Review: Mindjack - 360 (X post)
Mindjack - 360.
You know I've played a lot of bad games in my time, and some even worse that the crap that I've actually reviewed in the past few years, but in all honestly as bad as a lot of recent titles are I could find at least 1 if the only 1 redeeming feature. I mean Kane and Lynch 2: Dog days was more dog shit than anything else, but it had better gun fights and gameplay than the first game, Project slypheed and least gave me a laugh or two from some it's inane dialog, the dreadful 2008 Alone in the Dark had at least some good graphics when it came out. Oh and even the utterly abysmal "Turning point" at least had a good opening idea, and a scene where I fatally bog flushed a Nazi.
Mindjack hasn't got any redeeming features, every aspect just helps build the faecal water slide with the sewerage farm splashdown. Nothing I repeat NOTHING is good about this game. I would normally start with a new game series or original title by talking about the plot, but honestly while there is one, I am at 6 hours in and I still have no idea about what is going on other than the random calling of fictional company names, spouted by the voice actors who are barely doing this “voice acting” thing.
There isn't even much to look at either. The game only offers the most blandest of environments with the most bland of texturing, and the animation is so shitty, stiff and unconvincing that even the cast of thunderbirds, captain scarlet, singray and any Gerry Anderson “Supermarionation” show would be laughing at the feeble excuse that this game calls movement.
Even the colour pallet isn't good with most objects being dull grey or a horrid bland white, further dragging down the enthusiasm levels. Oh and there is even levels that have lighting that is way too dark, or baked in a pukeworthy hue. I just loved the one that was baked in jaundice yellow, making the game look like it was being played on a 20 year old MK1 gameboy.
The gameplay was supposed to be the selling point of this clusterfuck mess of a game, but that even falls flat on its face into a big pile of turds. For a start when you start the main game (and providing that you are online) you are given the choice to “host” the game. This allows fellow players to essentially “hack” your game, and take control of enemy’s and allies alike. This was supposed to be a way of making deathmatch work its way into the single player action with each bought of combat ending with a winner and loser screen. It also works as well as you would expect, in that it doesn’t at all. You just get constantly invaded by “red” oposing players who will use nothing but exploits and the major advantage of being able to “hack” any solider or civvy of their choice. You can't rebalance teams to stop this “griefing” and you will hate being constantly being beaten by a player who has a major advantage over you, oh and it only increases your time that you are playing this shitty game.
To make things worse the AI is a fucking joke. Prone to stupid actions that make no sense what so ever, like walking slowly out of cover in the middle of a roadway while shooting at you with little to no accuracy, or just forgetting that you are there and failing to attack. There is even a boss or sort of boss not that I could tell that, that seemed to be some kind of ninja but all they did was run about aimlessly, past me, my partner and everything else. The cutscene before bigged them up as some kind of big threat, but the hardest thing was working out where they where as they shot about the arena like headless chickens. Even the friendly AI suffers with this at times as it often just mills about in the open, fails to do anything useful and you end up picking it back up 9 times out of ten after it gets gunned down repeatedly. If you constantly fail levels it's not because of the AI of those that you are fighting, more often the retarded nature of the one who you are fighting with.
Oh then there is the big robots that you don't even fight but blow up on their own accord after killing all the mooks that surround them, although the game never tells you that.
Oh and one other thing, I hope you drained your bladder between levels, left the phone off the hook and pray that nobody shows up at the door, because as bad as the game plays it's impossible to pause too.
I could keep going on about how painful this game is and I could keep listing off it's issues, but I think you get the picture that this is a hideous game with crap graphics, sound, story and gameplay. However I will sign off by saying that it can't even get the options screen right. Yes even the options screen is bad by being bland, ugly and it explains nothing about the options that you are changing. As an example it took me a long time to work out that hacker limit wasn't even a limit, the the sole way to turn off the intrusion feature and prevent other people from joining your game. Why not just open game? ON or OFF? Why use “Limit” which suggests a maximum number of players?
The game can't even get the first few seconds right.
Overall I paid only £5 for this crap pile and I feel like I've been overcharged by somewhere in the region of £30. Worst game of the year.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
The Good.
It probally sounded like a good idea on paper during the first design meeting.
The Bad.
Not even enough to qualify as even being BAD.
The Ugly.
Almost everything this game has to offer.
Verdict
0.1 raped wallets out of 5
You know I've played a lot of bad games in my time, and some even worse that the crap that I've actually reviewed in the past few years, but in all honestly as bad as a lot of recent titles are I could find at least 1 if the only 1 redeeming feature. I mean Kane and Lynch 2: Dog days was more dog shit than anything else, but it had better gun fights and gameplay than the first game, Project slypheed and least gave me a laugh or two from some it's inane dialog, the dreadful 2008 Alone in the Dark had at least some good graphics when it came out. Oh and even the utterly abysmal "Turning point" at least had a good opening idea, and a scene where I fatally bog flushed a Nazi.
Mindjack hasn't got any redeeming features, every aspect just helps build the faecal water slide with the sewerage farm splashdown. Nothing I repeat NOTHING is good about this game. I would normally start with a new game series or original title by talking about the plot, but honestly while there is one, I am at 6 hours in and I still have no idea about what is going on other than the random calling of fictional company names, spouted by the voice actors who are barely doing this “voice acting” thing.
There isn't even much to look at either. The game only offers the most blandest of environments with the most bland of texturing, and the animation is so shitty, stiff and unconvincing that even the cast of thunderbirds, captain scarlet, singray and any Gerry Anderson “Supermarionation” show would be laughing at the feeble excuse that this game calls movement.
Even the colour pallet isn't good with most objects being dull grey or a horrid bland white, further dragging down the enthusiasm levels. Oh and there is even levels that have lighting that is way too dark, or baked in a pukeworthy hue. I just loved the one that was baked in jaundice yellow, making the game look like it was being played on a 20 year old MK1 gameboy.
The gameplay was supposed to be the selling point of this clusterfuck mess of a game, but that even falls flat on its face into a big pile of turds. For a start when you start the main game (and providing that you are online) you are given the choice to “host” the game. This allows fellow players to essentially “hack” your game, and take control of enemy’s and allies alike. This was supposed to be a way of making deathmatch work its way into the single player action with each bought of combat ending with a winner and loser screen. It also works as well as you would expect, in that it doesn’t at all. You just get constantly invaded by “red” oposing players who will use nothing but exploits and the major advantage of being able to “hack” any solider or civvy of their choice. You can't rebalance teams to stop this “griefing” and you will hate being constantly being beaten by a player who has a major advantage over you, oh and it only increases your time that you are playing this shitty game.
To make things worse the AI is a fucking joke. Prone to stupid actions that make no sense what so ever, like walking slowly out of cover in the middle of a roadway while shooting at you with little to no accuracy, or just forgetting that you are there and failing to attack. There is even a boss or sort of boss not that I could tell that, that seemed to be some kind of ninja but all they did was run about aimlessly, past me, my partner and everything else. The cutscene before bigged them up as some kind of big threat, but the hardest thing was working out where they where as they shot about the arena like headless chickens. Even the friendly AI suffers with this at times as it often just mills about in the open, fails to do anything useful and you end up picking it back up 9 times out of ten after it gets gunned down repeatedly. If you constantly fail levels it's not because of the AI of those that you are fighting, more often the retarded nature of the one who you are fighting with.
Oh then there is the big robots that you don't even fight but blow up on their own accord after killing all the mooks that surround them, although the game never tells you that.
Oh and one other thing, I hope you drained your bladder between levels, left the phone off the hook and pray that nobody shows up at the door, because as bad as the game plays it's impossible to pause too.
I could keep going on about how painful this game is and I could keep listing off it's issues, but I think you get the picture that this is a hideous game with crap graphics, sound, story and gameplay. However I will sign off by saying that it can't even get the options screen right. Yes even the options screen is bad by being bland, ugly and it explains nothing about the options that you are changing. As an example it took me a long time to work out that hacker limit wasn't even a limit, the the sole way to turn off the intrusion feature and prevent other people from joining your game. Why not just open game? ON or OFF? Why use “Limit” which suggests a maximum number of players?
The game can't even get the first few seconds right.
Overall I paid only £5 for this crap pile and I feel like I've been overcharged by somewhere in the region of £30. Worst game of the year.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
The Good.
It probally sounded like a good idea on paper during the first design meeting.
The Bad.
Not even enough to qualify as even being BAD.
The Ugly.
Almost everything this game has to offer.
Verdict
0.1 raped wallets out of 5