MindsEye

Functional third-person shooter with neat-looking story sequences, but not much more.

MindsEye is as beautiful as it is broken, vacillating between promise and problematic. With design choices rooted in the distant past and an infestation of bugs, it’s held back by an unforced error – releasing far too early.

When its performance is stable and you’re explosively blasting your way through robots, MindsEye can masquerade as a serviceable action shooter for a few minutes at a time. Its near-future setting and driving feel also impress. However, its flashy graphics and cinematics can’t otherwise hide its distinct lack of substance. High on ambition but low on original ideas, MindsEye’s rigid mission design renders its open world largely pointless – and it’s consistently undermined by vanilla combat, janky AI enemies, and its sloppy frame rate and bugs. Throw in its insultingly unfinished free roaming component and it’s clear it was simply not ready to be released. If you had your sights set on MindsEye, think again.

With a mediocre story and lackluster gameplay that wastes the potential of its sci-fi premise of big tech and AI, MindsEye is a resoundingly disappointing action-adventure that's neither satisfying as an old genre throwback nor presents a confident foundation for others to build upon.

Its world feels considered. There are decent performances from its cast among the graphical artefacts, and zippy pacing that respects your time and conjures a sense of playing the Schwarzenegger role that never was. But it's been released in a technical state that makes it impossible to enjoy its ideas, with core components of its action left underdeveloped. For the player, that's frustrating. For those who made it, surely, it's heartbreaking. [Issue#413, p.112]