Look, I wanted to love MindsEye. Really, I did. With Leslie Benzies at the helm: the guy who helped shape Grand Theft Auto’s golden years. And all that pre-release buzz about neural implants and cyberpunk themes, this felt like it could be something special. Hell, those first five minutes had me completely hooked. But then I actually had to play the damn thing.
MindsEye Opening: Brilliant Cinematic Design
Let’s start with what MindsEye gets absolutely right. The opening cutscene is genuinely fantastic, featuring some of the best cutscene styling and digital camera framing I’ve seen this year.
The way the game handles protagonist Jacob’s PTSD feels real and weighty, not like some throwaway plot device. You can feel the trauma bleeding through every fragmented memory, and the neural implant concept immediately grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go.
For those five minutes, I was thinking “okay, this is it. This is the cyberpunk thriller we’ve been waiting for.” The themes hit hard, the presentation is slick, and everything about Redrock City’s setup screams potential. It’s genuinely brilliant stuff that had me ready to dive headfirst into this world.
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Then the game actually started, and… yikes.
Xbox Series X Running Like a Last-Gen Console
Here’s the thing that really gets me: MindsEye is locked to 30fps on Xbox Series X. Not 30fps with occasional dips, just straight-up 30fps, period. In 2025. On Microsoft’s flagship console. What the hell?
The performance is rough across the board. Shadows look like they’ve been ripped straight from an Xbox 360 game, textures pop in constantly, and don’t even get me started on those explosions. They literally render as squares. Actual squares! I’ve seen mobile games with better particle effects.
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Character models are consistently out of focus, even when they’re right in front of you. It’s like someone smeared vaseline on the camera lens and called it a day.
For a game trying to sell itself on cinematic presentation, the technical execution is embarrassingly poor.
MindsEye Driving Mechanics: The One Bright Spot
Weirdly enough, the driving is actually pretty great. Those brief moments piloting a Polaris through the desert genuinely feel good. Responsive steering, decent physics, that satisfying sense of speed. It’s easily the game’s strongest element, which makes it even more frustrating that you get maybe 20 seconds behind the wheel before another cutscene yanks control away.
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But even here, there are bizarre issues. Tires don’t spin until you’re going what feels like walking speed, and the AI drivers are absolutely mental. They’ll slam on the brakes for absolutely no reason, turning every drive into an exercise in patience. It’s maddening.
MindsEye Combat System: Dated and Uninspired
The drone sections show promise with intuitive controls and natural flying mechanics. But the ground combat in MindsEye? Christ, it’s like someone dug up a PlayStation 2 shooter and hoped nobody would notice.
Guns feel weightless, enemies are braindead, and level design is about as inspired as a grocery store layout.
I managed about three hours before throwing in the towel. Every time the game showed a glimmer of what it could be, some technical hiccup or design misstep would drag me right back to reality.
Characters as Bland as Hospital Food
For a game set in this vibrant, neon-soaked cyberpunk world, the character design is shockingly generic. Everyone looks like they were pulled from a stock photo catalog labeled “Generic Sci-Fi People.” It’s such a waste of MindsEye’s interesting setting and Redrock City’s visual potential.
Underdeveloped Mess
MindsEye feels like a game that needed another year in development, minimum. The cyberpunk themes about technology and corporate power could have been genuinely compelling, and Redrock City’s visual design shows real potential when it actually works. The driving mechanics hint at a decent game buried somewhere in this technical disaster.
But none of that matters when MindsEye runs like garbage on Xbox Series X and plays even worse. This isn’t just a few launch bugs, this feels fundamentally broken. Locked at 30fps with poor graphics, dated combat, and generic character design, MindsEye is an expensive tech demo masquerading as a finished product.
I’ve heard rumours about incoming patches, but honestly? This should never have launched in this state. Save your money and wait to see if they can actually fix this thing, because right now it belongs in the bargain bin.
Should you be so inclined, it’s out now on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, but for $90 AUD? You’re kidding yourself.
Review access to MindsEye was supplied by Xbox ANZ.
