Mindjack

INTRODUCTION

I would like to preference this review by stating that I never did play this game when it first came out. Every gaming website, blog and magazine at the time was screaming at the top of their collective lungs how bad this game was so I never really gave the game a chance, well not right away anyway.

The simple matter of fact is I waited almost a whole year to slate my curiosity of this game because I really wanted to see if it was a bad as everyone said it was. So I picked the game up used for £5 and too my surprise this game is still being played by a handful of people and the developers have even patched the game. So please bare this in mind when reading my review, I am a "Johny come lately" and in all likelihood reviewing a game that is infinity more playable now than when it was released roughly a year ago.

Furthermore I would also like to mention that I have beaten the game story mode twice (first time by myself and the second time with a friend) and managed to get most of the achievements legitimately before resorting to boosting for the final two that I needed which where 'Get 50 wins as a Red Hacker' and the achievement where '100 people have joined my hosted games'. It took me just a little over 22 hours to get all 1000 gamerscore and the DLC is not required to max this game out either.

THE REVIEW

Mindjack on paper has a really interesting premise, a premise that a lot of people would get behind if it where to be executed properly. The host of the game takes control of the main protagonist 'Agent Jim' (yes really that's his name) and must progress through the story mode while other may join your game. They can either choose to help or hinder Agent Jim by "hacking in to" near by civilians, soldiers or robots that happen to be on the battlefield at the time allowing that player to take control of them. As the battle progresses the blue team can "mindslave" the enemy troops once they have downed them so that they will fight on their side and allow other blue hackers to take control of their body. The red team must stop the blue team from advancing to the next stage by any means necessary and typical have the upper hand at the start of the battle till the blue team starts mindslaving their troops, turning their own comrades against each other.

Every level pretty much works out the same, kill all the enemy and for the most part the levels here are pretty well balanced. As long as you bare in mind when and where to 'Mindjack' in to somebody you won't get shot to bits by the other players. You can also revive team mates at range as well so you don't necessarily have to be standing right next to someone to get them back up. As the blue team you want to save a civilian and make sure you Mindjack them and get them closer to your allies then jack back out again so that if both of the main heroes die you can get them back up again without to much effort.

However sometimes you will have to fight giant mechs, tanks or even massive cyber gorillas which I guess you could call Mindjack's bosses. These require a little more thought than your average level as they typically need to be taken down with heavy weapons which can either be found on the ground or taken from a backpack wearing heavy unit. Oh and pro-tip, if you actually want to beat the boss unit quickly my advice to you is to seek out the ammo stations that are dotted in the level as it will refill your rockets without having to fight another annoying heavy unit. If you are playing with other people make sure you take down the red hacker(s) before going for the ammo station otherwise you will be downed. With that said if you having problems beating a level due to other people killing you, you can simply set all the slots to private, you will still earn the bonus XP for being online too which is nice.

The last tip I can give you to make getting through the game a little easier is that the levels always have the same enemies and civilian placements so it is pretty easy to know what is coming and where. This can be important for the more lethal enemies like the ED 209 wannabies and the rocket firing drones so that your team can make a plan and take them down quickly.

I guess since at this point I have done more giving out tips than actual review I should point out that the controls are not that bad and the shooting in this game kind of feels like the Mass Effect games which is to say it's stiff but serviceable. (oh err!) The controls are definitely not perfect though and the perfect example of this is the melee attack. First of all you have to take you right hand of the right thumbstick which is awkward as the melee button is the 'B' button. Then there is the fact that you aim with this thing has to be perfect as there is a small margin for error and you can not correct it during the attack as you will be busy hitting the melee button to perform a flashy melee combo which makes you feel a little bit like Chuck Norris, but not quite. Melee attacks only seem to work on enemies that are standing still and not looking at you otherwise they will typically try to dodge or run away from you which is annoying if you are trying for the "10 melee kills in a row achievement".

One last thing I would like to mention about the gameplay of Mindjack and that is that there is a Call of Duty style perks system in this game called 'Plug-Ins' and allows the player some customisation of their character. The most annoying thing about this feature though is that you must be in the main menu to change the plug-ins which is very annoying if you want to switch them out on the fly during a game.

Another problem that I have noticed is that sometimes even though your character is behind cover but clearly leaning out of the cover they will somehow (and don't ask me how) shoot at the cover instead of the enemy right in front of you. It happens rarely but it's annoying when it does happen because it's normally at the worst possible time. Also throwing grenades is a bit weird too as you have no control over how far your character will throw the thing. Baseball must be a popular sport in future America because everyone in this game throws like a speed pitcher on steroids. I find that aiming the 'nade just in front of the enemy is enough to get them caught in the blast radius normally.

Mindjack's presentation to put it in a over used and generic game review language is very "hit and miss". The graphics don't exactly rival the Gears of War or Uncharted games but Mindjack's graphics are not hard on the eyes despite there being a lot of grey because you know in the future everything has to be in metallic grey and neon lights. Despite what you might think at least the game is consistent for the most part when it comes down to it's futuristic theme. The character models also look rather nice and have some nice animations to them but the game does not require them to do a lot other than the occasional canned animation for the melee attacks or basic rolling manurers.

The sound on the other hand does not fair so well. The music is that of a generic futuristic video game fare that kind of blends in to itself a lot. The only recognisable tune if the tune they seemed to have been lifted from EA's Red Alert series when anything that constitutes an important battle shows up. The sounds that the guns make when they fire are OK but nothing special in fact it would not surprise me if the devs used some sound effects from sound kind of generic sound bank library.

Then there is also the voice acting, there is a lot of it which is good but not all of it is perfect. When the main characters try to do snappy one liners they tend to fall flat, either because of the delivery or because the line was flat out uninspired. There are also times where the characters flat out speak in "Engrish" or broken English which is really odd for a mainstream video game in 2011.

Final Words

Overall I was presently surprised with Mindjack. It's not a great game by any means but I did have a lot of fun playing it as it's a fairly competent shooter with some slightly wonky cover and melee controls. Mindjack is especially with other people despite the online community being as small as it is. I was expecting this game to be all kinds of terrible but it appears that the developers have solved a lot of the issues that made the game crash a lot when it was first released. (the game has never crashed on me) If you can persuade a friend or two to play with game with you, you will get about 20 hours of enjoyment out of it and it's a pretty easy and a rare game to "max out".