We attempted to acquire a review code for MindsEye here at Pure Xbox prior to its launch on June 10th, and were told that unfortunately we wouldn't be getting one - which probably happened for most outlets considering there were no reviews at release. It was something we'd been expecting considering the game's poor reception even before it came out, and we watched from the sidelines as it debuted to mixed-at-best player feedback.
However, I was able to obtain a code for MindsEye through other means post-launch (before you ask, nobody has paid us or asked me to say nice things about this game!), and spent around four hours with it during the weekend just gone. Expectations were extremely low considering the poor press this title has received, and perhaps that's why I've been particularly shocked to find that I'm enjoying it. Yeah, I actually kinda like MindsEye.
So, here's the thing - there's a lot of ambition and evidently a lot of money poured into this game. The cutscenes wouldn't look out of place in a major AAA title, the world is pretty huge, and the gameplay feels reminiscent of GTA for the most part. You spend most of your time driving and shooting in MindsEye, and the former has great handling and a nice sense of speed, while the latter offers familiar mechanics and a well-implemented cover system. This gunplay is nothing special by any means, but not horribly implemented either.
The mission structure does branch out a little bit sometimes as well. I've come across one instance where you're tasked with shooting out the back of a car while someone else drives (reminding me of a classic level called "Precious Cargo" in 007: Agent Under Fire for the original Xbox - if you know, you know!). Another level tasks you with flying a drone through someone's house without them noticing, and there's a side-mission where you have to strategically place robots to try and prevent criminals from escaping the area. MindsEye's gameplay is still pretty repetitive for the most part (drive here, shoot this, go to the next mission), but they're at least trying to provide some variety here.
None of this seems broken either - just unfinished. The moment-to-moment gameplay is perfectly serviceable, but it could have been much more. Enemy AI makes weird decisions at times, side-missions are mostly lacking in depth and feel like they were tacked on at the last minute, and the open world is vast but empty in non-mission related locations. They've got the core of it nailed down pretty well, but it feels like they ran out of time to expand on everything else.
And again, I can't stress enough how impressive those cutscenes are for a studio's first game. Both the world and its characters look great aside from pop-in and other visual glitches that present themselves, while the lip syncing is really good as well. These aren't short throwaway moments either - in the four hours I've played so far, I've constantly been treated to high-quality cutscenes that have clearly had a lot of love put into them.
It's a shame the story is a bit of a mess, or at least I personally think so. Again, there's a decent core to the narrative — this idea that the main character has lost his memories and has an electronic chip in his neck that he wants answers about — but everything else about it is just... perplexing. In the first few hours, you're constantly introduced to characters that you're apparently supposed to know, people make references to things that you're apparently supposed to be aware of, and you're sent on missions to complete tasks that your character apparently feels are very important - but as a player, I often have no idea what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.
It's early days and maybe it'll all click for me at some point, but I'm definitely enjoying MindsEye in spite of the actual story behind it right now. And when I say "enjoy", that doesn't necessarily equate to a what I'd call a "good" game yet. As mentioned, it definitely has its problems, and it's still a bit of a technical mess on Xbox Series X at launch. Frame rate is inconsistent (and seemingly stuck at 30FPS for the moment), the lighting and anti-aliasing seem to be somewhat broken, pop-in is fairly rampant, and ultimately it just needs some patches to bring it up to speed.
I'll say this - I wouldn't go out and pay $60 for this game in its current state. Even when it's patched up and tweaks are made to things like the enemy AI, I still wouldn't pay full price for it. However, it's bound to start dropping in price pretty rapidly over the coming months, and I wouldn't regret dropping $20 on MindsEye even as it stands right now.
The main takeaway for me is that MindsEye has been painted as this horrendous laughing stock that'll go down in gaming history as a disaster, and yet I feel we've seen so much worse in the past. It's actually way closer to being a "good" game than I'd ever anticipated, but it fell at the final few hurdles - and unfortunately, I can't see it winning people around at this point. If they'd have only given this title another year-or-so, things might have been quite different.