MindsEye | Review

Initial release date: June 10, 2025

Developer: Build a Rocket Boy

Engine: Unreal Engine 5

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows, GeForce Now

Publishers: IO Interactive, IO Interactive Partners A/S

Composer: Rival Consoles

Genres: Action game, Adventure

KEY TAKAWAYS

• It’s technically a terrible video game
• Entertaining story albeit cheesy
• 8 hour story campaign
• Bugs
• Glitches
• Lacks quality of life gameplay mechanics
• Could be a cult classic with patches and proper QoL add ons
• Terrible prison stealth sequence
• Very linear mission design
• Very easy to fail every missions
• No useful maps
• Visuals impressive at times
• Memorable characters
• Bad performance on PS5
• Can only enter specific vehicles in this faux “open world” game
• Free Roam is very pedantic
• Not a GTA VI killer 😒
• Morrison, Silva, Rigby, Claudia, Charlie and Okada were entertaining
• Burk aka Elias Toufexis didn’t ask for this
• Played on vanilla Playstation 5

Introduction

I’m not going to get into who made MindsEye only the fact that it is technically a terrible video game. I paid very little attention only following trailers from time as the release date drew near.

As for my take on MindsEye, it’s a mess of a video game. You can’t argue that. However, fun is very subjective and I will argue why I had fun in my seven to eight hour playthrough. I must preface the following by telling you there was a prison stealth sequence that made me almost stop playing through MindsEye completely.

Presentation

MindsEye is a third person linear action game with a faux open world plagued with a plethora of bugs, glitches and much needed quality-of-life add-ons. There was a mission when I had to get to Charlie (a hacker woman) but I was on the other side of Redrock City due to my vehicle getting blown up.

So I starting walking across the city and eventually I had to restart my game. Now you’re asking why I had to restart my game so let me tell you. In MindsEye you can’t steal cars or sky cars. You are assigned specific vehicles. You are forced to use specific vehicles.

In Chapter 18 I believe it was, Jacob had to infiltrate a prison and plant a virus in the command center’s software computer. Okay, I managed to get to the console avoiding all these fucking robots with either broken ai or work too good ai.

To make a long story short I had to walk all the way back through the prison AFTER I completed the damn mission. No ladders or shortcuts back to my car pissed me off. The latter is just garbage mission design.

There were so many bugs and glitches. By the way I played MindsEye on my vanilla Playstation 5. There were a few hard crashes, three I counted. I can deal with hard crashes on console but what really pissed me off was in-missions where I was locked inside a vehicle and had to restart back into a long ass checkpoint auto-save.

Another thing that pissed me off with MindsEye’s presentation was the constant badgering of almost every NPC when you’re not moving fast enough to a destination. Like STFU please I’ll get there. I get it, you can’t explore the open world 🤣

MindsEye is the worst game I played from a technical standpoint since launch day Cyberpunk 2077 on PS5. I shit on MindsEye because it simply deserves it from a technical perspective. Now I will say I had fun with MindsEye due to it’s story, the characters, varied missions and gunplay.

Story

You play as ex special forces soldier Jacob Diaz who encounters an awakening of a alien species called Kin which is shown in the opening cutscene. The military gives him a prototype implant chip called the MindsEye. Jacob gets a job at Silva Industries via his long time buddy Seb who’s kind of a throughout the story.

The plot revolvs around Diaz’s ex CO Colonial Lamrie who wants to use the Kin’s power to start a robot army to take over Redrock City. Along the way Jacob meets charismatic, fun characters such as Morrison, Charlie, Claudia, Marco Silva and Lars Okada.

The story is the best of MindsEye. I like cheesy sci-fiction with humor and MindsEye satiated my appetite as far as that’s concerned. Writing was decent yet ham-fisted much of the time. They’re major character deaths in regards to the story.

The negatives in regards to the story are loose ends featuring Claudia and Mayor Vega. Early and mid story they were the focus then just fell off to be forgotten. I want answers dammit!

Gameplay

Gameplay is missing so many quality of life aspects other linear open world video games have it’s not even funny how bad parts of MindsEye is unless it’s so bad it’s funny? Regardless, gameplay was a mixed bag leaning heavily to the negative side as I did enjoy the gunplay the majority of time, mission variety and flying the sky-cars around Redrock City.

I’ll keep it 100%. Gameplay is the worst aspect of MindsEye. Grand Theft Auto 3 has more QoL gameplay mechanics then this did. I’m just glad I finished it and it’s done. YET at times I laughed and had fun. MindsEye has potential like every video game.

Jacob Diaz has a Drone called DC-2 then 3 which is upgraded through Lars Okada. The drone has it’s own gameplay mechanics that actually worked well for missions. Diaz’s drone can shock enemies, shoot grenades, open doors and infiltrate vents etc. DC-3 was solid gameplay-wise.

Main missions were varied where you are either on foot shooting bad guys or in the sky shooting combat drones from your sky car. Jacob Diaz has your typical assortment of weapons from an alien gun to shotgun, smg, assault rife etc. Although the gunplay was good for this game doesn’t mean it was good. Follow me?

Visuals

Cutscenes featuring motion cap was really good. Technically this game struggled the entire time to display ANY real depth-of-field on my Playstation 5. Mindseye is an okay looking at times and others not so much.

Sound

Music was generic sci-fi fare. Unmemorable, but I must tell you I played this with the copyrighted music off for YT VOD purposes. Alex Hernandez from Mafia 3 was good yet some of his lines I was like what the fuck? “We’re the crops” at the end killed me.