Mindseye is a game from a new studio called Build a Rocket Boy. It garnered some attention because it is a game being directed by Leslie Benzies, a former head developer at Rockstar. A lot of people were expecting something similar to GTA. Naturally, a lot of people were optimistic going into the game, including me. I was curious to check it out and even root for it.
There was a nagging feeling, what if it’s another disaster like Cyberpunk 2077? It turns out that the nagging feeling was right on the mark. This is just going to be a negative review of a game that made grand promises. It is a sci-fi game, making it different than GTA. There are some severe glitches in the game. The way the environment reacts to the player’s character leaves much to be desired.
Sure, the game has ideas, but they are mostly left undercooked. The graphics are good, which makes it a game that is pleasant to look at. The expectations from the game were high, which is one of the reasons that it hits harder. All of it brings us to the question: Is Mindseye worth it? Let’s find out.
Narrative-Driven
Mindseye is not good and, at times, can even feel like a waste of time. It does not have much to do, it is short, and things are not that much of an order. The developers are asking $60, which does not sit well with the type of game it is. It is a single-player linear action-adventure game. Its simple explanation might make it seem like a good single-player game, but that’s not really the case. It is a rushed game that has been left undercooked, and it’s short. It seems like the game is devoid of life.
There are multiple reasons why the failure of this one hits hard, as mentioned earlier. At a glance, it is a game that looks good, but it is linear, which makes it harder to accept this failure, at least for me. When characters are walking, it seems like they are floating, and the same goes for the vehicles. It does not have solid physics.
Premise
Players will take control of Jacob Diaz, who is a former soldier and field drone operator. Mindseye takes place in the near future and in a fictional city called Redrock City. After being discharged, he is missing some memories, so he starts hunting for clues. Redrock City is based in Los Angeles, and it is easily the game’s biggest positive point. It can look good even if it’s fictionalized and futuristic. It captures the feel of a real-life city. In short, it is a good setting and a decent playground for you to engage in.
City is just a backdrop, as I mentioned earlier, it is not an open-world game. You can drive around in the city, but it’s nothing more than a setting like how it was in earlier Mafia games. All is great to this point until you focus on the story that the game is trying to tell. It is mostly about driving from point A to B, shooting some guys, or clicking on something. This is the entire cycle of the game, which is broken up by occasional side quests, a stealth sequence, a chase, and other generic stuff.
Third Person Shooter
Where Mindseye fails to meet expectations is its 3rd person gameplay. There are multiple weapons to use in the game, but most of them don’t have a kick to them. The feedback that one should expect from the weapon is not there. The sound and the way guns react to shots are soft.
It is a strip-to-bone third-person shooter that feels outdated at times. It has clunky movement and a simple covering system. To top it all off, there is no melee, roll, dodge, grenade, or any such thing. The only thing you have is a drone hovering around that can be used to stun enemies or hack.
At any point in the game, you can take control of the drone in first-person view. It sounds cool, but the game does not use the drone or drone control in a meaningful way. The only thing you can do with it is
hack the door or look from an upper angle. It seems like the wasted potential of things that could have been done better. The combination of these elements with a futuristic setting makes it feel like an inferior version of Watch Dogs.
Gameplay
Enemies are downright dumb, and at times, they won’t do anything, or it takes them a lot of time to respond to your actions. At the same time, others will just run blindly towards you. There is not much challenge or something to shake up the scenarios in Mindseye. It is just simple and mindless shooting against robots and humans. The animation is not that bad, but it’s just that the rest of the combat is not that good.
Driving
Driving is not that bad, or it can even be called solid. You can mostly get out of the car and move, but it’s primarily a story-focused game. For the most part, you are relegated to the car that the story throws at you. It takes a while for the game to give you a fast car. Moving around the city in dense traffic and cutting corners feels good in Mindseye.
The way the environment is designed can have some major effects on how you interact with it. Small things like rocks, weird curves, or stuff like that can stop your car dead in its tracks. It can even lead to getting stuck in the area with no way out. This happens multiple times. If your car gets stuck, then that’s it, the game has no way to rectify it, so your only choice is to restart from the checkpoint. In chase scenes, you can outrun the target, or their AI is bad, and they will crash a lot.
Driving is good, and the game gives you plenty of opportunities to drive. This is a six to seven hour game, and you will be driving a lot with no music and stuff other than just generic NPC dialogues. Objectives can be far without any justification. You will be driving from point to point just to get a cut scene, which can get frustrating. It seems like this was done just to make the story longer.
Out of The Beaten Path
It is a linear game, so there is not a lot of stuff to do when you get out of the car. Mindseye turns side stuff down so much that it’s baffling. You can shoot NPCs, but when you start shooting them, they will just run at you with no reaction. No cops will show up when you kill an NPC.
Occasionally, you will find side missions as you drive around. These are basically random events. The story does give justification for their existence. These challenges can range from short to long, lasting for 10 minutes. It’s mostly different kinds of shootouts with occasional robot mini-games. As per the developers, players will create more of these over time, but based on what we have right now, I am not optimistic. It has some glitches, and the performance is not that good, which might be improved over time.
Verdict
At a stable frame rate, when everything is going well, the game can look great. Mindseye feels like an undercooked and rushed game. A lot of things could be ignored in a game if the overall experience was great, which isn’t the case here. The bad stuff outweighs the good stuff, making the game a bad experience.
A couple of story missions and some intense combat sequences aren’t going to cut it. It is just too generic and does not offer any surprises. It seems like Mindseye was made just because the developer needed a game. The game seems to lack a reason for its existence. Think of it as a type of game that wants you to buy something and then play, excluding the joy that comes from it.
It was interesting to see how some of the minds behind Grand Theft Auto were working on a new game, and the end result is this. It does not seem like a good first game from the developers, and it can spoil their reputation.
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