To the untrained eye, MindsEye may seem like a stellar effort from Build a Rocket Boy. But anyone diving into Jacob Diaz’s futuristic romp through Redrock’s AI-driven landscape will soon discover that the city’s shiny buildings, cars, and factories hide egregious performance issues and a gameplay loop that has failed to impress the gaming community at large.
In what can safely be called an unmitigated disaster for Build a Rocket Boy, MindsEye has drawn a lot of flak since it made its debut earlier this month. Damage control measures from its developers notwithstanding, the game brings back memories of other titles that were poorly received despite their immense potential.
Cyberpunk 2077 immediately comes to mind, as does No Man’s Sky. However, both those games are now successes, with meaningful additions making them resonate with players and critics alike. The scope to turn things around clearly exists for Build a Rocket Boy.
But can it manage to make MindsEye rise from the ashes it currently languishes in?
A Very Long Road To Redemption
Several reviews (including our very own) of MindsEye along with player opinions on popular channels echo the same complaints. For starters, a choppy framerate that went beyond gameplay into cutscenes, and an uninspired gameplay loop that actively discourages exploring Redrock’s stunning locales were among the most glaring issues that have come up since the game launch. It’s quite a disappointing state of affairs for a title that could have been an open-world adventure for the ages.
Even if Redrock was fully explorable outside of the main story’s lacklustre missions, its empty streets and lifeless NPC AI quickly make the desire to see more of the gorgeous city vanish in smoke. It’s quite jarring to see a police officer walk on by when Jacob murders an enemy right in front of them. Perhaps they were off-duty?
Bugs, crashes, and a few cutscenes where characters seemingly leave their faces behind are other issues that mar the experience that Build a Rocket Boy intended for its players. It’s no surprise that at the time of writing this feature, the game currently sits at a horrifying 38 on Metacritic, with generally unfavourable reviews from critics, which is especially saddening since MindsEye’s narrative does a decent job of sustaining the tension over its approximately 10-hour long campaign.
Speculation is rife about whether the bigwigs at Build a Rocket Boy knew what was coming. The studio lost both its Chief Legal Officer and Chief Financial Officer ahead of the game’s launch. The lack of pre-release review codes, alongside CEO Mark Gerhard’s assertion that negative sentiments about the game were funded by malicious third parties could indicate that the studio’s top brass were not too happy with the final product ahead of its release.
Action, Not Reaction
However, Build a Rocket Boy is seemingly dedicated to turning things around for MindsEye. A patch for the game has since addressed memory optimization issues to address its crashes, alongside other issues such as better performance and rebalanced difficulty on one of the campaign’s rare minigames.
With two more updates slated to release later this month, the game’s myriad technical problems may soon be a thing of the past. With fixes aimed at improving AI behaviour, a better-tuned Hard Mode, removing game-breaking bugs, and more, Build a Rocket Boy is clearly working hard to win back the goodwill of its players.
The studio has since issued statements, expressing dismay at the subpar experience that many of its players have had with what was meant to be the first step in its very ambitious Everywhere project. It’s evident that it is taking every effort to redeem itself in the eyes of players and critics alike.
But will those efforts be enough?
Making Favorites Out Of Flops
Build a Rocket Boy could look to CD Projekt Red and Hello Games for inspiration in its mission to repair MindsEye’s reputation. The latter found itself in a situation similar to MindsEye when No Man’s Sky first hit the shelves. Both titles were ambitious efforts to shake things up in modern gaming that fell flat when they first launched.
If Hello Games’ response to the poor reception its flagship title received is any indication, Build a Rocket Boy has a few lessons to learn. Trying to blame third parties for a title that brought so many problems to the table may not have been the best form of damage control. Instead, taking ownership of the game’s failures could be the way to go. Hello Games remained largely silent about the issues No Man’s Sky faced post-launch until it was good and ready to address them.
Its founder Sean Murray even acknowledged its failure to deliver on the experience that was promised while assuring players that missing features like multiplayer would eventually make their way to the game. Several updates and a lot of free content later, No Man’s Sky is now one of modern gaming’s most unique experiences and an incredible comeback story for Hello Games.
CD Projekt Red might find Build a Rocket Boy’s current predicament all too familiar. Cyberpunk 2077 shares the dubious distinction of being among the few games that Sony offered refunds to players on with MindsEye. With game-breaking bugs, subpar performance, and a largely lifeless take on Night City, CDPR’s effort to create a dystopian world in which anything could happen fell flat, earning the ire of players and critics alike.
However, the studio behind The Witcher franchise did not give up on its efforts to create a title that would withstand the test of time. Its myriad issues were swiftly addressed, and Cyberpunk clawed its way back into the good graces of everyone who dived into its incredibly written story and well-designed side content. Its Phantom Liberty expansion came with excellent additions that elevated the experience on offer while earning a lot of praise for the new story beats it brought to the table.
Can Build a Rocket Boy Turn the Tables?
While Build a Rocket Boy can certainly fix the technical issues plaguing MindsEye, getting players to come back to Redrock for more might not be as easy. While the game’s story is certainly serviceable, it does not hold a candle to the sprawling adventure that V was a part of in Cyberpunk. Jacob Diaz’s adventures do not achieve the same dizzying heights, while his supporting cast do not really live up to Keanu Reeves’ take on Johnny Silverhand.
While you may think that MindsEye could perhaps win back its players by making its gameplay loop more exciting, it would take a lot of effort from Build a Rocket Boy to do so. With fairly linear missions that do not allow any flexibility in their parameters, it’s a long shot to think that MindsEye can get more mileage out of its core gameplay loop. For instance, even adding in the ability to commandeer other vehicles in a mission simply cannot fix the fact that the mission was repetitive and boring to begin with.
Moreover, CD Projekt Red had the luxury of having a solid player base who believed in the studio’s capacity to deliver a satisfying experience with Cyberpunk after the success of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. Build a Rocket Boy does not have a similar player base of loyal fans since it is a newly launched studio and MindsEye is its pilot project. It’s a numbers game that largely indicates that unlike CDPR, Build a Rocket Boy has less time and likelihood of success in its efforts to bring MindsEye up to scratch.
What Do MindsEye’s Players Have To Say?
A cursory look at the game’s reviews on Steam are sufficient to indicate that MindsEye’s attempt at redemption is a largely uphill battle. From players believing that it “needed more time in development” to others calling it “one of the most frustrating experiences in quite some time”, it is clear that the game’s player base genuinely believes that it isn’t worth their time.
Over on the game’s subreddit, things are as bad if not worse. There is outrage that MindsEye’s players feel over the unpolished experience it currently offers, while one Redditor questions its premium price tag – a sentiment that is especially significant when one considers that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 offers a much better experience at a noticeably smaller cost.
While Build a Rocket Boy must be somewhat commended for its vision and subsequent efforts to right its wrongs, the question of whether the studio could have avoided this unfortunate situation with a delayed release must be considered. Assassin’s Creed Shadows did it earlier this year and managed to inject new life into the flagship franchise in the process. May Build a Rocket Boy could have spent more time making sure that MindsEye was the best it could have been before it launched the game.
It doesn’t help that MindsEye was likely intended as a proof of concept for the Everywhere platform, with its level building features largely being ignored by its players just like its endgame free-run mode that takes Jacob out of the equation and introduces a character with no backstory and murky motivations. That lack of clarity and direction plagues the Everywhere platform as well, and is a state of affairs that Build a Rocket Boy will want to remedy sooner rather than later.
Does MindsEye Have A Future?
All things considered, MindsEye is at a crossroads with utter failure or absolute redemption as its only two potential paths. It could certainly be brought up to acceptable standards with a concentrated effort from Build a Rocket Boy. But that’s a commitment that the studio will have to think carefully about as it could take a lot of time and resources to achieve.
But even if it were to attempt a comeback for MindsEye, it will need to completely overhaul the gameplay loop on offer, and even redesign its missions in the process. And with public sentiment currently set squarely against it, it seems that the game’s success is a distant prospect at the moment.
It’s going to need more than a few hotfixes and patches to salvage MindsEye. And while miracles have clearly happened before, MindsEye may not find itself among their ranks.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
