MindsEye – Review
Reviewed by Karan Parmar | June 11, 2025
MindsEye comes from a studio with big expectations; Build A Rocket Boy, led by Leslie Benzies, the former creative mind behind Grand Theft Auto. With that pedigree, expectations were sky-high for a groundbreaking open-world experience. What we got instead is a fragmented mix of half-realized ideas. On the surface, it looks slick and dystopian, full of neon skylines, rebel factions, and futuristic tech. But underneath the gloss lies outdated gameplay, erratic pacing, and uninspired mechanics. MindsEye feels like a game trying to resurrect the past rather than reinvent the future.
Gameplay, Combat & General Feel
At its core, MindsEye is a third-person action-adventure with linear missions set inside a pseudo open-world framework. You control Jacob, an ex-soldier dealing with memory loss and a shady tech conspiracy. The formula is familiar: shootouts, cover mechanics, driving segments, and the occasional set piece, but none of these elements feel particularly fresh or refined.
Combat is functional but stiff. Gunplay lacks punch, with spongey enemies and basic AI that relies more on numbers than tactics. Melee feels even worse; swings don’t connect satisfyingly, dodges are inconsistent, and parrying is unreliable. The cover system is serviceable at best and awkward at worst, especially when enemies rush or the geometry gets messy. It’s clear the combat model was lifted from older third-person games without much modernization.
Driving is a mixed bag. In scripted chases, it’s cinematic and fun. But once you’re in the open-world sections, the handling becomes floaty, and the traffic AI behaves erratically. Even when the car scenes work, there’s a lingering feeling of deja vu; as if you’ve done it all before in Sleeping Dogs or Watch Dogs, only better.
Gameplay systems outside of combat; like crafting or exploration are shallow. There’s an impressive-looking editor tool buried in the menus for creative missions and content sharing, but unless you’re a creator at heart, you’ll likely never touch it. The game wants to do everything, but ends up doing very little well.
World Design & Exploration
Redrock City is where MindsEye takes place: a stylized, dystopian urban sprawl surrounded by desert, neon alleys, and towering megastructures. At night, the city glows with synthetic life. Holograms buzz overhead, massive digital billboards loom, and the skyline feels lifted from a gritty sci-fi novel. There’s atmosphere here. But once you begin exploring, it becomes clear how hollow it is.
There’s very little interactivity in the open world. Side activities are minimal. Buildings that look explorable often aren’t. Pedestrian AI is robotic, repeating the same animations and lines. And while the game gestures at depth, hinting at politics, rebels, AI surveillance, and underground movements, it never allows the player to really engage with that world. You’re stuck following mission markers rather than making your own path.
Traversal isn’t very satisfying either. You have a map, some fast travel options, and a car, but moving around feels like a chore rather than a joy. There’s no real incentive to explore, no meaningful collectibles, and no lore-driven side paths. The world is all style, no substance.
Story, Writing & Characters
The premise behind MindsEye is full of promise. You play Jacob Diaz, a former military operative caught in a web of neural implants, corporate overreach, and lost memories. The setup touches on themes like identity, surveillance, and humanity’s relationship with tech, classic cyberpunk material. But the story never capitalizes on its potential.
Narrative beats are formulaic and predictable. Plot twists arrive on schedule, and character arcs never evolve beyond basic archetypes. Jacob is your standard stoic protagonist, while supporting characters fall into cliche categories: the tech-savvy hacker, the corporate antagonist, the mysterious informant. Dialogue is clunky at times, especially in emotional scenes, and while the voice acting is competent, it’s let down by flat writing.
The game occasionally tries to inject satire or world commentary through in-game advertisements and propaganda, but it rarely lands with impact. Unlike titles like Deus Ex or Cyberpunk 2077, MindsEye lacks nuance; it tells more than it shows.
Visuals, Performance & Audio
The game’s environments are beautifully lit, filled with cyberpunk color palettes and stylistic contrast. The cutscenes, in particular, are polished and cinematic, showing off high-quality motion capture and impressive facial animation, but in gameplay, the cracks begin to show. NPC animations are stiff. Environmental textures look outdated in daylight. The lighting system struggles to maintain cohesion outside of scripted scenes, and effects like explosions or weather changes feel inconsistent. On PC, the game suffers from performance issues, including stuttering, crashes, and long loading times. Optimization is a major issue, even on high-end rigs.
The audio design holds up. The synth-heavy soundtrack complements the setting well: moody, atmospheric, and sometimes aggressive. Voice acting is passable, if not memorable. Weapon sounds and ambient effects feel a bit undercooked, but overall, the soundscape fits the tone.
Mission Structure & Pacing
MindsEye follows a semi-linear mission structure, with campaign segments broken up by free-roam downtime. Main story missions are often bogged down by unnecessary driving or filler objectives. You’ll find yourself repeatedly fetching items, escorting NPCs, or participating in shallow mini-games.
There are attempts to vary gameplay; some missions include stealth, hacking, or vehicular combat, but they rarely feel refined. Stealth is basic, enemy detection feels random, and there’s no real reward for playing smart. Hacking boils down to quick-time prompts rather than puzzle-solving.
Even the biggest set-piece moments, like escaping from a collapsing tower or fighting on a moving train, lack the impact you’d expect. These sections feel like they were designed years ago and never updated for today’s standards.
Technical Performance & Bugs
As of launch, MindsEye is plagued with technical problems. Bugs range from the harmless floating NPCs and texture pop-in to the game-breaking. Crashes to desktop, corrupted save files, and UI glitches. Even patch updates have occasionally introduced new issues rather than fixing old ones. The lack of polish here is shocking given the game’s pedigree. It feels like it needed several more months in QA. Load times are long, and the interface is unintuitive, especially during inventory or mission management. While some of these issues may be patched over time, it’s clear the launch version wasn’t ready.
Endgame & Replayability
Once the main campaign is over, there’s not much to bring you back. The open world offers little in terms of endgame content. There’s no NG+, no meaningful progression systems, and the side content lacks variety. The level editor, while powerful, won’t appeal to everyone. It’s deep but not accessible, more for hobbyist designers than regular players.
The idea of a living platform with user-generated missions sounds great in theory, but right now it feels half-baked. The player base is already dwindling, and without strong post-launch support or community tools, it’s hard to imagine long-term replay value.
Final Verdict
MindsEye is an ambitious but deeply flawed project. It wants to be a cinematic action game, an open-world sandbox, a narrative drama, and a creative platform all at once. But in trying to be everything, it loses focus. The result is a game that looks futuristic but feels outdated in design, mechanics, and execution. There are flashes of brilliance in Redrock’s visual aesthetic, the ambitious level editor, and a few high-stakes missions, but they’re buried under clunky systems, bland storytelling, and constant bugs. This isn’t the next-gen experience it aimed to be. It’s a cautionary tale about scope, polish, and vision. If you’re curious, wait for patches or a heavy discount. If you’re expecting a new standard in narrative action, MindsEye is not that game, at least not yet.
Rating: 4/10
Special thanks to IO Interactive Partners for providing the review code.
© Images and screenshots used in this review are courtesy of IO Interactive Partners / Build A Rocket Boy.
Buy the Game
You can purchase MindsEye from the following official platforms:
Support the developers and experience MindsEye for yourself: a bold but flawed vision of a dystopian future, waiting to be explored.
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