The Callisto Protocol appears to be broken at launch on PC

[Modeps]

Not only does it have Denuvo and doesn't say it does on Steam, but according to the user reviews, even on high-end hardware it is running terribly. I was really looking forward to this one but... hopefully they can fix it I guess.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Wow. This was supposed to be THE title to show off the Radeon 7900XTX.

What did AMD get themselves into?

 

[Modeps]

Wow. This was supposed to be THE title to show off the Radeon 7900XTX.

What did AMD get themselves into?

From the sounds of it, they got themselves into UE4

 

[DigDog]

From the sounds of it, they got themselves into UE4

.. you mean UE5 ?


also, what persuaded you to put money into a mostly negative game ?

 

[Modeps]

.. you mean UE5 ?


also, what persuaded you to put money into a mostly negative game ?

I mean UE4.

I didn't spend money on it as it just came out. I like to wait to see what the masses find with these bigger releases before forking it over. Maybe it can be patched, if so I'll be waiting for a highly discounted GOTY version later on (they also announced a line of content that is still coming, including more story content).

 

[DigDog]

I mean UE4.

I didn't spend money on it as it just came out. I like to wait to see what the masses find with these bigger releases before forking it over. Maybe it can be patched, if so I'll be waiting for a highly discounted GOTY version later on (they also announced a line of content that is still coming, including more story content).

i'm still perplexed. if it's a title meant to showcase the 7900, surely they would pick something built in UE5 ?

 

[Modeps]

i'm still perplexed. if it's a title meant to showcase the 7900, surely they would pick something built in UE5 ?

https://www.ign.com/articles/the-callisto-protocol-dev-explains-the-tech-behind-the-games-gory-details

Looks like they incorporated some stuff from UE5 into a custom build of UE4.

 

[sze5003]

I was looking forward to getting this for ps5 but now that I have a 4090 it would make sense to get it on PC.

Sounds like I need to take a look at the steam reviews. I think this game got called out for micro transactions too. I was looking forward for something new to play with the 4090.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Never pre-order, never buy brand new. Wait 1 year, buy GOTY edition for 80% off.

What baffles me about these releases is "isn't someone playtesting these games?"

I mean, best I can figure, there is some algorithm somewhere that says that a lot of people will pre-order, only a small number will return, and the game will still be profitable. If the studio's name is damaged, just scrap the studio and re-open under a new name.

 

[Igo69]

What this game already came out!? I thought it was for 2023!? Well this is great then or not since it's mostly negative reviews. WTF??

Why does this game look exactly like Dead Space are there any differences?

EDIT: just read 1 negative review stating it is basically the same game as Dead Space but worse lol. This is priceless

 

[sze5003]

What this game already came out!? I thought it was for 2023!? Well this is great then or not since it's mostly negative reviews. WTF??

Why does this game look exactly like Dead Space are there any differences?

EDIT: just read 1 negative review stating it is basically the same game as Dead Space but worse lol. This is priceless

I'm still interested in checking it out despite the bad press. It was hyped up a lot and one of the features was the several deaths that can take place. Sounds like dead space but somewhat different. What's funny is dead space remake is out in December too.

 

[Modeps]

What's funny is dead space remake is out in December too.

Is it really? I figured that was next year.

 

[Igo69]

I'm still interested in checking it out despite the bad press. It was hyped up a lot and one of the features was the several deaths that can take place. Sounds like dead space but somewhat different. What's funny is dead space remake is out in December too.

I am also interested in this game but i am not paying $60 let alone $80 for deluxe version for the same game that came out 14 years ago. Just better graphics, you kidding me!

 

[sze5003]

Is it really? I figured that was next year.

It's actually out next month on the 23rd so yea technically next year.

I am also interested in this game but i am not paying $60 let alone $80 for deluxe version for the same game that came out 14 years ago. Just better graphics, you kidding me!

Calisto protocol isn't exactly dead space. But the dead space remake from what I've seen looks really good. They remade it nicely where now you can traverse through areas of the ship using your jetpack freely as opposed to the original and changed some of the AI more to be less procedural.

I never bother with the deluxe edition of any game.

 

[sze5003]

Apparently the patch that was released tonight for PC fixed most of the issues with performance and stuttering.

 

[DigDog]

What baffles me about these releases is "isn't someone playtesting these games?"

well i was a playtester so i can give you an educated guess.

In the games design industry playtesters are seen a garbage. They call us Monkeys and this is so common that everyone in the biz knows this slang - a monkey is a playtester. Coders hate us, management hates us.

Bug reporting *has* to be done in an extremely polite, deferent, reverent, submissive way. "Oh Great Lord Coder, bug report 07622A, on X date at X time, bug repeatable and observed by mulitple testers TJF TMN TMT TLK area of gameplay: front UI, Description: if hovering with mouse over image top left corner [image attached] of UI button "PLAY GAME", application appears to cease to function. Testers also reported system failure, erased system drives and smoke. Please advise if by design. "

And, game testing is top-down, not bottom-up. You walk in every day to an email that says "Team 2 : use Club to kill 3000 snakes" "Team 1: change resolution in all languages in all regions" "Team 4: walk through portal with all hats" etc
You do occasionally have just gameplay situations, but very rarely does that become a bug report. And you NEVER, EVER can comment on design decisions. Like, you've played FPS games since quake and you can clearly see Gun 7 is ridiculously overpowered compared to everything else in the game, you absolutely cannot bring this as a bug report, and the design team will never ask for you opinion.

so, the answer to your question, is no. None of the people paid to playtest the games are actually playtesting the game, as you and me would understand it.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

well i was a playtester so i can give you an educated guess.

In the games design industry playtesters are seen a garbage. They call us Monkeys and this is so common that everyone in the biz knows this slang - a monkey is a playtester. Coders hate us, management hates us.

Bug reporting *has* to be done in an extremely polite, deferent, reverent, submissive way. "Oh Great Lord Coder, bug report 07622A, on X date at X time, bug repeatable and observed by mulitple testers TJF TMN TMT TLK area of gameplay: front UI, Description: if hovering with mouse over image top left corner [image attached] of UI button "PLAY GAME", application appears to cease to function. Testers also reported system failure, erased system drives and smoke. Please advise if by design. "

And, game testing is top-down, not bottom-up. You walk in every day to an email that says "Team 2 : use Club to kill 3000 snakes" "Team 1: change resolution in all languages in all regions" "Team 4: walk through portal with all hats" etc
You do occasionally have just gameplay situations, but very rarely does that become a bug report. And you NEVER, EVER can comment on design decisions. Like, you've played FPS games since quake and you can clearly see Gun 7 is ridiculously overpowered compared to everything else in the game, you absolutely cannot bring this as a bug report, and the design team will never ask for you opinion.

so, the answer to your question, is no. None of the people paid to playtest the games are actually playtesting the game, as you and me would understand it.

-I appreciate the perspective! I guess to double down on my initial point: don't the devs ever play their own damn game?!

 

[Zenoth]

I watched some gameplay on Stream and (part of) a review on YouTube, and I have no idea why most (reviewers, it seems) don't mention it but the general camera work and movement in this game is so aggravatingly bad that it physically makes me ill. I cannot watch it for more than 10 mins before I feel dizzy. The combat movement, the hits on enemies (screen shacking, attacking angles, or how the camera react to your character being hit, etc) the way it switches around from left to right, from right to left and then back to right, back to left without much (and in some cases without any) transition is jarring and beyond watchable (let alone would be playable to me).

 

[sze5003]

I had some money to blow so I bought this on PC and wish I had bought it on PS5 as the performance and rtx is at least smoothened out for the PS5.

I figured with a 4090 I'd be ok but this title is an amd sponsored title using fsr 2 which isn't as good as dlss.

It's fine and playable for me at 4k ultra settings with Ray Tracing. Getting between 50-80fps depending on the area. I could lock the frames to 60 but the frame drops are more apparent when locking to 60 vs letting it go all the way up to 120 and vary. The stutter due to UE 4 and loading assets still occur at certain intervals for example when entering a new area, or some new animation happens, etc.

The atmosphere and visuals are really well done. The combat in the beginning kind of sucks but I'm not far at all and what i have heard is it gets better as you get upgrades.

It's difficult to take on multiple enemies with the way the combat is designed to work as you can't prevent anyone from hitting you from behind or the sides.

 

[DigDog]

-I appreciate the perspective! I guess to double down on my initial point: don't the devs ever play their own damn game?!

have you really never read The Trenches?
Now, Trenches deals more with game Development, than testing, but it will give you an idea of how predatorial this industry is. And, because most coders know this, they too tend to enforce the "blue badge vs white badge" habit where if you are X color badge you can do what you want, but Y color badge should never look into the eyes of a X badge holder, so the further down the ladder you are, the more you suck. (i also worked at IBM where a Blue badge means you are an IBMer, permanent contract via the company, and White badges were contractors, basically one step up from criminals in their eyes. I was a White badge, ofc. )

The Trenches - Friendship

Also, because their NDA was *not* in perpetuity, my employer was Pole To Win (previously known as e4e) https://www.ptw.com/contact Glasgow site.
Give that website a read, it's a bit older stuff, but it's worth it.

 

[sze5003]

have you really never read The Trenches?
Now, Trenches deals more with game Development, than testing, but it will give you an idea of how predatorial this industry is. And, because most coders know this, they too tend to enforce the "blue badge vs white badge" habit where if you are X color badge you can do what you want, but Y color badge should never look into the eyes of a X badge holder, so the further down the ladder you are, the more you suck. (i also worked at IBM where a Blue badge means you are an IBMer, permanent contract via the company, and White badges were contractors, basically one step up from criminals in their eyes. I was a White badge, ofc. )

The Trenches - Friendship

Also, because their NDA was *not* in perpetuity, my employer was Pole To Win (previously known as e4e) https://www.ptw.com/contact Glasgow site.
Give that website a read, it's a bit older stuff, but it's worth it.

I can relate to this.. I can write code and test it myself by having tons of junits, end to end tests, etc.

But I initially wrote it so technically it would be a conflict of interest if I just say oh yea it's good to go I tested it with several requests through our service, whatever. We always have another person or a QA person run test cases which again in my company are usually defined in conjunction with the product owner, dev, and tester.

Same thing goes for elevating, I have access to elevate to production but if I touched the code there are controls in place that will fail the whole deployment if it realizes I checked code in the past few weeks, etc.

Edit:
OMG i edited your post intead of mine... for some wierd reason.
Removed the edit.
Moderator Aigo

 

[aigomorla]

UE4 requires a entire rewrite of the game, which is why patch files are ridiculously large from what i hear.
So fixing bugs and patching the game is a major hassle. (look at Icarus and modern warfare)

This is probably why bug fixes take a long time, as they don't want the users to constantly be stuck downloading a 50gb patch to fix something stupid like a broken floor panel, unless its like UBISOFT and game breaking allowing you to fall to the depths of hell itself.

But the stuttering issue, i hear a lot of people saying happened on mostly underpowered cards.
If your in the PCMasterRace class, with a 3080ti or higher, the game was very playable, like how batman Arkman knight played like turd unless you threw massive gpu power at it, and cyberpunk as well.

I think it mostly has to do with poor optimization as the game being coded is not coded on a 1060, but the developers are probably doing so on at least a 3080 or a 6800XT.

I figured with a 4090 I'd be ok but this title is an amd sponsored title using fsr 2 which isn't as good as dlss.

On a 4090 with UE4 you shouldn't have to use FSR 2 or DLSS.
It should steam roll without having to use either of those, which tells me the game was majorly rushed, very poorly optimized and most likely it will probably have serious issues even on the ps5.

 

[sze5003]

I will say the latest 10gb patch did smooth out some of the performance. I didn't notice any stutters when some new animation occurred and the fps using fsr 2.0 quality settings along with medium RTX reflections, improved a bit. Although there are still fps drops because the game is not optimized to use more cores of the CPU.

I could in fact turn off any upscaling and run native with RTX as long as I lock the fps to 60. But as I'm using fsr upscaling I have the fps limit set to my monitor's refresh rate of 120hz. The drops in fps don't cause stutters anymore since they are not as big drops as they used to be.

I'm still excited for the dead space remake but I wanted to play something of the same nature but newer because even though dead space is a complete remake, I still remember much of the plot/areas.

 

[sze5003]

On a 4090 with UE4 you shouldn't have to use FSR 2 or DLSS.
It should steam roll without having to use either of those, which tells me the game was majorly rushed, very poorly optimized and most likely it will probably have serious issues even on the ps5.

You would think right? But unfortunately without any upscaling even with the latest patch it still won't run as smooth without frame drops. It is indeed not optimized well similar to plague tale requim although I use DLAA in that title instead of DLSS.

I've heard from people that have it on PS5 it runs smooth which I guess makes sense since it's an amd sponsored title so console performance probably is easier to work on. Dlss won't be in this game at all I think.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I've heard from people that have it on PS5 it runs smooth which I guess makes sense since it's an amd sponsored title so console performance probably is easier to work on. Dlss won't be in this game at all I think.

It's probably a happy side effect of having a single pool of RAM on console rather than the separate system and video RAM on PCs. Maybe AMD should just sell Zen 2 CPUs on their graphics cards alongside the GPU. Maybe then most game related texture data traffic on the PCIe bus will cease and we can have smooth console frames too.