For what it's worth, my Callisto Protocol "journal" from February 2023, when I didn't post here:
1. Haven't played this game, but I hate crouch makes quiet with a passion. Crouching in games should be for cover, avoiding line of sight and exploration, not sound. If you must have quiet movement until discovered, implement a tip toe animation or something, with only slight bending of the knees and hips, but don't lower the character to half their height. It's uncool, tedious and slow, crouching around everywhere.
2. Playing the free copy I got with my AMD card a few months ago.
The colors are fucked. Why do they never get the colors right? All the darks look raised, as usual. Almost like a lot of modern cinematography. I can't get anything close to blacks, meaning there is also not much range.
3. Someone on Steam told me the raised colors are common to Unreal engine games. I guess. Can't remember that well. Not often I play ones with such dark environments. Not a good look. Like there is a fog over the game. Shame because of how nice the environments look.
Game has Atmos. Notice it most with the doors coming up and down.
Very generous checkpoints. But the game is balanced in a way that it would be irritating and a waste of time without. Unfortunately. Playing on hard. Should have found a better way to introduce combat mechanics than spoiling an encounter before it begins with the on-screen instructions. Some of them don't need instructions, but appear only to have them for consistency's sake.
4. They {checkpoints} tend to give away when something bad is gonna happen. Of course the same thing can happen with saving station placed before the bad things, but saving stations are used a little more carefully by developers because of what they are in the game world.
Interesting they put "New experience" instead of "New game" on the main menu. Really seems like some video game designers feel slighted when their games are called games and want them to be considered more.
5. I don't get the complaint about only having one gun for most of the game, though. But melee system could be more varied in place of a small arsenal.
Was able to get better colors by raising contrast and lowering brightness in AMD control panel. Now it's actually dark. Never used that before, don't know if there's a way to set it for each game rather than globally, don't wanna go back into the game right now to check. Probably has to be done each time.
6. Have to wait for a 13 GB update to finish before I begin today, for DLC I'm not even gonna buy.
Habitat Zone H600, where the one hit killer robot walks in a big circle while the four-legged monsters move around, is really annoying. Don't know where the game even wants me to input the code as I try to get through this forced stealth.
7. Another thing about auto-checkpoints... There were two paths. I didn't want to miss something important and optional, but didn't know which was the way forward. Took one, received checkpoint. So knew it was the way forward. Went the other way for the optional path, knowing that I'd have to be very careful because I wouldn't get another checkpoint until I came BACK and went farther ahead to the next one. I made it through the optional path, continued onward, but died before the next checkpoint. So my progress through the little optional path was not saved. Saving manually makes more sense.
I'm in that place where the Last of Us clicker-like enemies start to appear. This place looks so good. Funny there's that whole setup with him trying to be super quiet while hanging upside-down and then when I actually get to playing again, I give them an easy beating and later sneakily stab them in the back of the head one by one. This is horror? Game's rather easy. Glad Resident Evil never adopted the stupid crouch makes quiet shit. But I never played Village and barely played 7.
8. Stealth is exceptionally bad. Just this very boring circle-crouching around the blind enemies, loudly one-shot killing their buddies within two feet of the other, and repeat, and repeat. I know it checks off those boxes, but their choices still are baffling.
9. That's not how you do a cliffhanger. Man, that was bad. Story is the typical dumb video game idea of "Let's make ourselves butt-ugly for transhumanism."
Played through the whole game with just the pistol and shotgun. Because why would you purchase guns and the upgrades for them when you can spend that currency on the few weapons you already have?
10. Left right, left right, left right dodge makes the bosses fucking shit. Also a good lesson as to why every third person game shouldn't be the cramped over the shoulder: you can't run away properly most of the time because the character is steered by where the camera is pointed and the combat relies on evading while facing the enemy.