PC gamers are reporting that the Callisto protocol is plagued with performance issues

With today’s launch of The Callisto Protocolconsensus in gaming media is that this is a decent PS5 dead space-like, but a terrible PC game. The reason for this is that the game stutters ominously, even on high-end machines. I’m here to tell you that it’s not. have stutter, but you need to turn off some bells and whistles.

This morning, Rock Paper Shotgun said that it could be a fun game “if it worked on PC”, Eurogamer suggested that “The PC is almost unplayable”, while Gamer on PC called him “a stuttering nightmare.” All of this translates to The Callisto Protocolit is steam pagewhose game currently bears the deadly orange epithet “Mostly Negative”, based on over 4,000 player reviews.

The problem is, beyond anyone’s specific complaints about the game itself, that it runs like absolute garbage when you run it at settings your PC should happily support.

The Callisto Protocol launched on PC today with pretty hefty spec requirements to see it running at its peak. While it claims to be able to run on graphics cards as low as a GeForce 1060 or Radeon RX 580, when you get to the top, it makes your eyes water. For what it strangely calls “Max” settings (although there is a level above it), it calls for a Radeon RX 6700XT or GeForce RTX 2070, running on Ryzen 7 2700X or an i7-9700. For the “Ultra” tier beyond maximum, he suggests a rig running a Ryzen 9 3900X or i9-9900K, with either a Radeon RX 6900XT or a GeForce RTX 3080. That’s right, it looks like the people who can meet these requirements may not get the performance for which they bargained.

My PC, an increasingly modest Ryzen 5 5600X with a GeForce RTX 3070, responds comfortably the “recommended” specs of the game a Ryzen 5 3600 and a GTX 1070, which would make me assume that I should be able to take advantage of some of the more sophisticated options. For example, I would expect a bit of ray tracing action to be available and to be able to go beyond “Medium” in the default settings. Hey, my computer almost hits “Max” – that’s not an unreasonable stance!

But damn it, it’s not. If I enable any amount of ray tracing or set the base spec to “High”, the game runs at a very choppy 12fps. It’s ridiculously bad, and it’s very easy to see why people are immediately upset with their $60.

The good news is that I’m pretty sure anyone meets these recommended specs. will be be able to run the game, if they’re willing to sacrifice loyalty.

Now I definitely have to point out that the PC launch days are still a goddamn fury, because given the nearly endless permutations of PC hardware, there’s always going to be a sizable contingent of gamers who stumble upon a setup that a developer hasn’t tested. So I have no way of being certain if my (admittedly pretty generic) machine may have had luck here, but I guess not. More importantly, I have no way of knowing if your the configuration is the one that will have a problem until the fixes are available. That said, try this:

From the main menu (and note: you can’t access most options during gameplay), select Options, then Graphics. At the bottom of the list is Run Benchmark, which will test the game against your PC. Mine, no matter how much better it should have done, told me it recommended I “enable FSR2 Performance Mode”. Again, it’s Options – Graphics, then Advanced. In there, at the top of the list, is “Upscaling”. Mine was set to “Temporal”, which I guess prevents the game from time travel. However, that’s what I needed to change, to “AMD FSR 2”.

That done, I could then change the next setting, “FSR 2 Quality Mode”, from the nice-sounding “Quality” to the much more disappointing “Performance”.

That done, the game has changed. I am now able to play at a fairly steady 60fps, sometimes dropping to 45 for a few glitchy seconds when entering a new area, but then quickly returning to 60fps.

Honestly, it still looks great. I mean, if you like grim, grimy spaceships splattered with corpses and mutated viscera. I really wasn’t aware of what I was missing, though I’d expect it to be better reflections in the pools of human blood, and maybe more hair on the rough faces of the frantic crew. of the ship.

That said, no, of course it’s not good enough. Either the specs were wildly inaccurate or the game desperately needs a massive amount of fixes. Which is always especially frustrating when there’s a PS5 version, working without any of these issues.

We reached out to Krafton editors to ask when we might expect a fix.