LeonidaMan

I had been following this game for a couple of years prior to release, even when the working title was still called "Everywhere". I honestly was not very impressed with any of the trailers besides the graphics, which isn't saying much because all games look great these days, and I was correct in not getting too excited.

Mindseye feels like a game straight out of the PlayStation 2/3 era, it's a lifeless cookie cutter game that will be forgotten about within a month. It is ridiculous that in 2025 a game like this can release and be sold for £60.

The Pros: As stated before this game looks fantastic graphically and really takes advantage of the Unreal Engine 5 system, cutscenes look very lifelike too which is a testament to how far games as a medium have come

The Cons: This game is lacking in nearly every single department, for example: There is no weapon customisation, no character customisation, no vehicle customisation, no melee combat (which is utterly ridiculous in 2025), no stealth mechanics and you can't even steal other vehicles most of the time. There are also no shops or a police/wanted system in mindseye which is baffling, if games from 2002 had at least half of these things, there is no excuse for Mindseye.

Story wise this game is not much better, everyone and everything is bland and generic as possible. You play as Jacob Diaz, a former soldier with a mysterious neural implant known as the mindseye. He is portrayed by Alex Hernandez who does his best but the dialogue in this game is abhorrent at times and makes me wonder if some of it was written by AI. All the actors do the best they can but are all let down by poor writing and bad dialogue. The ending is unintentionally hilarious with how abrupt and shameless the sequel bait is.

Gameplay wise Mindseye is extremely outdated, shooting is stiff and your character hardly reacts to damage at all. This game really does feel like it was taken from the PlayStation 2 era. Mindseye also suffers from painfully repetitive mission design like you'd find in a Ubisoft game. Every mission is just a big shootout, or a big car chase where you'll be shooting out the window constantly for three minutes at a time. Too many missions are on rails which is not up to 2025 standards

The last thing I want to mention about Mindseye is how frustrating the bugs and glitches are. Crashes are extremely common and it doesn't matter the device you're playing it on. Frames will sometimes drop to single digits during gameplay and even cutscenes. NPC's will sometimes clip through the ground and cars will just glitch into each other constantly.

Overall Mindseye is a glitchy, half baked pile of rubbish that you should absolutely not waste your money on. No amount of patches can fix a fundamentally broken game.

Grand Theft Auto is my favourite video game series of all time, every entry in the series for the most part has something unique about it, whether it's the style, setting or the gameplay there's always something special about all of them. Grand Theft Auto IV is the most polarising entry in the series because it's very different, too different in my opinion.

The Positives: Niko Bellic is a fantastic protagonist and certainly one of Rockstars best, he is written very well (even though towards the end his motives are a bit muddled) and is played excellently by Michael Hollick who doesn't get enough credit.

The characters in this game are very good, so good in fact I'd say it has some of the best characters in the series. There's comedic relief such as Roman and Brucie, loyal companions such as Little Jacob and Packie McReary and treacherous villains such as Dimitri Rascalov, Mikhail Faustin and Jimmy Pegorino.

The map in this game while not quite perfect (the lack of a countryside is really annoying) is insanely detailed. In terms of interiors it blows Grand Theft Auto Vs Los Santos out of the water.

The Negatives: The story in Grand Theft Auto games is the main selling point for me personally and while this game's story is actually quite good, it's too serious for a Grand Theft Auto game. GTA has always been about satire and being humorous, but this games satire is very subtle and there is little to no humour in it due to its serious nature.

I love the wacky and crazy missions in Grand Theft Auto, unfortunately this game has little to none of that. I can't even say this game has the worst missions in the franchise because they are so boring and forgettable that they sort of blend together.

Gone are the fun missions from San Andreas like breaking into Area 69 to steal a jet pack, robbing a mafia controlled casino and going on a crime spree in the middle of the sticks with a crazy girl, and prepare for non stop tailing missions that go on and on and killing hordes of enemies in tight corridors. This is my biggest gripe with the game, thank god Grand Theft Auto V was a return to form with its missions and Grand Theft Auto VI is shaping up to do the same.

Another big aspect of Grand Theft Auto is the driving, and my god Grand Theft Auto IV has the worst driving I have ever seen. I understand they wanted the driving to be a bit more realistic to fit with the story but cars do no control like that in real life in the slightest. Every car is like driving a boat, turning is ridiculously hard and it ruins the momentum.

Overall Grand Theft Auto IV is a good game that every fan of the series should play at least once, but it's overly dark vibe and strange design choices will forever make it the black sheep of the GTA family.