| Author | Review |
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CheneyHeadshot
168,311
TA Score for this game: 2,064
Posted on 18 May 12 at 12:33, Edited on 18 May 12 at 13:57 |
This review has 24 positive votes and 9 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Released to little or no fanfare in January 2011, this game probably passed you by. Critically panned with a Metacritic rating of 43 it soon fell into the bargain basement section. I grabbed it for £5 ($8) in July purely to boost my beandive stats so didn't expect much anyway.
The signs aren't good when you start the game up. Crappy looking graphics, appalling voice acting and an immediate introduction to the mindjacking mechanic are enough to make you think twice. In fact, I popped the first achievement and didn't go back until 5 weeks later. Something piqued my interest the first time, this game was intriguing regardless of its readily apparent flaws.
You play as the main protagonist Jim Corbijn (the name sounds Dutch but he certainly doesn't) who's caught up in a plot blah blah dead wife blah blah government agency bleh. The plot is secondary to the whole mindjacking mechanic. If you play this game as a cover based shooter you'll hate it. Without a doubt. But once you get used to the idiosyncracies of the game, you'll soon uncover diamonds amongst all the dogshit smeared all over your screen.
You can unload a clip into an enemy and he'll die just as in any other shooter. But if you time your weapon burst just fine and you're close enough to him, he'll be weakened and you can mindslave him at which point he'll turn on his erstwhile comrades. You can then jump out of your body and become a floating entity, then mindjack into your new friend thus taking control of his actions.
This is straightforward enough with the standard footsoldiers, the key difference being your health doesn't recharge so death is permanent. At which point you're thrown out of the host body and have to jack into another body before getting back into the action.
However, if Jim or or his female companion are incapacitated, one must revive the other as a form of insurance. Once all the mindslaves or civilians in a subsection have been exhausted it's just the two of you. If both of you are taken out, you'll fail that section and have to start again.
The only enemies you won't be able to take control of are larger mechs or occasional boss characters, but there's enough cannon fodder to keep you in bodies to throw into the mix.
Where the game comes into its own is by allowing other players to hack into your game either as an ally or adversary. This happens seamlessly if you're the host. In the heat of the action, the only hint someone's joined you is by the sound effect their avatar (known as a traveller) makes as they search for a body to take over. Sometimes it's something you can do without as some boss battles are easier without incidental characters being taken over by a real person, but as the host you can kick people out easily.
In conclusion then, a flawed game that looks shitty and doesn't seem to have any redeeming features but somehow manages to endear itself. The more you play it, the more you'll enjoy it.
p.s. If you negvote please can you say why by commenting? Ta!
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QFingers
84,718
TA Score for this game: 2,064
Posted on 03 June 12 at 23:48, Edited on 03 June 12 at 23:48 |
This review has 10 positive votes and 0 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
MindJack
50 achievements took me about 30 hrs without boosting, but I had most of them within 20 hrs.
Story:
Pretty weak.
The main character has a hard time following orders. The secondary character convinces you that "Evil Corp" is doing something evil. You ex-partner joins you and then betrays you. "Evil Corp" is evil, with a slight twist at the end. Fairly rudimentary, and I gained no attachment to any of the characters. Part of the problem was the awful dialog. It sounds like the scripts were written by two different people. The two characters hardly ever make sense together, and it sounds really forced. A lot of the time someone would jump to a conclusion that wasn't even relevant to the conversation at hand. If the dialog were done better, the story could have been more compelling.
Gameplay:
Very "eh", with a lot of flaws. Basic 3rd person shooter controls, with a cover-based aspect. When you injure an enemy you can "mind-hack" (isn't the title Mind “JACK"??) them and they join your side until they die or a checkpoint. Kind of nice, but crippled due to TERRIBLE AI. For an example, check out this video i shot:
The AI is dumb and on top of that, it doesn't really like to shoot the bad guys.
Cover-based positions tend to suck. Far too often you end up shooting the cover instead of shooting what you are aiming at down sight. Super annoying. And then on top of that, just because you are in cover doesn't mean you won’t get shot.
Melee is super busted. This makes getting those achievement a royal pain. You have to be exactly in the right place to execute the move, and if you approach from the front the enemy will either melee you first or rolls away 99% of the time. So, so Bad.
Broken reload. If you are in cover and start reloading then you pull out of cover, it stops. If you start reloading and then you take cover, it stops. If you empty the clip, some guns don't auto reload. You don't usually notice this until you are fighting some giant mech and need to reload the rocket launcher.
Multiplayer:
Semi redeeming. I love the idea of joining someone’s campaign but being able to play as the bad guys. When your bad guy dies, just jump into the next one! This is a pretty awesome concept, despite being a legitimized form of trolling. Unfortunately, it only works for a few times before whomever you kill over and over gets sick of it and quits or kicks you. It does actually take some strategy to get the win as the red team, though. The blue team AI can heal each other infinitely, and will do so over and over. You really need to attack them while they are separated, and target the AI first, not the player. As I said, this is fun for the red team but less so for the blue team. This makes getting a couple of the achievements slow-going, particularly "RED DEVIL" (Win 50 times as a Red Hacker) and "GUARDIAN" (Hack in as blue team and kill 50 people on red team). If you choose to "hack in" and play for the blue team, it makes for a fun but easy co-op session.
Other:
A weird sound issue - even after turning down the music and SFX in the menu to 0 and 1, when it would load a "cut scene" the sound effects would be FULL BLAST and the dialog would be completely muted. I had to turn the sound down on my TV just to compensate. I think it was actually louder the further down I turned it in the menus. Go Figure.
Bottom line:
Eh. Samey cover-shooter, with a fun but short-lived multiplayer twist. (Definitely worth the 3$ I got it for, though lol)
2.5/5, but its definitely not a 3, so I have to round down.
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Jstereomud
166,691
TA Score for this game: 469
Posted on 26 May 11 at 06:11 |
This review has 16 positive votes and 8 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Mindjack, well in principal the game has a fantastic idea behind it. The ability to take over the minds of weakened enemies and cowardly civilians. Using your mindjack powers you can turn even the most humble of janitors into gun-toating maniacs. Let me break this down to give you an overall feel for the game...
Storyline
Mindjack does not have an indepth storyline but any stretch of the imagination. The usual barely passable game story. Secret Agent does the wrong thing, now he on the run while his agency brings every possible riot gear wearing soldier down upon him. Pretty standard.
Rating: 2/5
Graphics
Despite it lacking the ability to view the possibility of outstanding graphics in action. I.e. Water and fire. The graphics were not too bad. Pretty standard considering the gaming industry today but not so bad that it made the game unplayable.
Rating: 3/5
Sound/Music
Mindjack does lack any sort of music which stands out. Everything just sort of meshes together and thinking back on it now, I cannot recall a single part of music within the game.
Rating 1/5
Multiplayer
This is a very redeeming part about the game, heck this is what makes the game. At any point during your play through of 'story'. Another player can 'hack' into your game to become either the pesky enemies or a valueable ally. This may sound tame but this point actually made the game somewhat addictive. The idea of being able to be what was essentially an enemy NPC is a very drawing point for Mindjack.
Rating: 5/5
So overall you might think I hate this game and I did, personally I bought this game as its sales plummeted down from Christmas, but I really do not regret it. Mindjack although lacking in story and everything else, seems to come together for multiplayer purpose alone. I would recommend this game because for the time being, you won't play another one like it.
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MILKY MECONIUM
276,683
TA Score for this game: 2,064
Posted on 30 March 11 at 22:55 |
This review has 5 positive votes and 10 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
a cool concept which i would like to see in other games. but lacked inovative concepts and ideas everywhere else. i would say the jumping in to play with or against people in there campaigns was a fun idea. they just needed to put more into the game play. the story was boring and i rarely found myself paying any attention to it. i personally expected more from square enix given their reputation. it is an alright game for a three day rental but definitely not worth a buy. beyond that it is an easy 1000 gamerscore if you have a friend.
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