It even has cybernetic gorillas!
MindJack is a third-person shooter video game developed by feelplus and published by Square Enix for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Unlike most shooters, this game also has a unique feature in that the player can use "mind jackinghacking" to take control of wounded enemies, NPCs on the map and even some robots. The game allows for seamless transition between single- and multi-player modes as well, letting up to four players join one server where they can either help the server host as the blue team or impede his progress as the red team.
The game takes place in A.D. 2031, when the world's governments are in decline and corrupt corporations are rising to fill the void. FIA agent Jim Corbijn is tailing a suspected terrorist known as "Weiss" through San Mira International Airport and ends up killing her contact. Unfortunately, he finds out that the man he killed was an undercover FIA agent. Jim suddenly finds himself cut off from his organization and is forced to rely on Weiss for help. The Action Duo must work together to discover why they are suddenly being marked for death and what secret is so powerful that the MegaCorp NERKAS will go to any lengths to keep it a secret.
This game provides examples of:
- Action Commands: You can press B at close range to perform a melee combo that injures your enemies, though the game treats it as more of a suggestion than a command.
- Artificial Stupidity: Both friendly and enemy AI characters have a bad habit of leaving cover and wandering into the open while several people are shooting at them. On one occasion, a boss will actually shoot the ground.
- The Atoner: The real player character is Andrew Gardener. Turns out he's been Dead All Along, and Jim has been antagonized by prerecorded messages. Gardener's mindhacking ghost has been guiding Jim so he can get back into his lab and destroy the Emily mainframe.
- Body Surf: One of your two main mindhacking powers.
- Came Back Wrong: The final boss is the result of a failed attempt by the inventor of mindhack to digitally bring back the consciousness of his dead daughter. The resulting creation is... less than stable.
- Child Soldiers: If you turn a child civilian into a Mind Slave, very much yes.
- Color-Coded Multiplayer: Players on your team are blue "Wanderers," players on the enemy team are red. When in control of an NPC, the respective colour outlines the NPC.
- Context-Sensitive Button: Similar to other third-person shooters, the A button provides a (brief) forward dash, a "combat roll" function, and can be used to move your character in and out of cover.
- Critical Existence Failure: Some minibosses in the game you cannot scratch at all with your weapons, but if you kill all the Mooks in the area then the boss will either explode or fly away in shame. Wait, what?
- Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: If you allow your game to be open other players can "hack" into your single player game as friends or enemies.
- Everyone Is Armed: When you mindjack a civilian, they somehow have the exact same weapons as Corbijn on their person.
- Everything Is Online: Headsets for humans as well as the infrastructure.
- Excuse Plot: We don't even know who the people are or why to care what happens to them, we're just dropped into the plot and told to shoot guys shooting at us. The large majority of the plot is dumped right at the very end, when we learn that the Big Bad has been Dead All Along, and his mindhacking ghost is trying to correct his mistakes before it's too late.
- Expy: There's one boss that looks an awful lot like a Metal Gear...
- Forgot About His Powers: Despite mind-hacking and mind-slaving several enemies for several hours, when Weiss talks about mind-hacking in a cutscene Jim acts like this was the first time he ever heard of it. This is actually a plot point. It's not Jim who's doing the hacking, it's Andrew Gardener's ghost
- Flunky Boss: Several of the bosses can't be defeated directly; instead you must shoot their minions.
- Hammerspace: Presumably where all the civilians retrieve their guns from when you mindjack them.
- Healing Hands: If one of the two main protagonists is wounded, you can instantly bring them back by getting up close and hitting X (on a 360 pad).
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
- Both in gameplay and in cutscenes, the enemies can barely hit anything. You're only likely to be killed if you charge head-first into battle or wind up on the wrong side of a machine gun robot.
- In one cutscene, Weiss and Jim both escape on an unprotected motorcycle into a barricade full of guards with automatic rifles firing at them. They don't even get a scratch.
- Intentional Engrish for Funny: "I don't know what is happen! Smoke, guns, the whole world is explode, so we just running, running very fast..."
- Mind-Control Device: Allowing the player to jack into the minds of the enemies, and civilians.
- Shoot Out the Lock: Several times in the story, whenever Jim and Becky come across a digital door switch they can't hack, they put a bullet into it and the door magically opens or closes depending on the situation.
- Unexplained Recovery: That guy whose neck you snapped in the intro cutscene? He's back in the ending, a bit annoyed about you snapping his neck, but otherwise just fine.
- Unnaturally Blue Lighting: Almost everything is blue-gray, probably so you can use the Color-Coded Multiplayer indicators a bit easier.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can mindhack random civilians and use them against enemy forces, at least until the civilian you're controlling gets shot to death, and you can also use the mindslave ability to force injured enemies to attack one another.
- What the Hell, Hero?: In the first minutes of the game! Jim is told by his handler to just watch Rebecca Weiss and not engage the mysterious person meeting her. He says "Copy that," proceeds to make direct contact and snaps the guy's neck note . Weiss is furious and the player is aghast. Furthermore, it's revealed the guy he just killed was an undercover agent for his side and killing him made his agency assume he's been "flipped," prompting the waves of soldiers trying to off him.
