Mindseye Review

Looks great, plays like a chore.

Watch the whole review or…

Read it here!

Title: Mindseye

Release: June 10, 2025

Platform: PS5 PC Xbox X|S

Developer: Build A Rocket Boy

Publisher: IO Interactive Partners A/S

Genre: Action Shooter

ESRB: M

Reviewed on: PC

Time Played: 12 Hours

Intro:

What do you get when you polish a car with no engine? That’s what Mindseye felt like. Sure, it looks sleek and impressive at first glance, but once you take control, you realize it’s missing the most important parts. The city pretends to be alive, the story moves fast without ever going deep, and the gameplay promises variety but never follows through. In this review, I’ll break down how Mindseye tries to do everything at once, stumbles through most of it, and whether it manages to offer anything worth your time in the end.

Where it starts

Five years ago, Jacob Diaz was on a black ops mission for the military. His role was to control a drone with his Mindseye, a high-tech neural implant that allowed him to view through and maneuver the drone. While exploring a mysterious chamber, the drone and he were heavily affected, causing him to black out. Now, after suffering memory loss and brain issues over the past five years, he’s starting a new job at the biggest factory for electric vehicles and robots, thanks to his friend. With his new position, he might be right where he needs to be to find answers to his Mindseye problems.

Exploring Redrock City

Your role as a guard at Silva Corp requires you to disable rogue robots and protect the company from competitors or other malicious individuals trying to steal from Silva. To do this, you’ll need to travel across long distances in Redrock City. As the story progresses, you’ll be given vehicles to get around. Since there isn’t much to distract you in the city, you’ll mostly be moving from point A to point B during different missions. Additionally, you can’t steal civilian rides while in the city, so you must take care of your vehicle or end up walking.

Gunfights

Nearly every mission involves at least one gunfight where you’ll move from cover to cover, shooting your enemies until they are either killed or destroyed. You start with a pistol that has unlimited ammo, and you pick up more guns throughout the story. These firearms have limited ammunition, so you need to collect ammo from fallen enemies. By the end, there is a small selection of guns you can use, depending on the situation. However, there are a couple of very powerful weapons that work in almost every scenario, as long as there’s enough ammo available.

Helpful Drone

Soon after the main story begins, you’ll receive a handy drone. Always by your side, you’ll be able to send it out to shock enemies or doors, along with other useful abilities that unlock later in the game. You can control the drone while looking through its camera; however, when you do, enemies will start attacking the drone, gradually chipping away at the cooldown bar needed for its abilities. While controlling the drone, it doesn’t take long before you can’t do anything with it when enemies shoot at it. You can command the drone to use its skills while staying in Jacob’s perception, but the aiming can be a bit off. I can’t count how many times the stupid drone dropped a grenade right on my head when I wanted it on top of a group of enemies.

Side Activities?

Mindseye primarily focuses on the main story, with very little to do on the side. Occasionally, you can find small portals throughout the world that take you into short mini-games, like racing or surviving large gunfights. From the menu screen you can jump out of the main story and free roam the city. There, you’ll find the same activities, but they are easily marked on the map for you to navigate to. Additionally, you have access to a workshop of sorts, giving you full control over the city and its inhabitants. By adding assets and programming them, you can even create your own mini-games. I played with it a little, and it seems complex—I didn’t want to spend too much time figuring it out. I just caused game-breaking explosions during my brief playtime.

Can the kids watch

Mindseye was no stranger to harsh language, with some characters cursing quite a bit more than others. Beyond that, there was your average violence within gunfights involving both humans and robots. It wasn’t terribly graphic, no dismemberments or copious amounts of blood flying around. I do think, however, it would be quite boring for the kids if they wanted to watch, even with the fights and occasional car crashes.

Final Thoughts

I would love to hear any thoughts or questions you have about the game or my review, so leave me a message in the comments below. While you do that, let’s move on to my final thoughts and ratings.

Mindseye didn’t have a great release, especially for consoles from what I understand. There were numerous bugs and jankiness throughout the entire game. I was fortunate to only experience a few issues like major lag during cut scenes or NPCs struggling to figure out how to get where they were supposed to go. But, even if the developers manage to fix all the bugs, I wasn’t impressed with much of what the game had to offer.

The only good thing I can say about it is the visuals. From cut scenes to gameplay, this game looks damn good, barring any visual bugs causing mayhem. Almost as if they spent too much time polishing something instead of working on things that really needed it. The game itself lacked any depth. The city has this illusion of life with all of the vehicles and people walking around, but I couldn’t hop into any vehicle or talk to anybody. The city’s only purpose was to look pretty while I drove to wherever the current mission wanted me to go. It was interesting to find that my vehicle could get flat tires due to bullets, and it greatly affected the speed I could go. But the fact I was stuck with whatever vehicle they gave me made some trips tedious, I had to be very careful with my ride. I was excited at one point to finally get to drive a drone, but it was slow and used only to drive from point to another, but in the sky.

The start of the game had easy gunfights, with enemies hitting me occasionally, but as it went on, the enemies got better guns and became very accurate. The last few missions were hard because of the increased difficulty, and the checkpoints were so far apart that it was a chore to work back through to where I died. There was a drone to help by throwing grenades or hacking robots, but I could only use it from Jacobs’ perspective. If I tried to manually control the drone for more accurate attacks, the enemies would immediately target the drone, removing any advantage I could have used.

There were very few activities that took me away from the main story. Some portals were available that tracked how long it took me to get through a gunfight, awarding me a medal when finished. However, there were no in-game rewards or anything that made them feel worthwhile. If I wanted to free roam the city, I had to leave the main story. In free roam, I could find many side activities, but again, they didn’t feel fulfilling. I love a good driving game, and there were a few kind of fun racing activities, but the driving in Mindseye felt slippery. Vehicles felt light and all over the place, which kept it from being a great driving game.

The developers did offer a workshop of sorts, giving me access to the in-game assets and letting me create my own experience if I wanted. An awesome idea, however, the user interface and usage were complicated. I only figured out a small part of what was available and used that knowledge to make explosions. It was a lot of fun, but very short-lived. I have no intention of spending the time needed to fully understand how to use it and to make some potentially fun things within Mindseye.

The story felt forced, with generic characters doing typical things. I felt no connection to anyone. It was a game that focused solely on the main story and jumped around too much. I never really had a chance to get to know any of the characters because the story had too many objectives to accomplish on its own. If there had been mission lines involving single characters and those were more spread out, it would have been much more enjoyable.

With that I think it’s time to boil it down to the numbers and place this game on a shelf.

The visuals, arguably the best part of the game, were very good. The cut scenes were a real treat, I’m giving it a 4

The story was dull and generic, trying to cover to much with no focus, it’s getting a 1

Gameplay was OK, driving was fun but the gun fights became repetitive and lacked variety, I’m handing out a 2.

Absolutley no replayability, even if there were no bugs to worry about the game lacks depth and overall enjoyment, that’s a 1.

I had little fun getting through the game, I was more excited about finally getting the end credits than actually getting there, that’s another 2.

Giving Mindseye an average score of 2 out of five. Pacing it on my bottom shelf. From the outside Mindseye looks like it has promise, but when you get into it, you’ll find it tries to go in to many directions and lacks any real depth of enjoyment. I would not recommend this game, even if there were no bugs.