Beyond Dead Space: survival horror mutates into a terrifying new form in E377’s cover game, The Callisto Protocol

gamesradar.com:

 “There’s not too many games – I can’t even think of one off-hand right now – where you use a grav-gun to pick up the enemy,” Glen Schofield says. “You’re usually picking up things, right?” The Striking Distance CEO makes a good point – and indeed the Gravity Restraint Projector (or GRP for short) wielded by protagonist Jacob in The Callisto Protocol is one of the things that sets this sci-fi horror apart from Schofield’s previous venture into the genre with the much-admired Dead Space. 

In E377 we get an extended look at the game, including an exclusive glimpse at its thrilling opening sequence, as Jacob (Josh Duhamel) is captured and locked up in a prison facility on Jupiter’s “dead moon”. Yet it’s not the convicts or the other guards he has to worry about, as the place is soon overrun by hideous mutants – ones which, after a while, you’ll get the ability to grab with the GRP, slamming them into spiked walls or whirring machinery with predictably gory results. 

It’s unsettling to have these creatures – collectively known as the Biophage – writhing close to your face, which, of course, is entirely intentional. “We play with that distance a lot,” Schofield says. “Because absolutely we want the first time you do that to get a scare – and yeah, each time you get a little more used to that, but that feeling of ‘Hey, this monster’s a little too close to me’ makes you uncomfortable.” 

And that’s before we get to the other key point of difference: this time it’s not the limbs you’re shooting but the tentacles. The Biophage are infected with a virus that causes some of them to mutate: this process can take different forms (some will grow heads and limbs back, others will gain a layer of pustulent armour), but whatever the case,