2.5/5 ★ – Step_GG's review of MindsEye.

[PS5] 15~ Hours, Platinum Achieved A disappointing potentially great game. I was going into this game expecting a good linear story with semi-open world elements reminiscent more of 2010s games but with some innovative twists, and to be honest, I kinda got it with also seeing the potential of the vision of it being expanded content wise both with the integrated UCG and official expansion drops, like an evolving universe, but unfortunately the game launched in a state that is a real mess, where its only hope is that BARB as a whole can do right by the community and bring the game where it should be and beyond, similar to what happened with Cyberpunk or No Man’s Sky. Pros: + Great looking cutscenes and pretty traditional action story + Good and fitting soundtrack + Good cast of characters with different vibes + Driving/Flying feels heavy in a good way that makes it feel immersive + The world/city can look amazing, graphically the game can be really great to look at when not having graphical/performance issues (for example during cutscenes, more landscape areas..) + Gunplay is pretty standard, but i liked it + Possibility of “infinite” content and community building other than having an ever-expanding world/story. + Straightforward/Accessible Platinum Cons: - Performance both technical and graphical, this is the biggest problem from FPS being all over the place, crazy depth of field blurring, to pop ins, artifact heavy anti-aliasing.. - Bugs, some missions can bug out (for one example, if someone else should drive a car and that car is damaged it can leave you stuck inside with the other character just standing there until you restart the whole mission) - World can feel empty but kinda depends on the scenarios going on, weird balance of traffic/pedestrians intensity - Missing useful gameplay elements, essentially things that usually makes the combat or movement more dynamic for certain situations, for example there’s no melee, no climbing walls a bit higher than the character, no manual shoulder swap, no stealing (could also be polite) cars etc.. making certain scenarios a bit awkward. - AI is kinda dumb but they can deal great damage depending on the scenario, i think it isn’t balanced too well or believable. - Gameplay animations both for the player and AI could be better, for example when you hit an enemy a lot of times they pop down for a sec and up again in a very unnatural way. - Weird limits and/or unclear paths, it happened a couple of times where i was trying to reach the objective but since the minimap doesn’t show the path unless it is a designated road you might take a longer path, but that gets abruptly interrupted by the mission failed screen, so feels a bit strict at times. Essentially, it is a game that i think suffered from the usual problems in a lot of games lately, the ones with the upper management of the studio/project and resources (like some BARB employee reviews also noted). Devs probably did thier best no matter the crunch and most likely pressure to release this way too early and still are, but now trying to fix the mess that might’ve been avoidable from the top. As of right now, even though i found good enjoyment in it (I might have an higher tolerance on things than the average player), i wouldn’t recommend it at the moment and would say to wait for updates to see how it will pan out if you’re interested! Hopefully the game can have a good comeback, because if determination and good change is there most of the issues are definitely fixable, making the great game underneath the issues come out.