Mindjack
The future is mental
Review 'Do you wish to continue?' It's a question games have always asked after death – a challenge to players to overcome defeat and try, try, and try again. But when that same question is posed upon completion of every stage, as in MindJack, what initially comes across as over-politeness quickly begins to feel just plain apologetic. And, believe me, MindJack has a lot to apologise for.
Disarm with dis arm
Painfully familiar third-person cover-shooting aside, MindJack's greatest failure is to squander its fertile premise. Set in 2031, a plot barely tangible enough to hang its maguffin on, sees nebulous governmental and commercial powers fighting a covert war to monopolise mindjacking – a technology that can hack into and control minds and machines.
It's a technology that should translate into gaming gold. While already touched upon in Deus Ex and Bioshock, among others, its promotion to central conceit promises a rich seam of novelty. But MindJack's unimaginative execution lacks the invention required to tap this potential.
Wanna stroke my gun baby?
Just two powers distinguish field agent Jim from the generic cover-shooter mould of Marcus Fenix and Nathan Drake. The first, Mind Slave, exploits a brief state of vulnerability before an enemy's death to enslave their mind and force them to fight alongside you. The second, Mind Hack, allows you to leap out of Jim's mind, float about the battlefield all Chocky-style and take complete control of an idle machine or friendly NPC.
Next page: Stop reading my thoughts and jack off
COMMENTS
+1 for Paradroid remake
Or the spectrum sequel whose name I forget.
Sigh
It would be not so bad if this crapfest was just the latest iteration in an already done to death franchise but when a dev takes what is conceivably a reasonably innovative premise and proceeds to just flush it down the crapper then that is just sad.
Queue marketards such as that clown from Treyarch blaming stupid angry gamers for "punishing a developer who dared to do something different" etc.
Paradroid!
Ah, thanks for reminding me of that one. I used to love Paradroid 90 (the remake) on my Atari ST.
I'll have a Arrgh please Bob!
Well bad game or no, this comment made me chuckle. Maybe throwing it in as some kind of mini-game might have improved things. I can imagine cyborg Holness gunning you down if you get a wrong answer!
I bet that lots of people think that being a reviewer on a site like El Reg.......
........must be a great job given that you get lots of lovely shinies to play with and to write about. This however, shows the downside of the job! Sometimes you have to watch/use and review something that does not even deserve half marks. Thanks for the warning - I will of course avoid this game like the plague.
