MindsEye was originally envisioned as an episodic product inside of Everywhere, the sandbox game creation tool also developed by Build A Rocket Boy, the Scottish upstart studio fronted by former Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies. The game’s production feels like a story waiting to be told, but it’s apparent that somewhere between its reveal and its release, the decision was made to release the game as a story-driven sandbox action game, very much in an attempt to emulate the spirit of Grand Theft Auto.
Not only that, but mere days ahead of the game’s release, the developer saw the mutiny of an executive, news of which quickly got buried by just how bad MindsEye is.
With no review code to form a critique before launch, I bought this game out of morbid curiosity after seeing damning clips online for the game. While I, personally, didn’t experience character models melting mid-cut-scene or characters turning to spaghetti after being clipped by a vehicle, MindsEye is a creatively muted experience that is an unfortunate culmination of either mismanagement or mislaid ambition.
ittedly, the story’s conceit is, in the broadest sense of the term, “pretty good.” You play Jacob Diaz, an ex-military grunt who takes on a menial security gig at the game world’s equivalent of Tesla to uncover the truth behind the titular computer chip in his neck that turned his life upside down and left his memory spotty at best.
The setup is similarly intriguing, Diaz is unfairly thrust into a mission to retrieve stolen tech and is caught up in a firefight, triggering in him some dormant trauma from his time in service and leaving his superiors scrambling to cover things up to avoid a political shitstorm. By the end, the player-character’s singular pursuit to reconcile his past and chase the game’s MacGuffin renders him a thoughtless terminator, resigned to blazing a path of wanton destruction.
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In addition to the dissonance his actions cause, by the game’s comically abrupt conclusion, the story is so rife with clichés with regards to both its characters, turns, and dialogue that it became harder and harder to endure. For a game that beats on about the perils of artificial intelligence, as soon as I saw a repairman working in a busy arcade, I sensed that the game didn’t even believe in its automated future.
Unfortunately, the game’s design tenets are no better. It falls drastically short in its attempt at mirroring Grand Theft Auto—shit, even the most recent Saints Row—as its sandbox adds nothing to the overall experience.
For a futuristic city surrounded by desert, there’s nothing to do in it. The tangle of streets feels vapid, is scarcely populated, and offers nothing in of worthwhile exploration. As soon as I realised there was no map at all, aside from the mini-map visible in your heads-up, it became apparent that not only was MindsEye’s open world missing all of the expected hallmarks, like collectibles, substantial side quests, or any reason to be there, they were in no interest of advertising it.
There are side missions, which present themselves occasionally as dimensional cracks, though they’re very bland. More often than not, they were brief shooting galleries or races that offered little that you couldn’t get in the campaign. All of these, as well as plenty of others, are available through the “Play” menu, which curates all of the game’s side and -created content from community builders. Although the selection at launch is pretty weak, the promise of content refreshes is there, so let’s hope the team can begin to funnel a bit of fun and excitement through this small component of MindsEye.
To make matters even worse, every mission was a cycle of driving out into the desert, shooting some shit, and driving back while drinking in the exposition that’s fed to you over comms. The most interesting missions, which numbered among the very few, were those that strayed from that formula—a highlight of mine was stealthily infiltrating a crooked assistant’s penthouse with a tiny pincer drone and gathering intel.
The game’s combat, of which there’s plenty of it by the end, plays like a relatively featureless cover shooter. It’s serviceable without adding an interesting wrinkle of its own to help it stand out from the rest of the market. The game offers the expected range of military-grade weaponry that you use to kill baddies and scrap bots alike. It also does that frustrating thing where it gates its biggest, coolest weapon to the story’s climax, giving you no time to enjoy it. I also found the auto-aiming to be noticeably overbearing and was quite surprised that there was no option to adjust it.
Early in the game, you’re given a small companion drone who sticks with you from that point on, lending a hand in both combat and exploration scenarios. Its shock ability can stun-lock or outright destroy enemies, while it can also by door codes. It can also eventually override certain bots to have them fight for you, so while the abilities are generic, they’re certainly helpful. The technology of the world is ittedly cool, although the drone is the least of it. Being able to fly sky cars and pilot armoured drones, as pointless as the exercise was in a world with nothing to do, did feel like a glimpse into our own, Musk-driven futures.
I don’t think MindsEye is abysmal from a visual design perspective. I think the art team had some interesting enough ideas that have simply been let down by poor execution. On top of the game being confused from a general, creative perspective, it’s also rife with niggles that further hamstring the experience to make it even more frustrating.
The game’s frame rate, a meagre 30FPS when it’s able to hold steady, is far from ideal. There’s no option to restart from a checkpoint; the checkpointing itself is horrid and doesn’t respect your time. The AI is unbelievably dumb, whether you’re dealing with pedestrians, drivers, enemy combatants, or otherwise. There’s an exceptional amount of screen tearing during cinematics, loads are sluggish, and there are comical lags in animation and pop-ins galore.
Put simply, MindsEye is technically half-baked.
It’s a complete shame that this game exists as it does. Though its technical shortcomings are clear and unfortunate, the final product’s ultimate direction and failure to make good on what was promised, so far as being a living, breathing sandbox, is far more damning. If you dig deep enough, there’s a kernel of potential in this wreckage. However, it’ll take some doing to right this ship.
