MindSeize Reviews

Several notes: 1. The movement is clunky and I believe this is not intended to be SOUL LIKE game. 2. I encountered at least 4 bugs that disabling my joystick in the middle of the game. 3. The story feels dull. I cannot recommend this game cause of the bugs.

[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote] I have said this before and I think I need to say it again: Someone once told me that the impression given by a game in its first two hours is very important, as if the player does not get hooked by something or does not find something that interests them, they are very likely to drop that game and never return to it. And I see myself agreeing with that statement. As time goes on, we find less and less time for our entertainment. Our free time, which seemed to be endless as a kid, slowly becomes a luxury as we tackle much more important tasks and take on more important roles. And all of this is without mentioning the refund systems that allow people to return a game shortly after purchase, if some rules are not broken, should they not want to keep onto it anymore. Therefore, the first two hours of a game are very important. So, if I play a game and find nothing that interests me about it, I'm not going to continue playing it for a very slight chance of suddenly falling in love with it. I'm not going to dedicate my very limited free time to playing something that I do not seem to like. Hence why I dropped this game after spending nearly an hour and a half in it. The very first thing that put me off about this game, was the story presentation. The first cutscene of the game seems to be in a rush and just throws you inside its world without any proper story development. You won't have any idea about what's happening in the game's world, you won't know what's the deal with the main character and his enemies, and the NPCs who work with the main character are not properly introduced. The cherry on top of everything is probably the main character's name though, as he is literally called "M.C.". If you don't know, that is also the abbreviation of "Main Character", which I personally found to be very jarring. And this is not the end of story problems. Do you know why the game starts like this? Because some of the story context is on the store page. No, I'm not kidding. Just go and see for yourself. A whole bunch of the information that is written there is not relayed to the player in the game. Why? I have no idea. If I had a nickel for every time I saw a game putting its story details on the store page and not inside itself, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. It's such a shame that even the gameplay failed to get me hooked. Now, the game did feel interesting at first. A metroidvania with a main character that uses the same combat methods as in Mega Man Zero? I'm totally down for something like that! But then... I don't know why, but the level design did not feel okay to me. Navigating the environment and going through the platforming challenges did not feel fun or rewarding at all, and the fact that the game does not tell you what you have to do just made things worse. It gives you no indication or even a hint on where you have to go in order to progress further, so you just keep moving around just to suddenly trigger a cutscene or find an ability that you need to get through specific places. And these are without mentioning the occasional bugs and glitches that can happen while doing simple platforming, or the fact the main character will instantly drop down like a bag full of stones if their head or body hits a diagonal part of the terrain. About those abilities. I did not like the fact that the collectable abilities you can find for the main character's mechanical suit are just spread around in the wilderness with no reason behind them. Why is a module that helps us slide under narrow corridors hidden inside an underground cave? Why is a module that lets us cancel a dash stuck inside a tree? Now, this is not a game-breaking fault, but I expect to have a reason on why this is a thing in order for the world to feel logical and believeable. I mean, Samus got her abilities from Chozo Statues, or Alucard got them after defeating Dracula's strongest allies and underlings. They just didn't find something that was absolutely necessary for progression in a random ditch or something. And you know what's worse when it comes to collecting abilities that are spread around? The game ignores all advancements in the genre since Symphony of the Night, and does not let you put a marker on the map to identify locations of interest. Now, I would have just dealt with this and accepted it, if I was actually enjoying the experience. At many points in the beginning areas, I just thought some of the enemies were purposely put there so there's a higher chance for the player to take damage or get juggled between them. Some of the enemies can even attack through walls, which is very unfair. And if you get hit, you will lose a substantial amount of health. The game lets you recover HP with repurchaseable health packs, but even that is not very well implemented. Simply put, the amount of health you recover with these packs are very low. You just need to take one or two hits from the enemies or the bosses to lose all of what you had regained. It also doesn't help that trying to recover health while in a combat situation is usually a death sentence as not only there's a wind-up animation prior to using a health pack, but your health regenerates gradually instead of instantaneously. So, if the enemy or boss you are facing against is pretty aggressive, using a health pack means you are basically committing seppuku. I was already having a very bad time with the game, and then came the final straw to break the camel's back. You know how stubborn we can be, right? Even if the characters in a game tell us that something is very hard or impossible to do at that point in time, nothing stops us from trying anyway. And if we find out that yes, there is indeed a way to claim victory, we just keep trying over and over again to win. So imagine how infuriated I was to see the game constantly replaying a conversation after dying to the second major boss, telling me that maybe I have to come back later. This conversation just kept coming up after each of my even numbered deaths, and made me angrier bit by bit. "Does the game think I am an idiot?" is what was circulating in my head at that point. I understand that some players might legitimately be too braindead to realize maybe they don't have what it takes to tackle a boss, but to just repeat what you have already told them over and over again? That's just overkill. I eventually understood the boss' behaviors and attack patterns and defeated him, just to get a new firearm and find out I still need to explore the environment to find out where to go. At that point, I started to think: If I did not enjoy my time with the game so far, it is definitely not going to get better. So, I decided that enough is enough, and quit. This could have been good; But the flawed storytelling, the unenjoyable exploration, the questionably-designed gameplay mechanics and all the bugs & glitches sadly make up for a game I can never recommend.