FromSoftware has cryptically teased “enhanced fights” against the big bosses of Elden Ring Nightreign, due to arrive sometime this month. But one modder has found some already real building blocks for the new fights, and made their fights playable in the process.
On June 3, the official Elden Ring account confirmed that, alongside Nightreign’s DLC (arriving later this year) and the upcoming Duo Expeditions option, Nightreign would be getting “enhanced fights against existing Nightlords” starting this month. No more details were shared, but it clearly acted as a Bat-signal for people to start digging.
Modder TerraMag (as spotted by PC Gamer) managed to find the boss content currently in the game, and built a mod to make it accessible. Importantly, these are unfinished versions based off the enhanced sets already found in the files.
Notably, what TerraMag found (and documented so far in YouTube videos) seems to be third phases for a number of the Nightlords, including those like Adel, Libra, and Caligo. These can introduce new moves, new models for the bosses, and any number of new ways to annihilate Nightfarers.
Of course, these are unfinished and not officially implemented, so it’s only a glimpse at what could be when the enhanced fights arrive sometime this month. For those already getting weary of the existing boss runs, though, this might make for a decent challenge, and a reason to dive back into some more runs in the ever-shifting Lands.
There aren’t many games lately which have compelled me to do a tweet, or skeet, or whatever you prefer to call ejaculating one’s thoughts out onto the socials. The Trolley Solution‘s Steam Next Fest demo not only did that, it convinced me to post a tweet I didn’t even write.
It’s a game from indie dev byDanDans that starts off as a series of moral quandaries, each inspired by philosopher Philippa Foot’s famous and now also thoroughly memed-to-death Trolley Problem. That being a thought experiment which forces you examine the ethics of either letting nature take its course to deliver one outcome that could cause harm to others, or actively intervening to cause another that might do the same in a different fashion. I didn’t go in expecting to become enraptured in what I can only describe as a tragic rail romance.
After scoring a major win with the critically-lauded Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober is ready to show the world what they can do next – with a slight change of pace – in an action-oriented horror game called Cronos: The New Dawn. I got a chance to sit down with Bloober’s time-hopping latest and find out what makes the world of Cronos so compelling.
Cronos puts you in control of a character called The Traveler, a woman tasked with going into areas ravaged by a human-eliminating virus that is rapidly transforming them into monsters. The Traveler’s goal is to not only log her observations and find human survivors, but also to lay a path for Travelers that come after her – just as those who came before her did. But that task is easier said than done.
“The theme of this game is merging and changing into something new,” co-director Wojciech Piejko explains, before adding, “Hey, this is not a good way to actually play this game, but watch this.”
Piejko proceeds to wake up a sleeping enemy with a stomp that can only be described as Dead Space-esque. Upon waking, the enemy noticed that the corpses of other monsters were littered around, and quickly went to consume one. Then another. Then a third. By the time the infected human had finished feasting (uninterrupted by Piejko), it had “merged” several times, essentially leveling up its monster type. In doing so, it became stronger, harder to kill, more aggressive, and had access to new abilities to take The Traveler out, such as spitting toxic bile at her. After a fair amount of ammo, it finally goes down.
“This is the core of Cronos,” Piejko says. “Manage your resources, take risks when appropriate, and survive.”
The only way The Traveler could have prevented this happening is to kill the monster before it has a chance to feast or rid the area of corpses using fire, a precious resource that can’t be used capriciously. That said, bigger monsters mean bigger rewards, so it is sometimes a good choice to burn some resources for a bigger payday of crafting materials.
“This is the core of Cronos,” Piejko says. “Manage your resources, take risks when appropriate, and survive.”
Just because a monster does not awaken does not mean The Traveler is safe, however. Anyone that tries to hoard resources will soon discover when backtracking through areas that enemies have a tendency to pick inopportune moments to pop up and start merging with other corpses on the ground. Not being aware of your environment can be a deadly mistake in Cronos, but wasting resources may be even worse.
The demo I participated in takes place in Nowa Huta, an eastern district in Krakow, Poland that was once an industrial hub of the former Soviet Union. In the future, it has been torn apart by the monster-plague infecting the world. It is the Traveler’s duty to identify important people that live or lived in the city and employ time-travel to rescue them from the pre-plague age of the 1980s. Since only The Traveler can hop through time, rescuing them involves digitizing their souls to carry around with her to take back into the present.
The Traveler is limited in how many souls she can carry with her, which leaves the choice up to the player to decide who gets saved and who does not. This can affect Cronos’s narrative, as different people will have different reactions to things The Traveler encounters and places she goes. As an example, The Traveler can rescue someone in the past and bring them to the future, wherein she visits that person’s apartment decades later and the former tenant describes their life before it all went to hell.
The Traveler is limited in how many souls she can carry with her, which leaves the choice up to the player to decide who gets saved and who does not.
In another example given, two of the souls in possession have a history and go back and forth with each other.
Bloober says that Cronos will contain an emphasis on the studio’s trademark psychological horror despite the action bent. After Silent Hill 2 released, which was developed in parallel with Cronos, the Cronos team absorbed their colleagues (or “merged,” to keep it thematically on-brand) to help finish the game out.
Oh, and throughout Nowa Huta, The Traveler will come across some less conversational survivors: cats. Kitties are locked away safely in various rooms throughout the game and, upon being rescued, help with resources for The Traveler. All the cats in the game are based on the pets of the developers at Bloober.
“We had so many submissions we had to start casting for them to decide who would get in,” Piejko says.
As part of their 1-2 punch with Silent Hill 2, Bloober is hoping Cronos proves the studio’s mettle as an industry-leading horror game developer. The New Dawn’s premise and designs are helping it start off on an interesting foot as part of Bloober’s journey there.
Good news, people who’re still interested in giving MindsEye a go for reasons that don’t involve gleefully watching as a poor NPC undergoes a sudden glitchy elongation. Developers Build A Rocket Boy have just pushed out the first in a series of updates designed to swat a bunch of the performance and crash-related issues that’ve plagued the game’s launch.
If you were busy with other hobbies such as arctic exploration or hardcore spelunking earlier this week, the GTA/Cyberpunky Mindseye suffered a pretty nightmarish debut. The user reviews weren’t totally negative right out of the gate, but it’s fair to say it didn’t land in the fashion ex-Rockstar bigwig Leslie Benzies’ studio probably hoped.
In many ways, Split Fiction feels like the culmination of everything Hazelight Studios has accomplished in the co-op space.
The journey began with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, a charming fantasy that required solo players to coordinate both thumbs to control two characters simultaneously. The studio then progressed to A Way Out, a jailbreak caper that introduced several clever mechanics for two players, including the now-standard Friend’s Pass system (more on that later). With It Takes Two, Hazelight pushed things even further, delivering a big adventure with a well-written, emotionally resonant story and great characters.
Welcome to Next Week on Xbox! In this weekly feature we cover all the games coming soon to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox PC, and Game Pass! Get more details on these upcoming games below and click their profiles for further info (release dates subject to change). Let’s jump in!
A cooperative first-person shooter set within a mysterious federal agency under assault by otherworldly forces. As a years-long siege on the agency’s headquarters reaches its boiling point, only Firebreak – the Bureau’s most versatile unit – has the gear and the guts to plunge into the building’s strangest crises, restore order, and blast their way back from the brink.
Lost in Random: The Eternal Die blends dynamic real-time action, tactical combat, and risk-reward dice mechanics for thrilling second-to-second battles. Unravel an original stand-alone story as Queen Aleksandra, the once great ruler of Random on a mission for vengeance and redemption. Start playing today by picking up the Fortune Edition.
Tron: Catalyst pulls you back into the world of Disney’s “Tron” to battle multiple opposing factions in the latest imaginative story from Bithell Games (Thomas Was Alone, Subsurface Circular, Tron: Identity). Tron: Catalyst is an all-new story-driven, isometric action adventure game, set in the immersive and diverse locations of the Arq Grid.
Gex Trilogy reproduces all three original games in exacting detail, precisely the way you remember them. Assuming you’ve gone senile and remember them having high-definition native 16:9 widescreen visuals and fully analog controls. Which they didn’t. No, this is the Gex series the way it was meant to be played.
RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army
The story of apprentice detective and Devil Summoner extraordinaire Raidou Kuzunoha XIV returns in this remastered classic! Call upon your demons to solve supernatural mysteries and dispose of enemies.
Rematch – June 19 Game Pass / Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery / Xbox Play Anywhere
Credible Football, with an arcade twist. Feel like an amazing athlete, easily performing all the iconic moves of football. Non-stop action with no fouls, no offsides, no pauses… no time to rest.
Set in a post-apocalyptic version of Earth, Revival is a 4x strategy game where the world and its rules can change at key moments, creating a deep and highly replayable experience. Explore a transformed planet, negotiate or conquer new territories and bring the light of civilization to regressing human colonies to prepare mankind for war with a despotic entity.
Can’t wait to get down and dirty with your fireplace? Long for the sweet embrace from your fridge? Date Everything! brings an exciting new twist to the dating simulator genre. Your BFA in customer service unfortunately goes to waste as you lose your job to AI. But… a mysterious stranger sends a gift – magical glasses called ‘Dateviators’ – which make your house come alive and dateable!
Gatewalkers is a unique mixture of co-op game, survival and RPG. You, as a Gatewalkers, travel across different worlds in order to save your own. Explore procedurally generated worlds, face hostile inhabitants and challenges like extreme weather conditions, toxic atmosphere, lack of water and more.
Jewel Match Solitaire is the ultimate relaxing Solitaire game! Return to the world of Jewel Match in this beautiful new Solitaire adventure! Journey across an ancient land to rebuild epic castles of old. Over 320 levels in all, plus many Solitaire variants including Klondike, Spider, Freecell, Pyramid, and more!
Step into the enchanting world of Knights of the Round Peg, where players embark on a musical journey alongside a brave knight through 80 captivating levels. Equipped with a lute and a quiver of musical notes, the knight bravely embarks on a journey, encountering peg-filled challenges along the way.
Rooftops & Alleys is more than just a game about Parkour & Freerunning. It’s the adrenaline rush of landing an impossible trick combo, defying gravity, and feeling like you’re flying… until you crash face-first into a dark alley 30 meters below.
A fast-paced action roguelite that thrusts you into epic battles against relentless hordes and colossal bosses. Harness the power of the Void to craft unique builds, unlock powerful weapons, and push your characters to new heights — all in pursuit of godlike abilities.
Conquer mountain slopes, vast highways, and bustling city streets in CarX Street. Build the car of your dreams with fine-tuning that reveals the full potential of CarX Technology physics. Take part in thrilling races, offline or online, and enjoy realistic gameplay and dynamic controls.
Lead a squad of warriors and your loyal dog, Diesel, against a brutal raider army. Pause and issue orders at any time. Choose your weapons, skills, and tactics. Shoot, chop, kick, or bite. Go in guns blazing or use stealth. Set traps, throw grenades, or crush enemies with an armored car. Deploy turrets and barricades to defend your home. The only thing you can’t do is surrender.
Enter a colorful world that’s looking for a new football star! Defeat your opponents with your amazing skills and take the cup home! Get through the tutorial, master the game controls and choose your team to start your football career. Defeat all your opponents while collecting achievements and have fun with the different game modes.
No Sun To Worship is a minimalist, stealth-action game that captures the brilliance of the first pioneers of the stealth genre and recreates their retro-aesthetic charm within an echo of a dying world.
It was a dark and stormy night… for Solitaire! Jewel Match gets spooky in this new Solitaire adventure! Discover and rebuild eerie derelict castles, but beware of vampires roaming the land. Over 200 levels in all, plus 50 bonus mahjong levels to unlock! Dozens of unique game play variations mix up the classic Solitaire such as locked and frozen cards.
Pathfinders, supported by scientist Albert New, time travel to study past civilizations and gather relics for a human history museum. They face obstacles, traps, and enemies. Your task is to memorize these hazards and chart a safe course. Can you meet the challenge?
Without a Voice is a thought-provoking visual novel adventure told through detailed character portraits, scripted dialogue of more than 15,000 words, lush backdrops and a dozen unlockable event illustrations. Make key decisions to decide how the story plays out and discover 8 possible endings to this tale of love and intrigue between its leading ladies.
Make the most of your extensive creative freedom, with a huge variety of materials, structures and items, and above all innovative construction tools which will enable you to design and customize your buildings, from the shape of each room to detailed roof drawings.
In this arcade shoot ’em up game you play as Princess Anna, the savior of cat people. Fight against the attack of Crazy Cyborgs for 12 boss rush levels!
Play Mateo Lombardo, the last apprentice of the Rose Cross Order, on a quest to hunt the infamous Beast of Gévaudan. This dark and thrilling platforming adventure blends fast-paced combat, challenging exploration, and deep storytelling, making it a must-play for fans of the genre.
A retro-futuristic action RPG set on the planet Yob, a world left in ruins and haunted by the machines once built to serve it. After twenty years in cryo-sleep, Zoe wakes to find a world she barely recognizes. To survive and to save what’s left, she must track down her missing father, lost during the cataclysmic event known only as The Blackout. Along the way, she’ll take on gangs of corrupted robots, confront towering bosses, and uncover long-buried truths about Yob.
Grab a hot drink and cozy up to the fire. It’s cold outside and you’re snowed in with a game of Solitaire! Travel the icy land and rebuild 5 frosty locations across 200 levels, plus unlock 12 bonus game variants such as Yukon and Emperor!
Dive into the world of dreams in Through the Nightmares! This is a hardcore platformer where you play as the Sandman, a size-shifting spirit said to bring people good dreams. Several children are lost in the kingdom of Morpheus, the mad god of dreams, who turns sleep into a prison. To bring the children back to their families, the Sandman must descend to a place where even the most secret of fears come to life…
Set off on a high-speed Hoverboard adventure in Star Overdrive, where fast-paced action collides with the mysteries of a distant alien world. After intercepting a cryptic distress signal, you, the protagonist Bios, find yourself stranded on an enigmatic planet called Cebete. Armed with your versatile Keytar and advanced Hoverboard, you’ll navigate diverse biomes, confront challenges, evolve your hidden powers, and uncover the mystery behind the disappearance of your beloved Nous.
Civilization has ended, and something else awakens in its place. From the world’s decay, ancient creatures stir, rise, and roam the land. Vessels of Decay is a post-apocalyptic action adventure following the story of Freja and Mud. In this retro-inspired tale, you’ll confront creatures of Scandinavian myth and folklore and explore the ruins of the civilization they inhabit.
Agarta has been designed to show you how valuable and important every decision you make in your individual life, every choice you make is. Because every choice you make is also a renunciation and you cannot undo any decision.
Blast through monster hordes with crazy weapons in a wild bullet hell! It’s chaotic, casual, and seriously fun! Each run takes just 20 to 30 minutes — perfect for relaxing anytime! Whether you’re unwinding after a long day or just killing time, it’s a great way to de-stress.
You’re about to dive into a sugary adventure! Combine sweets and prepare yourself for sugar overload! Race to merge the biggest candy while using clever tactics to slow down your opponent. Unleash tricky power-ups and prove who’s the ultimate candy master!
Put on your armor, grab your sword, and get ready to face what no sane knight would dare: noisy goblins, deadly traps, and platforms that seem to have a mind of their own. In Knight Quest, you are the hero the kingdom needs – even if no one warned you how complicated this mission would be.
Combine a multitude of skills and relics to create a wide range of powerful synergies, each offering unique advantages in your quest to escape the loop! With each buff you choose, the loop grows stronger by forcing you to select a curse. Your success hinges on making strategic decisions that enhance your power while managing the increased challenges posed by the loop, guiding you toward ultimate victory!
No one remembers what the world looked like before, except for a team of brave rangers. Now chaos and unpredictability reign everywhere – harmless creatures in the past bring destruction, and the world around is constantly changing, repeatedly nullifying the familiar environment around.
You’re a combat robot activated in the last moments of the Matrix, where corrupted codes have given rise to cyber monsters thirsty for destruction. Combining intense action, retro-futuristic style and roguelite elements, this is a challenge where every decision matters — and each upgrade can mean the difference between survival and total defragmentation.
The Samurai Quest is a 2D pixel art platformer that combines action, precision, and exploration in a campaign with 30 progressively challenging levels. Take on the role of an agile and skilled samurai who faces traps, enemies, and demanding obstacles in search of hidden ninja stars in each stage.
Play as a fearless stray in a city falling apart where every day is a fight to survive. Abandoned warehouses and silent streets hide danger and helpless kittens. Scavenge for food, rescue the lost, and protect the vulnerable.
Capybara Goes to Space is a lighthearted 2D platformer where you guide Capy, a laid-back astronaut capybara, through a strange alien planet in search of scattered spaceship parts. The world is full of bizarre creatures, radioactive traps, and mysterious landscapes that challenge your reflexes and curiosity. As you explore, you’ll uncover secret paths, dodge dripping toxic goo, and outsmart hilarious alien enemies.
Dive into the captivating world of Word Quest, the ultimate word puzzle game. Discover concealed words among letter grids across 200+ levels while guiding a valiant knight. Unveil hidden words to empower the knight in battles against foes. With escalating challenges and immersive visuals, challenge yourself or compete globally to become the ultimate wordsmith and defender. Word Quest is more than a game; it’s an immersive journey to sharpen your mind and vocabulary skills.
Test out your skills, and push them to the next level, while you try to connect the parts with into continual pipe. There are 250 unique levels, so there is always something new to enjoy, and the gameplay is very exciting and rewarding. Every new level is a true challenge, and you have dozens of them to choose from. Let’s play!
Warhammer 40,000 video games have been on a great run lately, with the likes of Space Marine 2 leading the charge of well-received, successful titles. The recently released Space Marine – Master Crafted Edition, however, may be Warhammer 40,000’s first video game misstep in some time.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Master Crafted Edition is a re-release of Relic Entertainment’s 2011 action game, Space Marine. Both Games Workshop and publisher Sega are not calling this a remaster. Instead they point to quality-of-life and graphical improvements “that take the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine experience to the next level.”
These include higher fidelity and improved textures, 4k resolution, “improved” character models, a modernized control scheme and interface overhaul, and remastered audio.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Master Crafted Edition launched on June 10 across Xbox Series X and S and PC, and straight into Game Pass (there’s no word on a PS5 version). It’s going down better on Game Pass, where gaming is often more disposable and subscribers are free to try games out and discard them on a whim if they don’t like what they see. On Steam, however, where Space Marine – Master Crafted Edition costs $39.99 / £34.99, it’s getting destroyed.
Space Marine – Master Crafted Edition currently has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Valve’s platform. Complaints revolve around the high price of the game relative to the changes it makes over the Anniversary Edition, and, on those changes, bemusement in response to what many believe is worse usability.
This, coupled with struggles to find others to play with online, has caused some to call Space Marine – Master Crafted Edition a “cash grab.”
“I was very excited for the idea of this being updated but honestly? I prefer the older version,” reads one negative Steam user review. “It feels better and looks better. Why couldn’t this just be an update or something? And for the price tag it just feels very meh. And this is one of my all time favourite games too. Just gonna install the older version and play through that.”
“Too bad, I really wanted to play this game,” reads another. “No players in PvP multiplayer. No players in co-op Exterminatus horde mode. FOV problem, aiming down sight makes 1000000x zoom. No option to change FOV. Maybe get it on sale after upgrades and updates and working enabled crossplay matchmaking. Refunded, sadly.”
“I bought and get refund” said one disgruntled customer. “Buy the Anniversary Edition, it’s almost the same but it isn’t a cash grab (around 7€ for a key).”
“Look how they massacred my boy,” declared another.
It’s a similar sentiment across social media, Discords, and subreddits. “Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Master Crafted Edition is a mess,” said redditor KitsuneLynx, highlighting problems even on Xbox.
“This game came out a few days ago and has shown itself to be an absolute mess and disappointment. When I heard this remake was coming out, I was so hyped, I was curious what they’d do and was excited to play it on Xbox after having played it on PC a while back. I was disappointed to say the least.
“This game is a buggy, janky mess that didn’t bother to fix anything and instead made a worse UI, odd visual changes, etc. Why make the Orks all Goffs now? The colors helped recognize each unit, now they all blend together to the point it’s hard to decipher which is which. WHERE ARE THE DEDICATED SERVERS? Not to mention the NEW jank and bugs that came with this release that weren’t present in the previous remaster. It didn’t bother to fix the jank or make the game feel revitalized, this IS the definition of a lazy cash grab. Charging this game for 40+ USD is criminal.
“Crossplay is off by default which just leads to the game shooting itself in the foot when it comes to vacant servers. My wife also just experienced a bug which is more common than it should be where when you boot up the game, there is a chance for your save file to corrupt and reset ALL OF YOUR PROGRESS. Why hasn’t this game received a patch yet? I can’t imagine all the other bugs I haven’t seen yet.
“If you’re planning on playing this game, either get it on Game Pass or wait for a sale and mega patch, otherwise stay on Space Marine 2 or play the remaster on PC.”
It’s worth noting that there are players who are having a reasonable time with the game, although anecdotally most of them appear to be on Game Pass. Similarly, those who have never played Space Marine before seem to be enjoying experiencing the events that lead into last year’s blockbuster hit, Space Marine 2. Steam, then, appears to be the focal point of the backlash.
The hope is that Sega will announce incoming improvements sooner rather than later, as Space Marine is generally remembered fondly by those who played it back in the day. In 2025, with Warhammer 40,000 at the peak of its popularity and with a flood of newcomers sparked by the success of Space Marine 2, it’s important Space Marine gets it right. The Inquisition, after all, is always watching.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
All the while, MindsEye’s troubled launch saw the developer cancel sponsored streams, and reports of players securing refunds, even from the normally stubborn Sony.
Hotfix #1 is out now on PC (5.7GB) and PS5 (2GB), with Xbox Series X and S (4GB) to follow, Build A Rocket Boy said in a post on Discord that also included patch notes.
“Today we’ve deployed Hotfix #1 tasked on an expedited timeline as the first in a series of patches aimed at addressing your feedback and enhancing the game experience,” it said.
Across all platforms, the hotfix aims to implement CPU and GPU performance improvements and memory optimizations. It also reduces the difficulty for the CPR mini-game, adds a new setting to disable or modify Depth of Field, and fixes missing controls in the MineHunter and Run Dungeon mini-games.
On PC, there are new pop-up warnings for PCs that have Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling disabled, and PCs with CPUs that have potential crash issues.
Build A Rocket Boy said this patch also fixes the memory leak issue that had been causing most crashes reported by players. “Performance optimisation is our number one focus and an ongoing commitment that will take further time,” it added.
“We will continue to provide frequent and transparent updates. Our team is committed to do everything possible to urgently action your feedback,” Build A Rocket Boy said.
Build A Rocket Boy has said that by the end of June, players can expect ongoing performance and stability improvements, a rebalanced ‘hard’ difficulty setting, animation fixes, and AI improvements.
The question is whether the developer, which was founded by former Rockstar North chief Leslie Benzies, can turn MindsEye around. On Steam, which does not paint the whole picture of MindsEye’s current popularity, the game hit a peak concurrent player count of 3,302 on launch, but had a 24-hour peak of just 786 players. At the time of this article’s publication, 435 people were playing on Steam, with a ‘mixed’ user review rating.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Right, put your hands on the table. Please. I won’t ask again. Thank you. Stellar Bladearrived on PC as of June 11th, and naturally that’s brought a new lease of life the the modding community who’d only had a demo to play with up until that point. Around 40% of the game’s mods over on the Nexus right now are a bit risqué, so we’ve done you a favour and picked out the three filthiest on offer.
Don’t feel you have to thank us. Well, me. This is all part of the job description, alongside all of the holding power to account and providing a service to the consumer stuff. Odds are my Pulitzer’s already in the post.
MindsEye may look like an exciting, GTA-adjacent action-adventure in short clips and GIFs, but actually playing it through to the end of its story has revealed an unfinished, overly ambitious project that’s plagued with performance problems, makes precious little use of its open world, and is crippled by unconvincing combat and dull mission design.
While it’s natural to draw comparisons with GTA, in basic terms MindsEye is more akin to the Mafia series. That is, it’s a tightly linear, single-player story where the open world largely exists as a backdrop for you to drive from mission to mission. That doesn’t end up serving it very well. Mafia is great. MindsEye is not.
You are Jacob Diaz, a former soldier and drone operator who has been railroaded out of the military after a botched mission, albeit with an extremely rare piece of tech still embedded in his neck. He’s a pretty thinly drawn amnesiac hero overall, with no especially memorable characteristics beyond his ability to follow instructions. After securing a security job at mega-company Silva Corp in the Las Vegas-inspired city of Redrock, Diaz is quickly embroiled in an AI-gone-bad, robots-gone-wild adventure that starts slow, gets a little more intriguing a few hours in, and then ends like someone’s yanked the plug out of the wall.
MindsEye does have style, and its near-future setting is accomplished and credible.
Credit where it’s due, MindsEye does have style, and its near-future setting is accomplished and credible. It fuses locations like normal homes and strip malls that wouldn’t look out of place in the present day with the proliferation of high-tech robotics and drones. The result is a world that appears appropriately futuristic, but doesn’t feel alien or unrecognisable. From an aesthetic perspective, it really does appear a few years from now in a well-executed way.
It also includes a genuinely impressive fleet of vehicles – and there’s a practicality to them that makes them look like real cars from, say, five to 10 years in the future. It basically takes modern trends – like today’s massive, chunkily-accented pick-up trucks, teardrop-shaped electric sedans, and battery-powered retromods – and successfully projects a decade of tweaks onto them. More importantly, the handling is actually genuinely good in a way open-world action games rarely manage. The cars you actually get to drive are weighty and really love to be whipped into high-speed handbrake turns through the realistically thick traffic. There’s none of that stickiness that’s typical of GTA clones like Sleeping Dogs (which I love regardless) or Saints Row (which I do not). You know, the kind of superficial handling that feels like you’re turning the world under the car, rather than the car itself.
Unfortunately, this is largely where the praise stops.
Mind Over Matter
The very first mission is a short drive into the desert to shoot four robots who barely have the vigour to fire back, and the second requires you to track a slow-moving thief by monitoring a security console and… switching cameras. It’s not exactly an explosive opening stanza, but things don’t get that much better when the bullets really start flying. It’s around 10 hours of the most boringly straightforward missions from the past decades of open-world action games.
Combat against the handful of bot types and human soldiers is mostly just plain, and dud enemy AI doesn’t make for particularly satisfying shootouts. Humans are the least sensible. Sometimes they take cover; sometimes they just walk towards you waiting to get shot. Run out to meet them and they’re confusingly slow to react (not that this is a particularly strong tactic, as there is no melee attack).
Dud enemy AI doesn’t make for particularly satisfying shootouts.
It’s just janky. On the one hand, you can actually shoot individual pieces – including weapons – off the bots. That’s nice. On the other, put a round into a human standing behind some scenery and they’ll often blink back into cover with no linking animation whatsoever. That’s shoddy.
It’s not due to a lack of firepower, because MindsEye does feature plenty of guns, although it mostly just chucks them into your arsenal with so little fanfare I usually didn’t notice. I’d just spot something new in my weapon wheel, like another assault rifle, or some kind of energy blaster. It’s rarely clear about what you should be using at any given moment, and it doesn’t seem to matter much.
The action does improve towards the back end of the story, as Diaz gets access to all his partner drone’s special perks. The ability to zap an enemy robot and turn it into an instant ally gives the action some zest that it absolutely lacks out of the gate. Your drone’s grenade ability is also neat for a while, but it’s probably a bit too effective at clearing out enemies ahead. I spent most of the late game missions as my drone, dropping endless grenades on soldiers and robots from high above. It made what turned out to be the penultimate battle into one of the easiest because the bad guys just have no defense against this.
The primary problem I had with MindsEye, though, was its drastically uneven performance on my high-end PC (RTX 4080, Intel Core Ultra 9 185H). While the auto settings placed the bulk of the configurable options at ‘High’ – and capped the frame rate at 60fps – my playthrough was rife with issues. It’s regularly blurry and choppy when panning, and the frame rate would flutter and sometimes hang. During one car chase performance chugged to a crawl and was only barely playable. Sometimes even the cutscenes would stutter and display ghosting. Experimenting with lowering the settings hasn’t yielded much in the way of positive results. It’s in really rough shape technically.
To be fair, there are definitely moments in MindsEye when it looks quite stunning. Explosions are excellent. The sunlight piercing through Redrock’s glitzy hotels is seriously snazzy. I liked the sheer scale and complexity of the Silva factory’s rocket loader, and at one point the metallic sheen of a parked jet in the desert glare stopped me in my tracks. When it runs well and looks good, it looks very good. But six months ago I played through Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on this machine and it performed fabulously. MindsEye does not. It’s like Steven Seagal circa 1990: Looks cool – just doesn’t know how to run properly.
It’s like Steven Seagal circa 1990: Looks cool – just doesn’t know how to run properly.
Performance optimisation won’t solve MindsEye’s myriad other issues, though. A lot of these are really just baked into how it’s designed. Too often, the missions are simply restrictive and dull. All you can do is drive a pre-assigned vehicle to a marker. That triggers a cutscene. Then you shoot everything. Then drive somewhere else. It’s all so rigid and leaves no room for the kind of goofing around or antics you can get into in comparable games, and there’s certainly none of the emergent fun you constantly get in something like GTA. MindsEye rarely trusts us to even park at a mission marker; it generally just splutters into a cutscene when you get close enough.
It doesn’t help that there are no radio stations or songs to listen to as you’re commuting between missions. Travel time from A to B mostly seems to exist to feed you phone calls to prod the story along a little further. Exploration is actively disencouraged, and you’ll be constantly scolded for not heading directly to your destination, or failed out. There’s no reason to explore anyhow, as it isn’t the sort of living world you might have expected. Police don’t even respond to Diaz’s crimes, so what’s even the point?
And there’s not really anything out there to find. Hunting for a cool vehicle to use? Don’t bother. Other vehicles are off-limits. Wreck the car you were assigned? That’s a mission fail. You won’t even be able to get out of it if it’s burning. It’s a baffling choice for a game like this – the entire genre is built around stealing cars.
MindsEye has some good ideas. An effective stealth mission mid-way is a positive change of pace, and there are some unexpected puzzles late in the piece that gave me a break from blasting. But it relegates the rest of them to its roughly two hours of cutscenes and wastes their potential. At one point a squad of robots are set sprinting after my car at highway speeds. While I was preparing myself for a potentially thrilling chase, the robots caught the car and destroyed it before the cinematic finished. This kind of thing is a real rug pull in a game that, a few hours earlier, made me play through a frustrating, one-off CPR minigame that could’ve just been a cutscene.
Even apparent bosses die in cutscenes. And in an unforgivable transgression, if there’s a way to skip them (even when replaying missions and watching them a second time), I couldn’t find it.
Bots on Your Mind
The kicker is, even if you get swept up in the sunk-cost fallacy of finishing this 10-hour campaign just to see how the story pans out, the ending itself is a colossal anticlimax. I’ll obviously refrain from spilling the specifics of the final moment, but it’s impossible to complete any assessment of MindsEye’s defects without explaining how deeply and desperately unsatisfying I found it. Story threads are left dangling and reams of questions remain unanswered. It’s not an artistic cliffhanger; it’s just vague and unearned. It’s an ending that feels like the writer was out of fresh paper and this was the only thing that would fit on the last line of the script’s final page. Picture Ghostbusters crashing to credits a few seconds after they cross the streams and you’re about there. There’s a PS after the unskippable credits, but it only makes things worse.
Well, until what happens after the finale, that is. After the story wrapped I was simply tossed back into the open world as… some random weirdo in a crop top. He has some kind of… base? With things in it I can interact with that do… nothing? There’s no explanation of how anything works, no direction, and no purpose.
Confused, I left the building in search of a vehicle, but even here you can’t carjack civilians, and you can’t steal parked cars. I got in the only one that would allow me to enter and drove to an icon that looked like the Hamburglar stealing a car. There was another car there, glowing, but I couldn’t enter it. I shot at the bystanders, and I shot at the soldiers. The soldiers popped out of their 4X4s like waffles from an overzealous toaster. Nothing else happened. No armed response.
I got back in the small hatchback I arrived in, which remained the only vehicle I could interact with. I drove to an icon that looked like a chess piece. The performance took another significant nosedive as I arrived. There were some soldiers there, spread throughout a multi-story parking lot. I shot at them until I got bored, which happened almost instantly because the action is restricted to basic third-person blasting. Chubby crop top man has none of the entertaining drone attacks that Diaz has.
This, it appears, is MindsEye’s free-roaming mode. It’s separate from the main campaign, but I have no idea what we’re intended to do in it. It’s pointless, scrappy, and a complete waste of time in this state. It just isn’t remotely close to finished.
