Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I got nothing against Marcus Phoenix, but in a fair and just world, Capcom would be
collecting royalties from him for the next century. The third-person shooter, specifically
the over-the-shoulder variety, has had a meteoric rise to prominence this generation. But it’s
a rise that can be traced directly back to the end of last generation.
And a rural village somewhere in Europe.
I bring this up for contrast. You can take the baton and do something with it, as the
Gears of War series has done...or you can drop it. For all its ambition, Mindjack is
a game that tries to juggle too many influences, too many parts, too many ideas.
And just drops the baton.
Mindjack is in this perpetual and haphazard rush to be clever. It tries to do so much
interesting stuff for the sake of doing interesting stuff that it forgets to polish the core mechanics.
You know, the boring components of a cover-and-shoot game...like the covering and shooting. Mindjack
has gotten a lot of negative reviews, but you can basically summarize them in the terms
of a third-grade science project.
This game shoots for the stars with a cardboard rocket ship.
Mindjack tells—and poorly, I might add—a dull story about a secret agent and some chick.
They’re rooted in the unfortunate philosophy of modern game design that says mature games
require characters with no distinguishable character. So you won’t be very concerned
with their stories, anyway. But the crux of the plot—and of course, gameplay—is that
you can hack into other people’s minds.
This is the game’s hook, the whole “mindslave” angle. It’s very important to note, however,
that it tries to establish this upon a core shooter that isn’t very good. The combat
mechanics are poor, and thanks to some really clunky design, shooting is usually as frustrating
as it is mediocre.
Obviously, that’s not a great foundation from which to get cute.
But Mindjack presses on with its namesake ability. You can wound enemies or even sentry
robots and basically hack them to fight on your side...so BioShock, right? Yeah, that’s
about right. Only the game also tries to add a little Battlefield 2, as well. You can essentially
swap consciousness with anyone on your side and fight with their bodies, instead. An interesting
concept, but it’s marred by poor execution. It’s very hard to locate usable bodies,
so the whole process becomes a disorienting mess.
Disorienting is actually an apt description of Mindjack at large. The enemies all look
identical, the environments never evolve. There’s a serious case of P.N.03 syndrome
here, as GameCube owners can attest. You never have a feeling of achievement or progression
because you never really feel like you’re progressing.
You’re just shooting and shooting and catatonic state.
Mindjack is a tremendously limiting game, which is counter to the ideas it wants to
establish. There are some smart ideas here too, but they suffer from poor execution...the
same issue that ruins the core shooting mechanics, as well. With a little more care, a game like
this could’ve been interesting.
But Mindjack doesn’t care. And neither should you.