Callisto Protocol Officially released today, including the PC version. As PC gamers know well, playing a launch game on their favorite platform can feel like rolling the dice.
The technical state of a PC port is difficult to determine ahead of release, and many people usually find out how the game works on their systems on the release date. At least in this case, things didn’t go well.
As you might expect, Callisto Protocol owners on Steam immediately shared their frustrations with the PC port, even before they encountered any gameplay or design issues they might not like. As of this writing, the game has nearly 3,000 reviews, with an overall mostly negative rating.
As it stands, 68% of Callisto Protocol reviews are negative, hence the rating. Not a great start considering the game has been out for less than a day.
The culprit appears to be the game’s performance on PC. Many reviewers claim that they run the game on the best hardware and should get better results. Outside of the frame drops, the game often seemed to stutter randomly, leading one player to dub it The Stutter Protocol.
Stuttering issues are usually CPU-related, which is interesting in this case, since the game uses the much-mocked Denuvo DRM, which has been shown to cause similar issues in other games.
For GPU-intensive scenarios, the Callisto protocol does provide a form of image reconstruction in the form of AMD FSR 2, but not Nvidia DLSS. Based on many comments, FSR 2 doesn’t seem to offer much of a difference.
This is especially true when ray tracing is enabled, and many people choose to disable ray tracing for solid performance despite having the hardware to run it.
“I’m running a 3080 and this game keeps dropping frames into the 20s. I keep dropping frames for the first cutscene and it gets worse from there. It gets worse during gameplay,” reads one review .
“Currently, on the 3080 with ray tracing turned off, I can’t even walk through open areas and turn without stuttering. Performance is not good at all right now,” noted another.
One player suggested turning off motion blur and v-sync for a stutter-free experience, while others suggested using DirectX 11 instead of 12 for gaming.
Worst of all the game probably isn’t worth the trouble (and troubleshooting). In our Callisto Protocol review, Dom called it a “dead, depressing space,” which sounds like many others in the media.
