Mindjack.
What the fuck? Square Enix, this cannot keep happening. How is it that the top three worst games I have played in my entire life all come from you? That shouldn?t be fucking possible. And yet? Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Final Fantasy X and indeed Mindjack. How did this fucking company ever get a fan base to begin with? They were never good! Final Fantasy never had interesting writing or a good villain!
But that?s not really a review, is it? Mindjack is the worst thing Square Enix has done since Final Fantasy XIV, which came out last year, and Final Fantasy XIII, which also came out last year. In fact if it weren?t for Eidos and Jupiter, Square would never have their names associated with any good game at all. But, Square?s name is on Just Cause 2 which was good, Deus Ex: Human Revolution which was good, and The World Ends with You, which was decent. So they continue to exist, and continue to make and or publish terrible games.
Mindjack continues a few proud Square traditions, starting with a completely misleading title. It wasn?t the final fantasy, and this is a game about Mind Hacking, not Mind Jacking. Maybe the main character is named Jack?
Oh. It?s Jim.
Maybe the mysterious puppet master who obviously controls Jim is named Jack? I dunno. I didn?t finish the game. I quit around the time monkeys were attacking me and Jim acted confused about what Mind Hacking was even though he couldn?t go one firefight without doing it.
The games central element is of course Mind Hacking, which behaves kind of like possession in Geist where you take control of random NPCs, though whenever a firefight ends your perspective always shifts back to Jim. You can hack the annoying ***** Jim is escorting, hack random bystanders who pull firearms out of their ass to attack whenever you do so, and hack robots that aren?t actively being controlled. You can also use Mind Hacking to convert wounded enemies and damaged enemy attack robots to your side, though a question as to why you would want to do that hangs over the game.
Why?
This game has one of the absolute worst AIs of any third person shooter this generation. It makes Saint?s Row: The Third look like F.E.A.R for fucks sake. Enemies don?t take cover. They?ll sometimes crouch behind barriers, but it doesn?t count as taking cover if you leap out of cover when your enemy is laying down suppressing fire and you are literally leaping right into a spray of bullets. It is literally on par with True Crime AI which would frequently stand next to exploding barrels so that the game could show off it?s dismemberment physics.
But that?s not all! Another proud tradition it continues is Square Enix?s horrible HORRIBLE narrative. Five hours into the game I still didn?t know who the main characters were, what the main plot was, why they were under attack, why the army had cyborg machine-gun wielding chimps, and who was controlling Jim who quite clearly showed he was being Mind Hacked in several cutscenes. Character behavior is also beyond idiotic. Remember wondering in Final Fantasy X why Auron didn?t tell them in the beginning that the Final Aeon and rituals of Yevon were homicidal lies when he clearly had previously experienced the birth of the current Sin and why Yuna didn?t send Seymour after the first time Waka beat him to death with a dodge ball? Well, this game is like that. It starts off in an airport with Jim tailing the lady whose name I didn?t remember talking to a third idiot who provides support. At one point the lady makes contact with a strange man, and party C clearly tells Jim to not interfere. So Jim walks up to the unknown man and breaks his fucking neck. And the lady never brings this up again. She doesn?t act surprised when Jim randomly murders someone, isn?t surprised when all the enemies are clearly being mind hacked, and later on when Jim calls for backup from party C who tells them not to move while they were in cover, they move and walk right into an enemy road block.
But it?s a third person shooter! Surely, like Final Fantasy X, it makes up for it?s worthless wastes of oxygen writing staff with decent gameplay, right? You?d be wrong! For one, my laptop is named Mariska, not Shirley, and for two, like mentioned before, the AI is pathetic. It?s not safe to possess NPCs because when you leave Jim?s body, he becomes AI controlled and has a nasty habit of trying to catch bullets with his teeth. When you use mind hacking to convert an enemy to your side, the new friend doesn?t take cover, he charges right at the other enemies and forgets he?s carrying a gun until the melee attacks don?t work. I suppose you could argue that Jim?s puppet master is sending them on suicide runs to flush enemies out, but that?s not necessary when enemies leave cover on their own ignoring your own fire responses. You could also try melee attacking yourself, but Jim often ignores button commands. The game sometimes ignores the command for a tactical reload, mistakes an order to take cover for an order to do a dive roll so again you long for manual stance control instead of a cover command, and the game almost never replies to the melee attack command. When you melee attack instead of just throwing a punch or a pistol whip, the game enters a cut away attack animation that only works one time out of ten frantic ?I?M OUT OF AMMO PUNCH THE STUPID BASTARD? presses, which accounted for quite literally all of my deaths.
But it doesn?t stop there! Enemies rarely, if ever, reply to getting shot, you can empty an entire submachine gun clip into them and they won?t twitch, throw a grenade at them and they won?t react to it until it explodes and they receive a shrapnel enema, shot placement doesn?t seem to matter at all because while the game did give me an achievement for headshots, it only was an instant kill half the time, and only when I was using the starting pistol which had a rate of fire so terrible that I had time to take cover, eat a pretzel, and check the news while waiting for Jim to squeeze off another shot. I know what you?re going to say. If the pistol is so bad, why not pick up a three shot battle rifle which is almost as accurate and use that instead? Because for some stupid reason, you lose your weapons between scenes and restart with your pistols. Boss fights are also shit. Whenever you encounter a giant robot, you don?t fight it. You instead take out a swarm of standard enemies and get a cutscene where the robot is destroyed. In addition, the game cannot be paused, the difficulty level can only be adjusted when you unlock perks by playing through the game, the game generally looks like shit and the cutscenes are stupid to the point of insulting. Why were the enemies shooting straight at a supply of exploding barrels? Why were exploding barrels in the middle of a derelict subway tunnel? Why did police put those exploding barrels in their barricades?
Mindjack is tied with Final Fantasy X for the crown of ?Worst game I ever played? and should never be purchased by anyone. It?s just totally inexcusable how terrible this game turned out. Square Enix, stop.
Stop making games. Give your resources and creative team to Eidos and shut down your studio. Let Eidos keep the rights to the shooter franchises you bought and give the RPG franchises to maybe Grasshopper. You just can?t make good games Square Enix. You never could. Give up.
Knows full well they won?t listen and that The Last Remnant may have been even worse than FFX
--Pyramid Head
Next Review: Mortal Kombat
What the fuck? Square Enix, this cannot keep happening. How is it that the top three worst games I have played in my entire life all come from you? That shouldn?t be fucking possible. And yet? Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Final Fantasy X and indeed Mindjack. How did this fucking company ever get a fan base to begin with? They were never good! Final Fantasy never had interesting writing or a good villain!
But that?s not really a review, is it? Mindjack is the worst thing Square Enix has done since Final Fantasy XIV, which came out last year, and Final Fantasy XIII, which also came out last year. In fact if it weren?t for Eidos and Jupiter, Square would never have their names associated with any good game at all. But, Square?s name is on Just Cause 2 which was good, Deus Ex: Human Revolution which was good, and The World Ends with You, which was decent. So they continue to exist, and continue to make and or publish terrible games.
Mindjack continues a few proud Square traditions, starting with a completely misleading title. It wasn?t the final fantasy, and this is a game about Mind Hacking, not Mind Jacking. Maybe the main character is named Jack?
Oh. It?s Jim.
Maybe the mysterious puppet master who obviously controls Jim is named Jack? I dunno. I didn?t finish the game. I quit around the time monkeys were attacking me and Jim acted confused about what Mind Hacking was even though he couldn?t go one firefight without doing it.
The games central element is of course Mind Hacking, which behaves kind of like possession in Geist where you take control of random NPCs, though whenever a firefight ends your perspective always shifts back to Jim. You can hack the annoying ***** Jim is escorting, hack random bystanders who pull firearms out of their ass to attack whenever you do so, and hack robots that aren?t actively being controlled. You can also use Mind Hacking to convert wounded enemies and damaged enemy attack robots to your side, though a question as to why you would want to do that hangs over the game.
Why?
This game has one of the absolute worst AIs of any third person shooter this generation. It makes Saint?s Row: The Third look like F.E.A.R for fucks sake. Enemies don?t take cover. They?ll sometimes crouch behind barriers, but it doesn?t count as taking cover if you leap out of cover when your enemy is laying down suppressing fire and you are literally leaping right into a spray of bullets. It is literally on par with True Crime AI which would frequently stand next to exploding barrels so that the game could show off it?s dismemberment physics.
But that?s not all! Another proud tradition it continues is Square Enix?s horrible HORRIBLE narrative. Five hours into the game I still didn?t know who the main characters were, what the main plot was, why they were under attack, why the army had cyborg machine-gun wielding chimps, and who was controlling Jim who quite clearly showed he was being Mind Hacked in several cutscenes. Character behavior is also beyond idiotic. Remember wondering in Final Fantasy X why Auron didn?t tell them in the beginning that the Final Aeon and rituals of Yevon were homicidal lies when he clearly had previously experienced the birth of the current Sin and why Yuna didn?t send Seymour after the first time Waka beat him to death with a dodge ball? Well, this game is like that. It starts off in an airport with Jim tailing the lady whose name I didn?t remember talking to a third idiot who provides support. At one point the lady makes contact with a strange man, and party C clearly tells Jim to not interfere. So Jim walks up to the unknown man and breaks his fucking neck. And the lady never brings this up again. She doesn?t act surprised when Jim randomly murders someone, isn?t surprised when all the enemies are clearly being mind hacked, and later on when Jim calls for backup from party C who tells them not to move while they were in cover, they move and walk right into an enemy road block.
But it?s a third person shooter! Surely, like Final Fantasy X, it makes up for it?s worthless wastes of oxygen writing staff with decent gameplay, right? You?d be wrong! For one, my laptop is named Mariska, not Shirley, and for two, like mentioned before, the AI is pathetic. It?s not safe to possess NPCs because when you leave Jim?s body, he becomes AI controlled and has a nasty habit of trying to catch bullets with his teeth. When you use mind hacking to convert an enemy to your side, the new friend doesn?t take cover, he charges right at the other enemies and forgets he?s carrying a gun until the melee attacks don?t work. I suppose you could argue that Jim?s puppet master is sending them on suicide runs to flush enemies out, but that?s not necessary when enemies leave cover on their own ignoring your own fire responses. You could also try melee attacking yourself, but Jim often ignores button commands. The game sometimes ignores the command for a tactical reload, mistakes an order to take cover for an order to do a dive roll so again you long for manual stance control instead of a cover command, and the game almost never replies to the melee attack command. When you melee attack instead of just throwing a punch or a pistol whip, the game enters a cut away attack animation that only works one time out of ten frantic ?I?M OUT OF AMMO PUNCH THE STUPID BASTARD? presses, which accounted for quite literally all of my deaths.
But it doesn?t stop there! Enemies rarely, if ever, reply to getting shot, you can empty an entire submachine gun clip into them and they won?t twitch, throw a grenade at them and they won?t react to it until it explodes and they receive a shrapnel enema, shot placement doesn?t seem to matter at all because while the game did give me an achievement for headshots, it only was an instant kill half the time, and only when I was using the starting pistol which had a rate of fire so terrible that I had time to take cover, eat a pretzel, and check the news while waiting for Jim to squeeze off another shot. I know what you?re going to say. If the pistol is so bad, why not pick up a three shot battle rifle which is almost as accurate and use that instead? Because for some stupid reason, you lose your weapons between scenes and restart with your pistols. Boss fights are also shit. Whenever you encounter a giant robot, you don?t fight it. You instead take out a swarm of standard enemies and get a cutscene where the robot is destroyed. In addition, the game cannot be paused, the difficulty level can only be adjusted when you unlock perks by playing through the game, the game generally looks like shit and the cutscenes are stupid to the point of insulting. Why were the enemies shooting straight at a supply of exploding barrels? Why were exploding barrels in the middle of a derelict subway tunnel? Why did police put those exploding barrels in their barricades?
Mindjack is tied with Final Fantasy X for the crown of ?Worst game I ever played? and should never be purchased by anyone. It?s just totally inexcusable how terrible this game turned out. Square Enix, stop.
Stop making games. Give your resources and creative team to Eidos and shut down your studio. Let Eidos keep the rights to the shooter franchises you bought and give the RPG franchises to maybe Grasshopper. You just can?t make good games Square Enix. You never could. Give up.
Knows full well they won?t listen and that The Last Remnant may have been even worse than FFX
--Pyramid Head
Next Review: Mortal Kombat