The Callisto Protocol Performance Review

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The Callisto Protocol is a game with a myriad of inspirations and references within its design, but on the technical front it is most certainly a leader. Striking Distance is a relatively small, and certainly new studio, filled with a mix of veterans and new members who have collaborated to create one of the most forward-looking games of this generation. But before I get into that, I need to note that while the game is cross-generation, our review code only had access to the new-gen consoles and later the PC version.

Game Modes

The PS5 and Xbox Series X both have two modes: one is the default, which you could call a Quality mode or Ray Tracing mode, which runs at 30fps and has a dynamic scaling resolution with counts ranging from 3456x1944 to 2304x1296, effectively 90% to 60% of 4K. This is then improved, I suspect, by Unreal Engine’s TAAU to up-sample that back to 4K as often as possible. The image treatment here from that lower base is staggering, and I would not be shocked to learn that the team that has built or enhanced this with their own custom resolve and AA pass, as it can easily pass as 4K aside from some high-contrast areas that can be slightly unstable from the jittered rendering resolve it uses to up-sample. The game also supports FSR 2.1, with the caveat that this could be what the consoles are using, and the dynamic scaling could be higher or lower. Due to its dark look, gritty world, gore, and violence, this is a game that benefits greatly both from the Film Grain, which can improve perceived sharpness of the image, and the superb Per Pixel Motion Blur that assists greatly in the fully real-time cinematics, often convincing you they are genuine offline renders from only last generation.

The Quality mode is where all the new features stand out, being a great example of how the team has integrated elements of the later Unreal Engine 5 into this Unreal Engine 4.2 game. It supports both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 to enable older GPUs to run the game, but without DX12 you will miss out on the ray-traced reflections, shadows, and translucent surface refractions. In isolation they may seem like only a small boost, but due to the core cinematic and atmospheric design the game has, they are the biggest reason the game pulls off possibly the most impressive real-time character models in games thus far.

This mode has two main boosts, Ray Traced Shadows and Reflections, with the shadows running on both Series X and PS5. They not only dramatically increase the amount of shadow casting light sources within a scene, they also allow smaller objects to now cast shadows. The accuracy here is incredible as light and shadow now react more realistically, and less light bleeds through geometry. Darker areas now contrast better with the light, and shadows cast right off into the distance, whereas in Performance mode, they can pop in close to the camera and cast no shadows off into the middle and far distance. The way light casts across faces is so good, making it one of the main reasons that the game has such a high-quality CGI look and feel. The other big boosts are in the gameplay, as the lighting design works much better with the sheer wealth of shadows, particularly since some jump scares and tells in the game are designed with Ray Traced shadows in mind. This means in Performance mode you will simply not see a shadow of a monster in the distance, whereas in the Quality mode it is like Michael Myers popping up from behind the sofa.

Currently only the PlayStation 5 supports ray-traced reflections, even as of launch patch 1.3, with the Series X version limited to screen space reflections. I would assume that a patch will come soon to add them to the Series X, but until then it does leave the Xbox console missing out on a big visual boost of the new-gen version. The only saving grace is the Quality mode on Series X does run with a higher resolution most of the time due to this. The loss is noticable, as reflections are another key ingredient to the horror cake. Screen space reflections are still used as a boost to the local screen data on pools of water, blood and such, but they draw off as SSR no longer has that information on screen, but they blend here with those ray-traced reflections, and those are always present. From giant security robots to head-munching beasts, everything reflects in these surfaces. But the game goes even further by using them in planar surfaces and transparent reflections, which are expensive, meaning that both you and dynamic enemies all appear far more grounded and present in the game world. These reflections are also used on sub surface light refraction on enemy skin, with the blood- and pus-filled growths refracting light through in real-time.

What we said about The Callisto Protocol

The Callisto Protocol is a supremely atmospheric and action-heavy tour through a spectacular slaughterhouse set in distant space. Its largely linear design makes for minimal backtracking, meaning it trims the fat while leaving no shortage of bone and gristle to rip and tear. However, it also betrays its survival horror roots by regularly tipping the balance of power too far in favour of the player, and while there’s plenty of murderous fun to be had using giant grinding mechanisms to make mulch out of mutants, such cheap thrills come at the high cost of puncturing any tension and dread that the tremendous art and audio design work so hard to invoke. Aside from the meaty melee combat, there’s also the overriding sense that there’s not a lot here that hasn’t been done before – and there’s disappointingly little to do once you’ve beaten the campaign. Thus The Callisto Protocol is a satisfyingly gory spiritual successor to the Dead Space series, but it’s ultimately more of a striking modern mimic than a scary new mutation. –Tristan Ogilvie, December 1, 2022

Score: 7

Read the full The Callisto Protocol review

The second mode is Performance, which makes some visual cutbacks to the graphical force this game is. Ray-traced effects are all off the table now along with reduced post effects, lighting model, ambient occlusion, shadows and resolution, which now changes the dynamic range from a 2560x1440 maximum down to a low of approximately 2112x1188 – 55% of 4K – in some heavier sections. Again, with many of these techniques it may be a base resolution AA up sampling that now targets 1440p rather than 4K. The result is that any deficit can be hard to notice in many sections, but the biggest tell is on texture details within high frequency areas, increased dithering on shadows and a great deal less of them, and worse and nosier lighting passes. The payback is the game now runs at a 60fps target, which helps improve the temporal stability and the controller response. This helps most in the dodge-and-evade combat mechanic which requires you to move the left stick in opposite directions to the attack.

That said, this game is not a fast-paced shooter by any means, although it does have many other Doom-like qualities. In fact one of the games it reminded me of was Doom 3, a game that pioneered stencil shadows, so it’s fitting for the ray-traced ones here to really deliver on those same aims of accurate light and dark. It has the same sense of atmospheric tension, just delivered on a whole new scale.

The Series S cuts back some more effects, but resolution is the same as the Performance mode on the higher-end consoles, with a 1440p high and dynamically scaling down to 1080p as needed, although all my counts came out at 1440p. However, this is a single mode on the console and targets the same 30fps as the higher-quality mode of the other consoles, but it misses out on many of the graphical treats that mode offers, and instead resembles the Performance mode more, just with some extra cutbacks to aid the performance targets and relatively high pixel count it offers. The differences are not stark to most I am sure, but it did stand out to me jumping from the ray-traced mode on the other two. The cutbacks are intelligent, which can start to highlight some of the cross-generation roots of the game, as the extra fidelity, post effects, lighting and essential post processed film like rendering techniques are cut back heavily in places and far more frugal in others. This leaves materials often looking flat, with far fewer light sources, shadows, and more obvious light bleed and incorrect lighting on faces. These can still happen on the Performance mode on the other consoles, it just appears more frequent here due to reduced shadows over those modes.

Performance Comparisons

Performance Mode

Starting with the Performance mode, pitting the PS5 against the Xbox Series X, the first big difference is the resolution is often higher on the PS5 than the Series X, with the PS5 sometimes having a 19% higher pixel count. In addition, the performance is slightly more stable on the PS5, but these tend to be memory or CPU-like stutters that crop up on Series X on occasion when entering a new area, or mid-battle as it appears to be calculating the impact of the dynamic dismemberment and deformation system in real time. That said, most of these are almost invisible with an fps graph, and they both perform brilliantly in all the sections I tested with that 60fps rate never being an issue. Considering the game’s delivery time and some of the bugs that did crop up, performance is largely a standout achievement. Additionally, the patches that have come since review code dropped have improved all formats, and the 60fps mode is very close now between the two consoles.

Ray Traced Mode

The extra graphical enhancements and increased resolution cost halve the framerate in this mode, which is actually more than a fair trade off as the increased per object motion blur and 3rd person action are not significantly hampered by the reduced input latency. And from the sections I tested, it really only skips a single frame here and there which would never be noticed without a frame-time graph. The review code was very stable on PS5 and slightly less so on Series S, but the Series X had more dips and judders that would have caused an issue. But applying the patch 1.2 and then 1.3 it now performs much better and is close to a locked 30fps to now be in the same range as the PS5. In this mode though the Series X has the resolution advantage now, with it often hitting 2880x1620 versus the PS5 often being at 2688x1512, giving a 14% resolution increase in this mode. The visual reductions do explain some of this, but like the small performance dips, the gap is not really apparent as the relatively high resolutions they all run at.

Xbox Series S

The Xbox Series S also runs very close to a locked 30fps, and I noted no big issues both with and without Motion Blur. It can dip more than the Quality mode on the other two consoles, but this has been improved with the pre-launch patch and now is as close to locked 30fps as you would hope for. I played some sections I thought would present some dips, but it was all very solid in general with only a handful of dips on the odd occasion, so this presents an excellent version of the game that manages to achieve the core aims of the team. The biggest standout is the much lower RAM pool does cause lower material quality and slow mip loading in gameplay and more so in cinematics, which is where they stand out the most.

SoundScapes

The final piece of the jump scare jigsaw is the sound design, mixing and execution. The electric fizzle of an earthing cable. The hydraulic pressure of an opening door. Fans that create a Doppler effect as you walk closer, accompanied by screen shake and controller vibrations. The meaty squelch as heads pop, limbs break and much much more. The use of sound and silence is incredible as you can hear the screech of enemies in the distance, but sometimes the sound of silence scares you the most. Music is blended in at times, with a clear John Carpenter-like synth mix that has more than a nod to the Thing. Voice acting from all is top notch and although it can be cheesy and cliche at times, it often takes twists and turns you do not expect and is never holding your hand or running on too long. I often say that sound is 50 percent of the experience in games and films, and here that may be understating its impact. It is an impeccable piece of work from the sound team that complements the game’s art, technical, animation and storytelling.

Summary

Striking Distance has managed to achieve a feat we have not seen in a very long time, blending many mediums and archetypes into a seminal survival horror game. From a visual and audio perspective it is a leader for the current generation. Taking the UE4 engine and, in my opinion, improving on what we saw from the Matrix Awakens UE5 demo. The character models are now at the point of being photorealistic both in gameplay and cutscenes that you would struggle to tell a video from the game apart. Some bugs with death animations, clipping through scenery, and bad animation cycles aside, the team has managed to deliver one of the most visually striking, stable, impressive games this generation. As linear and within the lines of its own genre it may be, The Callisto Protocol still offers a visual tour de force and enough surprises to be worth your time across all formats. I just hope that the final Christmas present is that Series X gets its Ray Traced reflections added before the year is out.

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Spoiler Alert Review

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Spoiler Alert debuts in theaters on Dec. 2, 2022.

In a year of movies about movies (Bardo, The Fabelmans, Empire of Light, and so on), it’s almost refreshing to get one nominally about ’80s sitcoms, even though it’s really about TV journalist Michael Ausiello (Jim Parsons) telling the story of his late photographer husband, Kit Cowan (Ben Aldridge), who died from cancer in 2015. Then again, Spoiler Alert is only really “about” television in the most passing sense, with brief and tenuous connections made between Michael’s perspective on his field, and his approach to real life. Parsons narrates the story, which slips into sitcom-esque flashbacks on occasion — single-camera with a laugh track seems to be the lens through which Michael views his own life — but director Michael Showalter is seldom interested in telling this tragic romance with much flair or emotional allure.

The result is a deeply plain movie that, though it has a warm and welcome palette, features great performances, and captures the outward shape of a relationship, has very little else to offer.

The title makes little sense when shortened from that of Ausiello’s memoir (“Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies”), but its opening scene fills in the missing gap, showing Michael laying with a terminally ill Kit on his last day alive. The rest of the movie chronicles the 14 years leading up to this moment, casting a dark and unavoidable cloud over its central relationship. Michael, a timid wallflower, reluctantly accompanies his coworker to a gay bar, where he meets the sweet and sexy Kit. A mismatch on paper, they strike an immediate and adorable chord, but the actors rarely have physical chemistry despite their numerous intimate scenes. Part of the blame falls on Showalter, who captures sex and even kissing with a stilted, distant hand — rarely has a queer film felt so safe and conventional — but Parsons and Cowan have enough by way of upbeat energy to sell at least some semblance of a dynamic between Michael and Kit.

It's difficult to gauge who either of them are as people beyond their interactions. Michael has a collection of Smurfs memorabilia that’s played for laughs, but neither man’s perspective — as a journalist and photographer respectively — seem to inform their worldview, and little about their dialogue or behavior suggests they have any kind of depth or history beyond the immediate circumstances of a scene. This is especially unfortunate given the vulnerability both actors put on display, bringing their characters’ respective insecurities to the fore (Kit is still closeted; Michael is afraid he’ll leave him for someone better).

However, Spoiler Alert is concerned, first and foremost, with fitting all 14 years of Ausiello’s tale into its 112-minute runtime. So, while the highs of Michael and Kit’s relationship have just enough spark to be convincing, the lows play more like boxes checked off for the sake of fidelity. This includes extended periods where they’re forced to work through their issues in couple’s therapy, but it’s all reduced to a head-scratching rom com montage that gives their most rigorous and defining romantic moments a mere passing glance.

When they’re visited by Kit’s high-strung parents (Sally Field and Bill Irwin), the situation is mildly awkward until Kit is forced to come out to them, but compared to Showalter’s The Big Sick — which was about the friction between the main character and his future in-laws — Spoiler Alert frames even this vital drama as a gag to be swept under the rug with a quickness. There certainly needn’t be a binary choice between “comedy” and “drama” (The Big Sick deftly blended the two), but Michael and Kit’s story is frequently reduced to the former for most of its chronology.

Spoiler Alert is just about saved by its cast, especially Parsons and Aldridge.

When things finally get more serious — which is to say, when Kit receives his diagnosis, and when his condition eventually worsens — the movie has no choice but to let the circumstances speak for themselves. The performances elevate the story just beyond the realm of Showalter’s dull non-embellishments, if only for him to find a sprinkle of late third-act panache when it’s least dramatically appropriate, robbing the film’s most touching moments of their power in the process.

Spoiler Alert is just about saved by its cast, especially Parsons and Aldridge. But it’s hard to avoid wondering what kind of work they might have done in the hands of a better director, one capable of molding their physical and emotional dynamic into something deeply felt — rather than simply seen — so that losing it might feel more meaningful.

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The Callisto Protocol Review

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A proper remake might be rising from the grave next year, but the festering corpse of Dead Space has come lurching back to life early in the form of The Callisto Protocol. This spiritual successor to the sci-fi survival horror series recreates the haunting blood-streaked hallways and space zombie-slaying hallmarks first established on the USG Ishimura back in 2008, and injects the gore with more awe than ever before thanks to some strikingly detailed splashes of blood and guts. Unfortunately, while the mutant dismemberment has never been more vivid, The Callisto Protocol’s shortcomings appear just as clearly. Occasional control annoyances, imbalanced combat, and a general absence of innovation result in a roughly eight-hour massacre that’s gratifyingly gruesome, but never quite as great as the series that inspired it.

Catastrophe has struck the Black Iron Prison facility on the moon of Callisto, and the convicts are revolting; not just in the sense that they’ve escaped their cells and are causing a riot, but also because they’ve been infected by a mysterious virus that’s mutated them all into twisted toxic avengers. It’s up to wrongly incarcerated cargo pilot Jacob Lee to get to the root of the resident evil and find a way off the prison planet, undergoing a claustrophobic crawl through an exceptionally well realized facility in ruin and overrun by lunar-based lunatics. What follows is a fairly linear gauntlet run, but thankfully the team at developer Striking Distance Studios has proven itself to be masterful makers of creepy corridors – rarely are any two passages ever the same and each area is given a distinct sense of place, from the maintenance room decorated with dangling corpses that look like prison guard pinatas, to the frosted-over facilities that lie beyond the prison walls.

The Callisto Protocol's putrid penitentiary had me locked in a state of maximum insecurity.

Josh Duhamel from the Transformers movies does a commendable job in the lead role, as does The Boys’ Karen Fukuhara as his main ally Dani Nakamura, but the majority of the desperation and discomfort of the pair’s plight is conveyed through the impressive art direction and audio design. With the third-person camera tight on Jacob at all times, you get a clear look at the sweat sheen on his scalp in the humid laundry area, the blood-spatter that soaks his coveralls after each brutal encounter, and the especially icky sewerage that coats his body after he’s forced to wade waist-deep through waste management. Everything is thick and gross in a genuinely palpable way and reinforced by unsettling scrapes and sickening squelches in the darkness around you. And while it’s become a common technique for developers to mask the loading of new areas with the use of narrow gaps in the terrain for players to shimmy through, here they fortify the feeling of dread rather than becoming a drag. As Jacob inched his way through the disgusting pus-boil and tendril-covered caves of Black Iron’s lower levels, his winces on screen mirrored my own looks of unease. The Callisto Protocol's putrid penitentiary had me locked in a state of maximum insecurity.

Retread Space

Let’s address the elephant-sized mutant monster in the room, though; The Callisto Protocol is effectively a Dead Space game in everything but name, with Striking Distance Studios even being lead by Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield. From the neatly minimalistic HUD which grafts Jacob’s health bar into the back of his neck like a phone battery indicator, to the stomping of crates and corpses to uncover precious resources, to the combat system that heavily relies on a battery-powered telekinesis ability that allows you to hurl objects around with a flick of Jacob’s wrist. There’s even evidence of a mysterious religious cult that’s somehow involved in the outbreak, and instructions on how to kill enemies left in blood smeared on the walls. It stops short of introducing Isaac Clarke’s stasis ability, and swaps his collection of weaponised mining implements for a more conventional arsenal of pistols and shotguns, but it otherwise feels very familiar – and as someone who’s played all of the Dead Space games, it made for a campaign that was heavy on startling jump scares but light on any major story or gameplay surprises.

The biggest deviation that The Callisto Protocol makes from Dead Space’s terror-fueled template is it’s increased emphasis on melee combat, at least during the opening hours. With weapons and ammunition initially scarce, dispatching each snarling cellmate demands that you lure them into an uncomfortably close proximity, sway out of the way of their clawing attacks, and then counter with a flurry of blows from Jacob’s stun baton. The thumbstick-based dodging and blocking of incoming attacks feels a bit like ducking and weaving in a boxing game – except your opponent is less like Holyfield and more like ‘Holy crap!’ – and it feels satisfyingly weighty to bash their limbs off one by one and bludgeon baton-shaped grooves into their skulls.

The already tight-in camera pulls even closer to really highlight the carnage as you administer each infected inmate with a lethal injection of hot lead. 

Even as Jacob’s arsenal grows, melee combat remains a smart way to conserve ammo since each successful combo string you land opens up a brief window to perform a ‘skill shot’, allowing you to automatically lock-on to a weak spot with your firearm and down them in a few shots instead of a full clip. I enjoyed the risk-reward choice involved in getting up close and personal rather than trying to more safely pick enemies off from afar, not least because the already tight-in camera pulls even closer to really highlight the carnage as you administer each infected inmate with a lethal injection of hot lead.

Getting a GRP

Unfortunately that high level of tension isn’t sustained once the GRP is introduced. Powerful enough to lift most enemies into the air, this gravity-defying gauntlet can certainly make for some dynamic combat encounters, particularly in tandem with the various deathtraps and volatile objects that are handily positioned around each area. You might enter a room full of ghouls, lift up one and impale him on a spiked wall, throw another into an exposed grinding mechanism, before finishing off a third by hurling a saw blade through their midsection, all before they’ve realised you were ever there. It can be a lot of fun in a jailbreaking Jedi sort of way and it often produces some gloriously gory results, but it also means that major threats are often too swiftly snuffed out, like you’re Indiana Jones bringing a gun to a swordfight.

GRP is an ability that depletes and must either be recharged over time or instantly topped up with batteries should you have one in your inventory, so I couldn’t constantly use it as a crutch, but I certainly felt it gave me the force-flinging upper hand in the bulk of enemy encounters even on the ‘maximum security’ difficulty setting – at times making me wonder if the most dangerous monster lurking in Black Iron was actually me.

The overpowered nature of the GRP meant I didn’t really bother investing too much in The Callisto Protocol’s weapon upgrade system. I certainly splurged on basic augmentations like expanded clip sizes and recoil dampening, but never felt the need to scrounge up enough Callisto credits to buy the more exotic enhancements. After all, what use are explosive rounds for the riot gun or the homing bullets for the assault rifle, when the ability to throw the ever-present explosive canisters or pick an enemy up and drop them over a ledge is the only alternate fire mode I ever really required?

Similarly, stealth sequences fail to induce much in the way of stress. Midway through Jacob’s great escape The Callisto Protocol introduces a deadly blind variant of the infected that are reminiscent of the clickers from The Last of Us. However, although they’re purported to possess an elevated sense of hearing, I found it surprisingly easy to violently shiv them to death right under the nose of other enemies who seemingly wouldn’t bat an eyelid – assuming they have eyes – despite the loud death squeals of their freshly dispatched friends. A far more serious threat are the towering terminator-style security droids that can only be destroyed with a pinpoint headshot – mess it up and you’ll likely be swiftly minced by their high-powered canons – but strangely these genuinely formidable foes are introduced early on and then rarely encountered again.

Hell in a Cell

That’s not to say there isn’t a healthy variety of enemy types to tackle in The Callisto Protocol. Although they embody a fairly customary set of survival horror archetypes – standard zombie-types, suicide bombers that rush you, spider-like creatures that scramble on all fours up walls and along ceilings – they all look wonderfully repulsive, and even better when you’re making space jam out of their space guts. Before too long a regenerative ability is introduced that enables basic enemy grunts to transform into more resilient brutes if you wound them without finishing them off completely, which brings a welcome sense of urgency to fights with groups of agitated foes. This is perhaps best exemplified by a late game ride on an underground drilling platform, with hordes of attackers that set upon you from all sides and instantly power-up as a result of being lashed by the shards of flying rock. It’s definitely one of the most heartrate-ratcheting sequences of the entire journey.

But elsewhere my anxiety was stirred by the surprisingly slow so-called ‘quick weapon swap’ function. It routinely let me down during the repeated fights against The Callisto Protocol's twin-headed tank-like mini-boss in which my ammunition reserves were rapidly drained. Tapping left on the D-pad swaps out one equipped weapon for another, but the animation of Jacob holstering a weapon and drawing the next is too long and can be accidentally interrupted, meaning there were many times I’d start a weapon switch but perform a dodge to evade an enemy attack immediately afterwards, and then spring back up into a shooting stance to find myself still armed with the exact same weapon I was attempting to holster. Clumsy control issues aside, The Callisto Protocol’s handful of boss fights are disappointingly one-dimensional and never really blew my mind (although they certainly smashed Jacob’s skull on a number of occasions).

There are a number of other smaller quibbles that plague The Callisto Protocol. It’s frustrating that opening chests automatically picks up everything inside, meaning I had to continually hop into the inventory screen to drop the skunk gun ammo I never asked for in order to clear space. It seems a bit antiquated that you can only listen to audio logs while you’re standing still with your head stuck in a menu, instead of having them serve as eerie accompaniments to your exploration as they are in games like Dead Space and BioShock. And although having a facehugger leap out of the locker you’re searching might have been a great idea for a jump scare the first time, by the sixth or seventh time it’s just plain annoying, and feels like you’re being forced to endure the same repeated office pranks of an alien April Fool’s day.

Lastly, while its eight-hour runtime feels about right in terms of pacing, there’s precious little to do in The Callisto Protocol after you’ve beaten the story. While a New Game+ mode is apparently coming via a free patch at a later date, for now there are no interesting unlockables to speak of that might encourage repeat playthroughs, or any alternative modes to try, making the overall package at launch feel almost as slim as a prison cell mattress.

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World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Review in Progress

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Most recent World of Warcraft expansions started with a tightly scripted, story-heavy, and somewhat bothersome on-rails scenario. Dragonflight seems to have remembered that this is an MMORPG and I should be deciding what kind of adventures I want to go on. Right off the boat onto the expansive, beautiful Dragon Isles, you'll be met with only minimal handholding and four huge, new zones to explore. It's like Blizzard finally learned to trust us to find the fun without supervision, and they're letting us have the run of the world again. I still have a lot of this expansion left to play, but it’s already so refreshing.

As of now, I've leveled from 60 to 67 and quested through two of Dragonflight's four major zones. They really fly by – pun intended – which is a bit of a disappointment. I'm much more of a, "The journey is more important than the destination," kind of player than one who thinks the "real" game only begins at max level. The new talent points I've earned along the way have definitely helped my characters come into their own, though. I feel like I understand so much better where the combat designers were going with specs like Marksmanship Hunter and Preservation Evoker now that I have a more complete toolkit to work with.

These zones are downright gorgeous, too. The contrast between volcanic wastelands and verdant river valleys in The Waking Shores is a breathtaking introduction to the expansion. And it features some of the best side quest writing I've seen in WoW in a long time. One of my favorite quests involved sitting and listening to a red dragon, shapeshifted into a humble dwarf, talk about all his regrets and the pain of being banished from his homeland for 10,000 years.

Another one I loved involves traveling slowly, on foot, with a centaur clan to their sacred meeting grounds, complete with a pit stop for a hunting competition. These kinds of heartfelt, memorable moments really are World of Warcraft at its absolute best. They seem to be here to lovingly bonk you over the head and remind you to take your time, simply exist in this beautiful world for a moment.

A Wing and a Prayer

If that's a bit too slow-paced for you, though, then I think you'll love the new dragon riding system. Zooming over the landscape at up to three times the speed of WoW's traditional "flying" mounts, I feel like I can't ever go back to that old system. Vigor, which limits your dragon's stamina, can feel a bit restrictive at first. I've developed a habit of tabbing out of the game to check on my friends in discord every time I'm forced to land and wait for it to recharge, because there's often nothing useful or interesting to do during this downtime.

But it feels incredible when you're soaring, banking, and diving around with a palpable sense of momentum and physicality that WoW normally lacks. The restrictiveness of your first drake's abilities is a strong incentive to chase hidden glyphs that will allow you to go higher, further, faster, which has been one of my favorite activities – alongside dragon riding courses that reward you for better and better times.

I'm not a huge fan of how it controls on a mouse and keyboard, though. It seems to be begging for controller support, which has long been rumored but never actually manifested. Also, there are still some technical issues. If you fly into a steep slope at high enough speed, you might just glitch out and get booted to the login screen. A couple of my guildmates were even unable to log in again for some time afterwards.

A Dance of Dragons

The main story, so far, hasn't exactly wowed me as much as the side quests. If you didn't follow all of the out-of-game lore leading up to Dragonflight, you might be a bit confused about why you're even here in the first place. There is some tension between the major good guys, but it rings kind of hollow. The new bad guys, the primal dragons and their humanoid minions, the Primalists, haven't yet made an impression as especially complex or interesting villains. There does at least seem to be some sort of succession crisis brewing within the Black Dragonflight that has the promise of delivering interesting stories down the line. But the first dungeon, Ruby Life Pools, is very straightforward and unmemorable outside of the rather bombastic final fight.

All of that has kind of fallen to the wayside so far though, because I'm just having so much fun exploring the isles and getting excited about smaller adventures that don't involve the fate of the world again. This gives me the feeling of playing 2004 vanilla WoW more than even WoW Classic did. I might get called "Champion" by the power players like the Dragon Queen Alexstrasza or the cocky Prince Wrathion, but most of the time I'm just vibing like I did in my freelance adventurer days when some guy in the woods would ask me to go collect twelve bear asses for his bear ass stew. It feels good.

And the expanded crafting system has really gotten its hooks into me, too. This is easily the best World of Warcraft has ever been for fans of making and enchanting your own cool stuff, with varying qualities of materials and different results for finished products based on your skill level and progression choices. When I make myself a pair of Tier 5 leather pants, I know every stat on those bad boys is as high as it is because my Leatherworking skill is so much higher than the recipe calls for, because I specialized into leather pants specifically, and because I chose to use only the finest bear asses in their manufacture. Those pants will be sought after because of my mastery, dedication, and reputation as a crafter. There are many pairs of leather pants. But you want these ones, because I made them.

There's still more than half of the expansion to see, so I'll be updating this review as my journey continues. I'd be remiss to put a score on Dragonflight before I've seen the new raid, currently scheduled to go live on December 12. But at this moment? While I may miss the spirit of innovation that ran through certain parts of Shadowlands – I long for something like Torghast done better, where it doesn't feel like a chore but still allows primarily solo players like me a place to really test our skills and class mastery – the back-to-basics approach of this expansion seems to be paying off so far. The positive reaction to WoW Classic clearly inspired some soul-searching at Blizzard based on interviews they've given recently, and while this may end up feeling like a "rebuilding year" for modern WoW, the foundations being laid are strong ones.

from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/XJxVtP3
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