Let's get the inevitable GTA V & VI (Grand Theft Auto 5 and 6) reference out of the way immediately and just say: You're allowed to play Mindseye and Rockstar won't mind at all–they are vastly different and have only passing similarities–if you must compare it to something it's more like Watchdogs, Cyberpunk, maybe Ghost Recon Wildlands, and has 27 extra missions & races which require a good selection of different skills, a bit like Mafia or Saints Row.
In Mindseye you play as Jacob Diaz, a soldier in the near future who has an experimental implant that allows him to interface with various systems and drones via a neural link known as... Yep, you guessed it: Mindseye. Jacob is discharged from the military after an operation goes badly wrong, he is blamed for it going FUBAR… Flashbacks throughout the story fill in what really happened during Jacob's disastrous final mission.
Jacob arrives in the city of Redrock after a former army buddy Seb fixes him up with a job at the company he works for–the huge Silva Corporation. The Tesla-esque company builds cars, drones and robots. Jacob is given his own apartment and access to vehicles and weapons. Redrock is a sprawling desert city that looks a lot like a modernised Las Vegas, and has a fully automated robot & drone law enforcement system, all designed and built by the Silva Corp–strong echoes of Robocop, Detroit and Omni Consumer Products.
In-game the character models are good and well-animated, in cutscenes the character models and acting are all of a very high standard, and the lengthy intro sequence really sets the scene for the game, but there are some disappointing glitches.
Missions follow in a logical order, but side missions, challenges, races etc. can be accessed by walking into portals that appear in view or on the mini map. These might be a flashback to an incident in Jacob's past or something tactical like placing security bots to stop a bank robbery. The previously mentioned selection of car/drone races and other shootout-type missions can be accessed from the "Play" menu when paused.
Jacob interacts with a large cast of characters; Seb Paul, Kerry Rigby, Marco Silva, Mayor Shiva Vega, General Lamrie, Diana Howard, Claudia Hastings, Burt Sommers, Travis Conrad, Hunter Morrison, Lars Okada and Charlie the friendly hacker. Some order or tell Jacob what to do, some tell him what not to do, and others just help or hinder. Jacob takes on some weird collaborations during the twisty-turny storyline, which is full of double-crosses and deception.
Missions all seem to consist of cutscene/drive somewhere/shootout/cutscene/rinse repeat‐it's a formula used to death and back by almost every open world game, from GTA 3 through to GTA V & Online, 2 Red Dead Redemptions, The Witcher 3: Wildhunt, 4 Mafias and even comeback king Cyberpunk. The problem is that, unlike the previously mentioned heavyweights of the genre, for most of the game there is next to no freedom, no free roam and from what I've seen, not much point anyway.
Other than the mission-based narrative adventure, at its heart Mindseye is a cover shooter (press 'B' to hunker behind available cover), and running and gunning will only work to a point. The weapons do a good deal of damage, and only the tougher robot enemies are hard to kill until your drone buddy is fully upgraded.
Jacob's companion drone is called the DC-2. The drone is a key companion to the player character, used for various tasks like disabling machinery, scanning targets and marking their positions, shocking electronic locks open, and eventually stunning enemies and launching grenades. It connects with Jacob by collecting neural impulses through the Mindseye. Unfortunately the controls for this are fiddly and non-instinctive, but zapping enemies and then finishing them with Jacob's ballistic weapons never gets old.
The game's physics are a rather mixed bag. Jacob doesn't have any mass or momentum (something we were introduced to with Niko Bellic in GTA IV) and the cars (almost all EVs) feel a bit odd too, with rather light steering while still managing to feel heavy –they don't handle very well, but do the job. Both the remote drone and the passenger drone's physics are extremely basic, with no actual feeling of flight. The cover mode (B) works about as well as most games that have the feature (i.e. sometimes)–Jacob will even stealthily skedaddle from one cover spot to the next with a press of 'A', and slide into cover if he's sprinting and you hold "B", but in some situations, and not all. Another problem is the lack of a selectable shoulder swap–which obviously limits Jacob's field of aim at vital moments.
Now to the serious gripes. I'm no game dev by any means but how do you create an "open world" shooting game with no other attack besides being able to shoot things with weapons? I can run up to someone or be approached by an enemy (they are intelligent enough to flank you in many situations) and... You suddenly discover that you can't punch, kick, karate chop or even pistol whip/rifle butt them! This omission is highlighted by the fact that there's no automatic weapon swap when empty–another daft thing to omit. There's a decent sniper rifle in the game with 3 zoom levels on the scope, and while there's not a ton of ammo for it available, it's usually a one-hit kill.
Will they be able to add these features later in an update or are we just stuck with the game as it is? A couple of these issues are such basic things that I was actually flabbergasted when I found that they were missing‐especially as they were definitely mentioned in the beta test…
Like many open world games, missions sometimes have "fail" conditions–like taking too much damage, taking too long, losing contact with a target and suchlike. Mindseye will sometimes fail you for taking a slightly different route to the one that the game designer DEMANDS of you–with zero warning!
I also found that (on a TV without speakers at least) the sound levels are WRONG, with the music (which is pretty darned good) and ambient sound fx frequently drowning out dialogue–meaning either delving into the audio options or turning the subtitles on are a must if you want to follow the plot.
I found Mindseye a frustrating experience because some of it is SO good (particularly the lighting) and yet a lot of it is poor, seemingly tested by amateurs and at times barely playable. The game's worst flaw is without doubt the frame rate, which will often cause you to miss a shot. Other glitches include vehicles popping up out of nowhere and AI fails, where the AI traffic just stops working.
Mindseye was touted as a triple-A title (and certainly advertised enough, with high-quality trailers that suggested a GTA V rival) but failed in too many departments. It's not exactly terrible but it is continually disappointing when I'd hope for something special. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy parts of the game, but it relies on constant shootout action and even the story's climax is a letdown.
Developed by Build A Rocket Boy