Despite being one of the biggest releases of the year, The Callisto Protocol’s PC port looks like a technical nightmare.
The Callisto Protocol was one of my most anticipated games of the year, so you can imagine how disappointing it was to learn that the PC port runs terribly. I’ve been down this road before with the best graphics card money can buy, and I refuse to go down it again.
Although it’s true that next-gen consoles are starting to show their age, they hold a benefit over PCs that’s been exaggerated over the past year: precompiled shaders. The Callisto Protocol is the latest egregious example, so I’m saving my pennies on the PC port for the time being.
It’s easy to see The Callisto Protocol has issues on PC. The game carries a Mostly Negative review on Steam right now, despite Digital Trends Gaming Editor Giovanni Colantonio giving the game three-and-a-half out of five stars in our review. He reviewed the game on an Xbox Series X and noted performance issues, but not enough to justify a mostly negative score.
That’s because The Callisto Protocol, despite being demanding, isn’t pushing hardware to its absolute limit. The RTX 4090 is well above what the developer recommends for max settings on PC.
