MindsEye review: Destined for the bargain bin

The story about MindsEye is more interesting than the story of MindsEye. Developed by a studio run by a former Rockstar lead, at first this just seemed like a fairly ambitious GTA-like action game. Then things started getting weird. The way MindsEye was presented in press releases, for example, was off-putting in a way that was hard to put my finger on. It was like I was reading marketing material for a fictional game in an episode of Law and Order.

The weird messaging collided with an apparent reluctance to show the game to the press, then bizarre comments from an executive in a Discord channel alleging some kind of conspiracy to take the game down. It was released in poor shape, with bugs and low scores from the few outlets who were given access, and further conspiratorial accusations from ownership. I’m still not convinced MindsEye is a real video game, and I played it!

The kicker is that while the events surrounding MindsEye are weird, such as an influencer who went viral after failing to maintain the facade of politeness during a sponsored stream, the game itself isn’t, like, a disaster. There were some attempts to kind of mock this thing from folks out there in the media, to sort of point and laugh like other high-profile botches like Mass Effect Andromeda or something similar. But really, MindsEye is just dull. It’s boring. It’s whack, but in a way that would’ve just seen the game quietly occupy space in bargain bins back in the PS2 days. It’s a swing and a miss, without much in the way of bombastic zaniness or things that unintentionally make you laugh. It’s no Crime Boss, I’ll tell you what.

Anyway, here’s what MindsEye is about

MindsEye follows Jacob Diaz, a man who was in the military, operating a drone in a mission investigating a buried ziggurat. Something in there made the drone lose control and attack the squad, and years later Diaz is trying to figure out what happened. This takes him to Redrock city, a setting that’s basically “what if Tesla took over Las Vegas,” looking to infiltrate the Silva corporation as part of his quest for answers. The answers come in exchange for a bunch of video game busywork circa the early 2000s, which means a lot of driving and shooting. Mostly driving to places to do shooting, then driving back to the first place to get directions for the next place to do another shooting.

Here’s what you do in MindsEye

Driving and shooting, neither of which are in any way interesting, creative, or remarkable, is what you do in MindsEye. You get to operate a drone eventually for some special moves on cooldowns, but those barely register as different things to do. Shooting is as basic as it gets, with a cover button and no other maneuvers aside from pointing and shooting. You can’t even hip fire! Driving is almost like riding elevators to mask loading screens. You aren’t allowed to drive away from mission objectives, can’t take cars that aren’t your Designated Vehicle (in most cases), and are constantly pestered by characters in your ear to get to the objective faster than is possible. You can’t even look at the map beyond the confines of the mini-map, which is great when you can’t really tell precisely where you’re supposed to go.

It’s all in service to a story that, as far as I can tell, is about absolutely nothing. It uses a lot of odd elements for set dressing, such as AI with security issues, weird tech billionaires, Burning Man for some reason (there is so much awkward Burning Man stuff in this game, y’all), corrupt politicians, ambitious military Disney villain-type dudes, and more. But it doesn’t do anything with or have anything to say about these elements, mostly using them as pieces on a board to push Jacob forward until it’s time to wrap up, then throws aliens in the mix, almost like the game is tapping you on the opposite shoulder so it can distract you from the fact it’s been jerking you around for ten hours.

MindsEye, one of the video games of all time

There’s another component that’s kind of like a level editor but more elaborate, and part of developer Build a Rocket Boy’s apparent interest in “democratizing game development,” something those press releases I mentioned were drilling into. But why would I want to play with a level editor for something that feels like being trapped in a commercial about sketchy video game design courses? I feel like if I started building levels in MindsEye I’d risk getting sucked into the most degrading isekai situation imaginable if a thunderstorm hit. Not worth the risk, I reckon.

MindsEye isn’t a “so bad it’s good” situation. It’s just bad in a mundane, uninteresting way. It’s a half-baked idea built out with shallow writing, vapid gameplay, and bland everything else. Even the bugs aren’t funny enough to be memorable. The most entertaining part of all this is the vague allusion to sabotage the leadership at Build a Rocket Boy seems to be leaning on. Will we eventually learn exactly who sabotaged what part of this pile of decaying, raw beef of a video game to the extent of holding it back from greatness? Or were we simply seeing desperate executives throwing darts at the Wheel of Avoiding Accountability? Who can say? By the time an answer may emerge we’ll probably all forget MindsEye existed. We don’t really have bargain bins anymore, after all.

MindsEye is available now for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. An Xbox copy of the game was purchased by Shacknews for this review.