Review: MindJack (2011)

• February 29, 2012
• James Skemp
• gaming, review

MindJack got a lot of grief when it came out, and it hasn't gotten much better. However, seeing it for under $5 one day, I decided to pick up a copy and see just how bad it really is.

MindJack tells the story of a man who's name I can't remember (and that I don't care enough to look up) as he tries to discover what he can, as within the first few minutes of the game he's treated as something of a traitor.

The voice work is pretty horrible at times, so expect to groan.

The mind hacking - taking over the bodies of friendlies or neutrals - is similar to The 3rd Birthday, with the exception of a pretty poor AI (although left alone for long enough they do a somewhat passable job most of the time) and you won't hear Aya's exclamations of ... whatever. This hijacking requires line of sight, however there also seems to be some percentage of body seen, in order for it to consistently work.

The game is mostly a third-person shooter, with a rather faulty hand-to-hand combat system (although taking someone as a shield seems to work fairly well).

All that said, it's about an eight hour game. However, I've put a little over 20 hours of time into the game. And it's for the same reason I'm going to give the game 4 stars.

The game allows you to play through by yourself, or like Demon's Souls (I apologize if anyone cringes my mention of that in regards to this game), blue or red hackers can jump in. Blue hackers can use any friendlies (and since you consistently have a partner through the game, at least one could play through with you), while red hackers can use any enemies. Red hackers can certainly have an easier time, since there are more enemies than friendlies at the start, but they're unable to jump into most bosses.

You can shut this off if you want, but the real enjoyment of this game comes through in the multiplayer.

Unfortunately there's not too many people playing the game (I'd say maybe a dozen at the time of this review), yet on the other hand they tend to be people that also just picked up the game, making it a fairly 'tight' group of people. In fact, thanks to MindJack I found someone who I'll be keeping an eye on, since we have very similar gaming tastes.

Had the online component not been active I would have given this game 3 stars. However, because of the great community, and the fun I had because of it, I'm giving MindJack 4 of 5 stars. It's certainly not one of their better games, but at $10 or less, it's worth the price, in my opinion.

• review