The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station (2022) - Horror Audio Podcast Review

Everyone knows that The Callisto Protocol video game was designed to be a spiritual successor to the legendary Dead Space. Personally, I thought it was a pretty decent attempt, but others disliked its reliance on close quarters combat, while the announcement of a remake of that original game stole its thunder somewhat, leaving this new series in the dark. One of the things I liked about the original game was its multimedia approach, featuring books, films (Dead Space: Downfall), spin-off games, and even a full motion comic book prequel. It was only after going to add my review of this video game homage on imdb that I saw that this too had attempted a similar multimedia approach. Around the time of the game a high production value audio drama was released. I spent much of my time with The Callisto Protocol wondering just where the story was. Well, it turns out the story was over here in the six part audio drama The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station. 

This serves as a prequel to the games, but one that is only tangentially related. A mild spoiler, but this basically explains how the terrorist group The Outer Way, came to know about the horrific experiments that were taken place in Black Iron Prison on the moon of Callisto. Here, a jaded bounty hunter named Percy (voiced by Gwendoline Christie - Wednesday TV series, The Sandman TV series), and her partner Kane (Michael Ironside - Total Recall, Scanners) are hired to take a Black Iron Prison guard, Metzger (Kevin Durand - X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and a mercenary named Prendergast (Sam Littlefield) to the abandoned Helix Station space station, in order to capture a man who had fled there after escaping Black Iron. The place holds a special and terrible significance to Percy, whose life-long battle with intense PTSD stems from an incident that took place there many years in the past. She finds not only her own personal demons there, but literal ones as well, as it turns out the escaped prisoner was actually a medical doctor from the prison, who has taken along with him a gruesome and deadly monster that he seemingly had a hand in creating.

This might not have had too much impact on the events of the game, but I still found this to be a decent little podcast series. I love Haunted: The Audio Drama, but it was only after listening to this one that I realised how much more you could do with a higher budget. First and foremost is having such a recognisable actor such as Christie here. You might expect someone in that much demand to phone in their voice work, but she seemed to put a lot of effort in here, making for a great performance as the very troubled protagonist. Split over six episodes, each one is roughly a half hour long and follows a traditional path. This is audio drama in the dramatic sense, with no end of high quality sound effects creating the feel of a movie playing out, albeit in audio only. This makes for a thrilling listen, even if, much like the game, there is nothing new here. Much of the story takes place in the present moment, but being from Percy's perspective, you get to hear the audial hallucinations as her memories blur with the present moment. This culminates predictably in episode five, 'Old Ghosts' which part takes place as a flashback story, detailing exactly what happened in Percy's past to make her so messed up in the present.

With a small cast of characters things never have the scope to get too crazy, but there are plenty of The Thing style shenanigans with members of the group getting infected and transforming into monsters. The story is well paced over the six episodes, with twists and turns, even if they were not that inspired. I had wished there was more a link with the game, as I had thought there would be closer links than what was eventually revealed. As always with a dependence on sound effects, sometimes what was happening could get a little hard to follow, and at the beginning at least I did get confused over which character was which. Still, for a free podcast (still available to listen to now), I had a good time with The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station. If you enjoyed the game, then certainly check this out.

SCORE: