Promising new look at shooters

Modern shooters come and go these days in the manner of bacterial infections; they do not last very long, you forget about them in a week and some of them can be particularly nasty. Features like regenerative health and the effective use of cover used to be referred to as "innovative features" before the gaming community took them for granted. When we see new trailers for shooters, we want to see something we haven’t seen before; something to toy with or, if all else fails, something that just looks downright awesome. Mindjack is not shaping up to be a benchmark game with all new, genre defining innovations. It is, however, shaping up to be a pretty cool one.

Possession, mindjacking and evil corporations

The year is 2031 and players assume control of Jim Corbin who, with the help of his sassy female side-kick, Rebecca, is tossed into an all-out war with an evil, futuristic corporation. This being the future, you would be right in assuming that the robots are fierce, the weapons are glossy and the corporations are relentlessly evil. This, so far, is a plot that needs some serious fleshing out. However, there is some promise over the horizon, as we are going to find out.

Let me tell you two things, folks. First, I am not easily impressed and, second, Mindjack is beginning to impress the dimples from my stupidly grinning face. So, what exactly it is about Mindjack that has me so excited? To skip the nonsense, Mindjack is a third-person shooter with a fairly basic approach to combat, but it has the added twist of hacking into the minds of NPCs and using them to your own sick and twisted ends.

The process of possessing your foes is somewhat unclear. The pre-release materials depict the player's mind as a coloured puff of ether as it scours the map searching for a potential host. How exactly this was made possible in the game's universe has not been disclosed by the developers. Apparently, discussing the process of mindjacking is an integral part of the plot which should not be spoiled. Thankfully, we do have some details we are able to share with you...

Breaking the borders between single- and multi-player

Fortunately, the mindjacking in itself is not the only trick up the sleeves of the developers. The mindjacking ability can certainly be a great addition to a game, but it is not an entirely new idea. Games like Battlefield 2: Modern Combat allowed the player to assume control over any member of their team in a similar fashion. So, what is it about Mindjack that makes it stand out from the crowd?

The answer, my dear readers, is in Mindjack's promising multiplayer component. As each new player dives into the single-player campaign, they are prompted as to how they would like to play the game. They have the option to play solo and take on the perilous future single-handedly or to play online where their campaign effectively becomes an open playing field for anyone to join... whatever their intentions. As a new player joins your campaign, they are given the same liberties as yourself. How they use those liberties however, is up to them.

This is a single-player/multiplayer campaign hybrid I have been dreaming of for some time. If all players in the game are given the freedom to do what they want in someone else's adventure, the results could be... chaotic. Poor Jim Corbin could end up facing an entire squad of real players in the minds of NPC’s, or it could be the other way round for that matter.

Awesomeness in giant packages

Overall, the concept of mindjacking and the story around it that the game will unfold sounds pretty interesting for an FPS game. And when we add the chaotic and at best very entertaining possibility of joining someone else's game and creating unimagined havoc there, we may very well have something unique and memorable in our hands. Expect awesomeness by quantity of human weight, folks, for this is destined to be, if nothing else, a very intriguing project by Feelplus Inc.