MindsEye

There are big problems in Redrock, MindsEye’s techbro-infested near-future analogue of Las Vegas. Some of them are authored deliberately and satirically by developer Build A Rocket Boy — this is a narrative-led open-world shooter set in a city run by CEOs in baseball caps and self-interested government officials, and as you look around at malfunctioning Al robots and palatial tech company headquarters, you're reminded that it feels a bit close to home.

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Other issues, however, appear accidental, but still by chance serve to exaggerate the big-tech dystopia MindsEye depicts. Take the way Redrock citizens tend to drive into each other and cause horrific, fiery car accidents on practically every block, or the way armed enemies act completely oblivious to your presence, as if they themselves are malfunctioning AI agents.

Then there are the problems Build a Rocket Boy surely didn’t intend to include and don’t enrich the game but dismantle it. There are, unfortunately, a lot of these. If you were a citizen of Redrock, you wouldn’t prioritise pressuring local officials to scrutinise corporate tax affairs, you'd want them to fix the framerate so you could drive to work without getting a migraine.

The real question here isn’t whether MindsEye is a good game — it isn’t — but whether it would have been, if it were released in a technically stable state. Might the hokey but occasionally well-observed social commentary have been worth digesting, and could the story have risen above the basic cover shooting? Certainly there are component parts worth salvaging. You are Jacob Diaz, a military veteran suffering PTSD flashbacks and convenient memory loss following a traumatic failed operation. Now back on civvy street, you call in a favour from your friend Seb, who works at Silva Corp, the tech giant that made the neural implant in your neck. You take a job there in order to get close to the man who designed this MindsEye and uncover the truth about it.