More than anything, The Callisto Protocol wants to sh*t you up

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“I hate this fucking place,” says protagonist Jacob Lee after sliding down a waste water pipe, dodging turbine blades, mutated human abominations, jutting rocks, and all manner of other hazardous shite. You’ve just had to cave in the head of what was assumedly an old inmate acquaintance, but you don’t know for sure, because he had tentacles where his face should be. You’re now waist-deep in human waste, wading through a sanitation plant just so that you might, maybe, live to see another day. I hate this place, too, buddy.

For our The Callisto Protocol hands-on preview, we played a level entirely set in the sanitary system of the prison. You’re in a penal colony on Callisto, the second-largest moon of Jupiter, and something has gone wrong. A virus is ripping through the inmates and staff here, and you appear to be one of the few humans left in a locked-down industrial building full of stuff that wants to kill you. But the violence isn’t the scariest bit – not really. It’s the masterful way Striking Distance plays with tension that gets its hooks in your brain and refuses to let go.

Whether it’s steam vents depressurising at you, noises from pipes clunking right next to your head as you walk, skittering and scuttling in vents above and beneath you… there’s enough in just this one level to shred my nerves and keep me with a twitchy finger on the DualSense triggers throughout my playthrough. It’s a good job Jacob is as stoic as he is – he doesn’t even flinch when a steam valve pings right next to his head! – because I was doing my anxiety breathing exercises and damn near reaching for a Propanolol by the time the demo was up.

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