REVIEW — Despite Leslie Benzies’ pedigree as the former president of Rockstar North and producer of Grand Theft Auto, his new studio Build A Rocket Boy hasn’t launched a rocket — they’ve dropped a stuttering, barely functioning mess. In its current form, MindsEye stands as one of the year’s biggest disasters. Here’s hoping IO Interactive, who picked this up for publishing, doesn’t go down with the ship.

Two lead developers departed just before launch. The studio cried “smear campaign.” Maybe the doomsayers were right all along?

Jason Diaz (used to exist, now clipping through the pavement)

MindsEye is a single-player, third-person, story-driven action-adventure set in a dystopian near future. You play as Jacob Diaz, a former elite soldier with a neural implant — the titular MindsEye — that keeps triggering fractured memories of missions that altered his life. The narrative is painfully mediocre and aggressively unskippable, forced down your throat whether you like it or not. Dialogue is stiff, delivery is worse, pacing is erratic, and most characters are walking clichés.

This isn’t your typical GTA clone — it leans heavily on cover-based combat, evoking Cyberpunk 2077 more than Los Santos. And believe it or not, 2003’s Kill.Switch feels more polished in comparison. Structurally, it’s a mess: linear mission progression, a lifeless city with little to explore, and foot travel is borderline unusable due to performance issues. Speaking of speed… there is none. Even on PlayStation 5 Pro, the game crawls, stutters, and chokes. Built on Unreal Engine 5, yet somehow optimized like a launch-day Unity prototype.

Bugs? Endless. We could fill review character limits listing them. A shame, because some elements had potential. The visuals aren’t terrible, and yes, the devs hyped the game — for once, they weren’t lying. The setting concept is compelling: a futuristic Las Vegas where gambling is outlawed, replaced by tech-driven governance. And yet, the city is dead on arrival. Atmosphere? None. Sound design? Makes it worse. Character models look decent, but their animations and personalities are shallow and soulless.

Jacob restarts life as a low-level security guard at Silva Corp., the city’s biggest arms manufacturer. He’s joined by Seb, his AI-driven partner-in-crime, or just a liability — if Seb dies, the mission fails. This happens often. And yes, it can be laugh-out-loud funny, though unintentionally so. Beyond that, everyone feels pulled from the bargain bin of action clichés. Emotional expression is all but nonexistent. The acting is robotic. It’s borderline parody — and not the good kind.

In medias bug

The game opens with Jacob in military service. No context. No buildup. Just boots on the ground and “go.” It’s comical — a level of incoherence last seen in 2013’s disaster Ride to Hell: Retribution. Then bam — hard cut to Jacob’s first day at his new job. Sure, Spec Ops: The Line did the in medias res thing back in 2012, but that had psychological depth. MindsEye has confusion and cover mechanics.

The combat is barebones: simplistic cover-shooting with no weight or recoil on weapons. Stealth? Nonexistent. Instead, we get an awkward CPR minigame (somehow worse than the one in 2023’s Quantum Error). Teamkill Media, are you ever releasing that game on PC or Xbox?

Miss the quick-time events and you’re forced to restart missions from scratch. And those cutscenes? Can’t be skipped. Ever. Even when the game crashes — which it does. A lot. NPC pathfinding breaks regularly, collision detection is laughable, and glitches range from T-poses to ragdoll spasms. Build A Rocket Boy promised “endless gameplay.” Maybe they meant the bugs never end? If Nietzsche played this, he’d scream into the void.

All this comes not at a budget price, but at a premium $60. That’s 24,000 HUF. It plays more like a $10 asset flip — except the flip is our collective middle finger.

The Gollum of 2025

MindsEye gets a 4.5 because the visuals aren’t outright garbage, and the premise had potential. Strip that away, and we’re staring at a 3/10. It’s a joke — but not the funny kind. Even the core gameplay loop is barely functional.

Maybe it’ll be salvageable in a year, but as it stands, we’ve got our “worst of the year” title nailed down — just like Lord of the Rings: Gollum in 2023. And if rumors are true, next week’s Gex Trilogy remaster might earn its own place in the hall of infamy. Spoiler: it apparently doesn’t run on Nintendo Switch 2. These were PS1 games.

-V-

Developer: Build A Rocket Boy
Publisher: IO Interactive
Genre: glitch
Release Date: June 10, 2025