend off squamous mutant inmates in a passable imitation of Dead Space. [REDACTED]you beast hordes of colorful monsters in frenetic Hades-style arena brawls. There are skills to upgrade, metas to master, “experiments” (mods, I think?) to equip, and weapons and outfits to loot.
“This game is all about fighting, dying, dying again, dying some more, and adapting, taking the classic roguelike formula and turning it up to eleven,” the press release exclaims, because nothing says “punk rock” like unironically quoting a mockumentary piece of dialogue that was originally intended as a joke about the meaninglessness of numbers. At the very least, I wish video games would start turning the volume up to 12. Maybe next time.
I'm probably being too mean. Or at least I'm raving too much in the press release and not saying enough about the game. Forgive the Poochie The Dog presentation and just treat it as a genre piece with no connection to Callisto and [REDACTED] It looks decent enough. The visuals are pretty Void Bastardy, and hey, the melee combat definitely looks more fun than The Callisto Protocol, which is admittedly like saying that dragging a grater across your face is more fun than sitting on a blowtorch. The game does have one clever idea, at least, but I don't think it's unique. [REDACTED]: When you die, your corpse respawns as an enemy equipped with all the gear and upgrades you were carrying.
In other words, every run is an exercise in preparing for a boss fight, and I wonder how that might affect your tactics on a deeper level: If you're confident you'll take him down, should you throw in all your powerful gear to make life easier for your successor? Along with your own reanimated flesh, the game also features other human survivors locked in the same race for the final prison escape pod. They'll either try to kill you outright or throw “unexpected challenges” your way. Typical old-school scheming. When will they learn?
[REDACTED] It's out October 31. If you preferred the previous version of Black Iron Prison, you might be interested in former Striking Distance boss Glen Schofield's thoughts on the difficulties of development and abandoned plans for a sequel.