If you’ve been following the gaming industry for the past few weeks, I’m sure you must have already heard about MindsEye! The latest game from the Ex-GTA Producer Leslie Benzies, known for his work on basically every GTA game since GTA 3. Given our love for the GTA franchise, we were quite certain that we have to check the game out, no matter how it turns out to be, and well we did! Keep on reading this review, to know our thoughts on MindsEye!
Also Read: Top 10 Easter Eggs Spotted in GTA 6 Trailer 2
Disclaimer: Our review for MindsEye, was written based on playing the game at launch on the PlayStation 5 with the latest Hotfix available at that time. In case the game gets updated in the future, we’ll make sure to update our post as well. Let’s now continue with the review!
Story
While I didn’t exactly have high expectations from the game, after looking at the promotion material, something I did wish for was an engaging story-line! As we don’t get a lot of linear stories with games these days. The last linear game I did enjoy playing was the Mafia Remake, so I was hoping for something similar. But it was a bit disappointing, as that wasn’t the case.
After completing the entire story, I will have to say it felt quite incomplete. Without going into much details to avoid any spoilers, the story just felt rushed. I really enjoyed interacting with the characters during the start of the game, however as the story progressed, I couldn’t grasp at the fact that most of the characters felt unused throughout the game.
In one of the interviews, the developers had said that MindsEye would be a one-game story. Basically suggesting, that the entire story would be packed in one package, while other future games would feature different stories. However, it seems like there were some changes in the plan, as the ending of MindsEye was left at a cliff-hanger. Now whether a sequel is going to be in-development, or a DLC would be released, only time will tell that!
The game was spread out across various different missions, which were treated as chapters. The progression was decent, and it never really felt like I was disconnected from the story. But as suggested previously, the ending is highly disappointing. I do hope the developers have something in store for the future of Jacob, as I would love to check out the story further.
Gameplay
Moving on, let’s now talk about the gameplay of MindsEye! Here’s where it starts showing the unpolished nature of the game. Right off the bat, the first thing that was noticeable was the character movements and the animations. The movement feels very weird given the clunky gameplay from the start to the finish. It almost felt like that the game wasn’t designed with the third person perspective in mind.
The same can be said for the gunplay as well. While the game offers players with a wide variety of weapons to choose from, the gunplay is very plain. Something I found quite weird was that there was no option for melee combat in the game. While not noticeable at first, as the fights get intense during the end-game, you really start to miss out that option.
What is cool is the little drone companion though. Even though I was not impressed with the gunplay, something I really liked was using the drone as a side-kick. There were a lot of cool things which can be done throughout the story, however, the potential still feels quite limited, as it should have been used more in the early game.
Another thing that the studio marketed was the unique driving experience, with the utilization of Unreal Engine 5.4’s Custom Physics. And well, no complaints there, the driving did feel pretty good. Imagine this, if you were to combine the realism of the driving from GTA 4, along with the smoothness of driving in GTA 5, then the final product would be MindsEye’s driving!
World
I would have cut some slack for the world, given that it follows a linear story. However, you’d be surprised to know that the developers have tried to push the open-world narrative in the game, a lot. Similar to the Mafia 1’s Remake, instead of fully letting you explore the open-world, the game gives you an option to play it, after reaching a certain point in the story.
But in all honestly, the open-world is just dull and boring. While the concept of the Cyberpunk-like world sound cool at first, the game does nothing extraordinary. There’s really not a lot that can be done while you’re out in the open, which is very disappointing given the involvement of Leslie Benzies, known for pioneering open-world games with the GTA franchise.
As soon as you’re done with the main story, without any explanation you’re just randomly dropped inside the world of Redrock as a random character. While I did not spend enough time in the open-world itself, in our short experience, it felt a bit bizarre. There really wasn’t anything exciting to do, which would have made me want to play the open-world mode.
Visuals and Performance
A major part of our review is going to be focused on this segment, so buckle up, as I’ve got a lot to share. Starting off with the visuals, the game actually does a pretty decent job, as it looks good. The cut-scenes/cinematics are probably one of the best looking ones, I’ve seen this year. Credit where’s it’s due, but the mo-cap of the game were actually pretty good.
As for the other visual effects, it also features a ton of explosions throughout the game. Both during the gameplay, as well as the in-game cinematics. I was quite shocked at how good and detailed those explosions looked. I’d go as far as say, this game features some of the best explosions I’ve seen in any video game ever. But well, that’s pretty much it for praises.
Speaking of the performance, that’s where the game just starts to crumble. I played the entirety of the game on the base PlayStation 5, and the performance was just abysmal. I don’t have any issues with the game running at 30fps on consoles, but the frame pacing was really bad. There were a lot of instances where I found the frame rate to drop below 30fps constantly.
The game runs at 30fps on all the current generation consoles including the Xbox Series X|S and even the PlayStation 5 Pro. Surprisingly, the description on the PlayStation Store says that it is indeed enhanced for the Pro console, however, during our short test with the Pro console I did not find any changes. The frame rate issues remain the same across both the consoles, and even the visuals including the resolution were same on both the consoles.
Many users reported a bunch of crashes and game breaking bug, while playing the launch build. However, during our testing, the game only crashed once, which still needs to be addressed. As for the bugs, I did not notice any game-breaking or strange bugs, which likely means they were fixed on consoles after the first update was deployed.
However, the same cannot be said for the PC version. It runs on Unreal Engine 5, which has already been a big challenge for PC gamers, and the story remains the same here. During the first boot of the game on PC, it crashed straight away, which was not a good look. After that, I noticed a lot of stutters, even on a high-end PC. Safe to say the PC version is not recommend in it’s current state, as we noticed a lot of bugs which needs to be addressed.
Verdict
If you’ve read the review so far, it’s fair to say you understand that I did not like the game at all. All the issues aside, one of the major reasons for such heavy criticism is mostly because of the fact that someone as big as Leslie Benzies was involved with the production of the game. This is the same producer who has been with Rockstar Games for every major GTA title, so to ship an abomination like MindsEye wasn’t something I expected. But well, here we are.
At the end, I would like to give MindsEye a 4 out of 10. All I can say is, MindsEye is easily one of the worst games I’ve played this year. I hope this review helped you in deciding with your purchase.
With that said, in case you’re in the market to check out a new game, I would recommend taking a look at The Precinct. Coming from a Indie Game studio, it feels similar to the old-school GTA titles, it surprised us and surpassed our expectations! Read our dedicated review here: The Precinct Review: Grand Theft Auto In An Alternate Universe
