Image by Morena Perez Vitale
Video games are a medium that has existed for less than eighty years, making them considerably younger than television, let alone cinema. Like those earlier mediums, it took time for video games to transform into what they are today. In the 1940s, the earliest games were little more than experiments conducted with surplus military technology. By the 2020s, however, video games had long since matured and were expected to compete directly with television and cinema.
Today, video gaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Countless major and minor companies produce games, millions of players consume them, and an entire ecosystem of content creators surrounds the medium. As a result, video games are under greater scrutiny than ever before. Both major publications and independent creators are eager to critique or even dismantle new releases. Debates often arise over which title deserves the dubious honor of being the worst game. As far as 2025 is concerned, that game might just be MindsEye.
MindsEye Was Created By the Producer of GTA V
MindsEye is an action-adventure game published by IO Interactive, the studio behind Hitman and Kane & Lynch. On paper, that pedigree should have all but guaranteed success. Even more enticing was the fact that the game came from Build a Rocket Boy, a studio founded by Leslie Benzies. That name will be familiar to any longtime fan of Rockstar video game franchises like Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt, with Benzies having involvement in every one of those games as a producer. His final project at Rockstar, Grand Theft Auto V, remains one of the most successful games ever made, with Benzies credited not just as a producer but as a designer.
Yet, the promise of Benzies’ involvement came with baggage. His departure from Rockstar was anything but clean, sparking a public and protracted legal feud over royalties and accusations about his behavior in the workplace. That rocky history inevitably colored expectations for MindsEye, turning it into less of a fresh start and more of a gamble.
After leaving Rockstar Games, Leslie Benzies wasted no time establishing several studios, the most prominent being Build a Rocket Boy, founded on October 1, 2018. Its first project, MindsEye, entered development around 2022 and was first teased at Gamescom in Germany that same year. By 2023, full production was underway, and in 2024, the studio secured IO Interactive as publisher, announcing the game would release on Windows, as well as two of the best 64-bit gaming consoles, the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.
On paper, it looked like the perfect setup: a high-profile studio head, an experienced publisher, and the power of modern hardware. Yet cracks began to show long before release. Review copies were conspicuously absent, with not a single major publication receiving early access. Worse still, Build a Rocket Boy refused to provide even a playable demo. For many players, this was less a minor red flag and more a blaring siren, signaling that MindsEye wasn’t ready for prime time, and possibly never would be.
MindsEye's Gameplay and Story Have Been Heavily Criticized
Image via IO Interactive
When it comes to setting and backstory, MindsEye doesn’t exactly break new ground. The game takes place in Redrock City, a futuristic metropolis in the western United States that feels like a thinly veiled stand-in for Los Angeles or San Francisco. On the surface, Redrock markets itself as the “safest city in the world,” though that claim quickly unravels thanks to tensions between the city’s government and its largest corporate power, Silva Corporation. At the center of that struggle are Marco Silva, the corporation’s namesake chair, and Shiva Vega, the city’s mayor.
Their conflict isn’t about taxes, infrastructure, or even power. Instead, it’s about who gets to colonize the universe first. It’s a bizarrely hollow premise, one that feels more like a pitch meeting buzzword than a serious narrative hook, and it drags the game’s story into uncomfortable territory from the start.
The player takes control of Jacob Diaz, a Silva Corporation recruit suffering from amnesia brought on by personal tragedy. Assigned as Marco Silva’s personal bodyguard, Jacob finds himself caught between Silva and Vega’s competing ambitions, all while trying to uncover his own past. His main motivation is to track down Hunter Morrison, the man responsible for implanting the titular “MindsEye” chip in his brain, an experiment that cost Diaz his memories.
In theory, this personal arc could add weight to the corporate melodrama, but it’s quickly undermined by the sheer number of distractions. Between running protection detail for Silva, sniffing out Vega’s schemes, and battling the corporation’s suddenly rogue robots, Diaz feels less like a protagonist on a personal journey and more like an errand boy juggling half-baked plotlines.
It’s clear that MindsEye’s setting and story bring nothing new to the action-adventure genre, and unfortunately, the same can be said for its gameplay. The game borrows heavily from Rockstar’s blueprint, particularly its third-person shooting mechanics. Developers have also pointed to MindsEye‘s many influences, which range from Mafia’s open-world design to Minecraft’s user-generated content. But rather than feeling like a bold fusion of ideas, MindsEye comes across as derivative to the point of parody. Ironically, the sheer lack of originality isn’t even its biggest problem.
Above all, MindsEye functions less as a game and more as a promotional vehicle for Build a Rocket Boy’s upcoming Everywhere creation system, a platform built on Unreal Engine 5 that promises to let players craft their own worlds. The idea is ambitious, but it also explains why MindsEye feels so hollow.
Between the recycled mission structure, lifeless AI, and toothless combat, the game barely holds together. And then there’s MindsEye ’s technical performance, which is nothing short of catastrophic. Even with steep system requirements, MindsEye struggles to maintain stable frame rates, leaving players with an experience that feels unfinished at best and broken at worst. In the end, MindsEye isn’t just unoriginal but is technically bankrupt, a game that fails both in ambition and execution.
MindsEye Could Spell the End of Build a Rocket Boy’s Future
Image via Build a Rocket Boy
MindsEye was released on June 10, 2025, for Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, just five days after the Nintendo Switch 2 launched, which effectively stole away any spotlight the game might have had. Beyond poor timing, MindsEye ‘s commercial performance remains murky, though abysmal player counts on platforms like Steam paint a bleak picture.
The critical reception, however, is unambiguous: MindsEye has already been declared the worst game of 2025 by many reviewers. Critics have slammed the game for its lack of originality, severe technical issues, and uninspired world design, among a laundry list of other shortcomings. Instead of accepting fault and promising to make things right, Build a Rocket Boy attempted to shift blame by claiming the wave of negative reviews was orchestrated by a “nefarious third-party group” paying for bad press, a bizarre defense that only made the studio look more defensive.
To their credit, patches for MindsEye have since been released, but they’ve done little to repair the game’s reputation. With MindsEye shaping up to be the biggest flop of 2025, and Build a Rocket Boy’s response raising more questions than answers, the studio’s future is uncertain. The controversy over MindsEye is reminiscent of 2024’s biggest video game flop, Concord, a live-service game that was shuttered shortly after release. Firewalk Studios, the studio behind Concord, was shuttered long after, and Build a Rocket Boy could share the same fate.
Their next project, Everywhere, is pitched as an ambitious game creation system built on Unreal Engine 5, allowing users to craft levels and even entire games. The platform has been in closed beta since June 18, 2024, but its ultimate fate remains unclear. Will Everywhere succeed where MindsEye failed, revitalizing Build a Rocket Boy and cementing Leslie Benzies’ comeback, or will it drag both the studio and Benzies further into obscurity? Right now, the only thing that can be said for sure is that MindsEye has left a stain that will be hard to wash out.
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