Mindjack

Mindjack has an excellent premise: you have the ability to take control, or "jack" the minds of your enemies. This can turn the tide of a battle and be used in many and interesting ways. However, Mindjack manages to not only botch this concept, but fail to produce a playable product on all fronts. The game is a complete disaster that I can hardly believe a major publisher can put out in 2011.

Mindjack's story focuses on the near future, where governments have become weak and corrupt organisations and groups are taking their place. The player character is an agent named Jim, who is tailing a rebel when he inexplicably goes against his direct orders that he received mere moments before and intercepts and makes contact with her. From here the story turns into a quest to discover why the main characters are being targeted by the state, and it all becomes inexplicable. Many plot points are never explained, and the story even has an infuriating moment where the characters learn that its possible to "jack" peoples minds, even though this has been a gameplay mechanic for 6 hours at that point. This does open the door for the story to take the twist of the characters having been controlled all along, but this never happens. The story is a bungled mess and has zero impact on the player. 


Mindjack is an ugly game graphically. Textures lack any detail and look like a bad ps2 game. Character models are ok, but animated poorly and again lack any detail that would make them stand out. The colour palette is completely generic, with nothing but metallic colours and browns. The environments are all industrial grey offices and city environments, and none of them are attractive to the eye or show a spark of creativity or inspiration on the part of the developer. Even the lighting effects are poor, with shadows and particles integrated in an unnatural way. The game also has awful music and some of the worst voice acting I have heard. Dialogue is delivered in a monotone and emotionless way and seems to be out of context a lot of the time. 


The actual gameplay is a third person shooter, and a bad one. It involves taking cover and shooting at enemies but falls completely on its face. Y ou cannot move from cover to cover, and the weapon selection is miserable, involving only the most basic staple weapons. Invisible edges, frustrating controls, awkward animations and inaccurate grenade and melee attacks ruin the combat flow. You can enslave weakened enemies in combat, allowing them to join your team. If you die, you can take control of another ally or a civilian in the vicinity, who inevitably pull a gun from their ass.  The game also takes your weapons off you after the end of each chapter, and the chapter system is completely miss-paced. Some chapters last 30 seconds and others 15 minutes.  Combat is far worse than Gears of War, which is 5 years old now . The lack of ambition and laziness in this game is incredible.

The AI in Mindjack is a complete joke. Enemies wander aimlessly from cover to the open, just allowing you to gun them down.  They will shoot at walls and they won't react as you take their comrades down. It all feels so poorly put together. The game is also riddled with bugs. I became invincible twice while I played this game, and AI characters got stuck in walls and on cover. The accuracy of the weapons is also awful on an Alpha Protocol level. Boss fights are horrible. Most boss fights are won by ignoring the boss and killing the normal enemies around them, which often causes the boss to be defeated as well. Its an unsatisfactory system and gives no enjoyment or achievement from playing this game.The multiplayer is integrated into the campaign, as human players can oppose your progress through a level and then you switch sides, prolonging the pain of playing this piece of shit. Also, the game cannot be paused, even when offline.


Mindjack has a good concept that was destroyed in implementation. The multiplayer is well integrated, but the combat is broken, enemies are bullet sponges and the enemy variety is non-existent. The story is garbage and the visuals are ugly. Boss fights are boring and ridiculous, and the game completely lacks polish or production values. Even the actual jacking and enslaving of enemies is badly done and doesn't work as it should. Mindjack fails on all fronts, and is a miserable waste of potential. Stay far away from this broken shitpile. Feel Plus should be shut down for this mess, and Square Enix need to stop putting their name to games this bad. 

Pros:

• Interesting integration of multiplayer
• Good concept

Cons:

• Ugly visuals 
• Terrible storytelling and script
• Soundtrack and voice work are hilariously bad
• Bad menus and game can't be paused
• AI is horrendous 
• Check points and chapter pacing are a mess
• Combat is broken, buggy and completely unsatisfying

Wtf:

• 6 hours in you tell me that there is a thing called mind jacking??? What the fuck have we been doing all game!!!!!???

Score: 

• 1/10

Needs work on every aspect of the game.