- Publisher: Square Enix
- Developer: Feel Plus
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: Third-Person-Shooting
- Pros: Awesome concept; invading other players' games
- Cons: Clunky controls; awful A.I.; broken melee; slow movement; cover system; bad story
Mindjack is set in 2031 in a world where noncorporeal consciousnesses (minds without bodies, basically) can fly around and take over the bodies of humans as well as robots and other technology. Toss in some corrupt governments, shadowy evil corporations, and a couple of agents as main characters trying to stop them, and you have the makings of a passable sci-fi story. At least, it would be passable if it didn't turn out predictable and cliched and the dialogue wasn't poorly written and lazily delivered.
Multiplayer
One of the most interesting features of Mindjack is that it has a six-player online mode where other players can invade your campaign or you invade theirs. You can fight alongside or against them, and it is cool in that it is essentially a constantly evolving deathmatch. Since you're still playing through the story, each new area you enter provides a completely new map and new set of weapons and characters to take over. It can be a lot of fun, but it can also be pretty frustrating since human players put up a much greater challenge than the A.I. and it sucks to have your story progress impeded by a particularly skilled player. It is definitely cool, at least for a while. You can, of course, also just play solo if you want.
Gameplay
Square Enix
The actual shooting is a letdown as well, since enemies take a somewhat ridiculous amount of bullets (even two or three headshots) before they go down. To help, you have an A.I. partner, but can also mindjack enemies or robots to fight for you. It certainly makes things easier when you can have 4-5 extra allies (or usually more like bullet sponges) on the battlefield with you. You can also jack civilians scattered throughout the levels and make them fight for you as well.
If your mind slaves die, who cares. The only people you care about are the two main characters. If one of them goes down, the other one can revive them and the A.I. is usually pretty good at reviving you when you go down. And you will go down. A lot. This game can be brutally hard as wave after wave of enemies hack you down surprisingly quickly.
Graphics
Graphically, Mindjack is only okay looking. The environments have very plain textures and generally lack detail and the character models are generic at best. The animation is very stiff and awkward.
Square Enix
The sound is pretty bad all around. The music is sort of monotone and forgettable, and the sound effects are nothing special. The worst part, however, is the dialogue, which sounds completely phoned in.
Bottom Line
Mindjack is a bit of a mess. It has some great ideas, such as being able to hack into other minds / machines at will and the interesting invasion multiplayer concept, but the execution is so poor it just isn't really worth your time. The gameplay suffers from bad controls, poor hit detection, and braindead A.I., and the presentation is well below what we have come to expect on the Xbox 360. Skip it.
