Monday, February 7, 2011

Mindjack | Review


Synopsis: Promptly following the Lord of Arcana review, Square Enix has apparently decided that they want to keep us busy since it was too cold to do anything else over here in sunny Arizona. Mindjack is the recent futuristic shooter from the company most known for their RPG titles. With little promotion behind this game, I am here to tell you what this title holds and to help determine if this is a diamond in the rough or just an ordinary lump of coal. In Mindjack, you join a rogue team of agents fighting for survival only to get deeper in the middle of a conspiracy. Two features that are unique to this game is the ability to seamlessly go from single player to coop when people join your game and also the ability to hack into enemies, vehicles, or civilians to get the upper hand in battle. Now, on to the review.

Praise: The gameplay behind this title is rather unique and helps to make the game more fun. This holds true especially when you are shot and killed because you are able to find a civilian to “hack” into and continue the good battle. The other good side behind the hacking ability is that when you take down an enemy and not kill them, you can then turn them into slaves, building your own army to take out the opposition. The cutscenes resemble that of the typical Square Enix titles, which is always fun to watch and kept me playing to see what happened next. The coop feature was pretty nice and was able to find people to play with rather easily; however, I have yet to have someone join me in my single player game.

Gripes: Unfortunately, in Mindjack, I felt that the cons outweighed the pros, specifically with the graphics, gameplay, and story. The graphics looked rather flat and unpolished, as if the game was rushed and put out before being totally finished. One thing that bugged the hell out of me was when you shoot the enemies, they do not react when hit, making it hard to tell if you are even hitting your target. The story is also rather bland, starting with the background behind your character and conflict, which seems to start strong, but I quickly lost interest into what was going on, and started focusing on enslaving enemies and racking up experience points to level up and evolving my character’s play style.

Overall, Mindjack was not a bad game, but did lack some key elements to help improve its list of shortcomings. Though I would not suggest this game as it wasn’t my cup of tea, but for those interested, my best description of it would be to compare to a mixture of The Club and Lost Planet should they have a short deadline to fully develop what they originally had conceived it. Those looking for trophies are able to rack them up as I was getting one every ten to fifteen minutes. Though I don’t think I will be going back and playing again, I do still plan on finishing it, as it is still generally entertaining, at least until the release of Bulletstorm, which we should be reviewing in the next week or two.

Mashbuttons.com gives Mindjack a 4 out of 10.

Mindjack is available now for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

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