Because I'm now a normal person who reads about video game news much the same way most of you do, did you know the first I even heard about the video game MindsEye was only a few days ago, when I read that its creators had blamed negative pre-launch coverage on paid shills? What an introduction!
Given how volatile the video game community is these days, and how easily vital parts of it (reviews, social media, etc) can be weaponised against developers, I felt a pang of sympathy for the team. We've all seen how chuds can bury a game without having even played it, and this sure sounded like another example of that happening.
WRONG. This game sucks, and everything bad that anyone has ever written about it, for free or otherwise, is true.
I've tried playing the game over the last few days and have hated every second I've spent with it. I can see the outline of what was attempted here--a cyberpunk GTA clone, something like Watch Dogs meets 2077--but what's actually here is a buggy mess of a game that looks bland, is boring to play and perhaps worst of all seems to have treated its story and dialogue with open contempt.
Given MindsEye's developer is led by prominent ex-Rockstar man Leslie Benzies, the GTA similarities are to be expected, but like...just watch this, the first real mission you have to undertake. It does everything a GTA game would do, in that it gives you a car, tells you to drive somewhere to shoot some bad guys then fills the downtime with dialogue, but every single aspect of it here is just dreadful, from the pathfinding (look how long it takes you to get to the car!) to the stilted delivery of some meaningless lines to the limp, wet gunplay.
I cannot believe how bad the writing and voice acting is in this game. Actually, let me be fair: I don't know if it's the acting itself, or just the way it's all been recorded and delivered in two-line packages, seemingly in isolation, meaning nothing ever sounds like it’s part of a natural, human conversation. I was only 20 minutes into this game before it started testing my patience; by the two-hour mark I was ready to mute it and just put subtitles on.
It’s like a GTA clone that was delivered by ticking boxes--cars, check; guns, check; cover system, check--without ever bothering to make sure if any of those boxes were any good. It looks like a parody Game Awards trailer. It plays like a cancelled PS4 game.
It's so bad that streamers are having their sponsored streams cancelled. It's so bad that seemingly no major outlets were sent review code ahead of time. There are so many bugs and glitches that Sony is reportedly offering at least this person a refund on technical grounds, something it has only really done previously with Cyberpunk.
Some of this can be chalked up to it being really hard to make a good open-world game, which is why the few studios who can do it get paid so much and can sell so many copies. Some of it can maybe be chalked up to the fact that developers Rocket Boy originally had plans for MindsEye to be part of a big metaverse grift, which might explain the presence of an odd and seemingly useless creation suite within the game.
Whatever the reasons, and whatever the original intent, this is a very bad video game that's bad in such fundamental ways I don't know if it can ever be fixed with a patch or two. It's buggy, sure, but it's also so drab and uninteresting and by-the-numbers that it just bums me out.
