MindJack Multiplayer Hands-On

Remember Geist? In that multiplayer shooter for the GameCube, you could take over the bodies of AI-controlled foes and infiltrate their ranks. It looks like MindJack will be following in Geist's footsteps. While roaming the E3 2010 show floor, we took up a controller and jumped into a multiplayer match just to see what this ghostly looking shooter was all about. While it's clear that there's still a lot of work to do on this upcoming shooter, it seems intriguing enough to warrant closer inspection as the game nears its announced fourth-quarter release window.

First, a quick rundown on what we know about MindJack. This third-person shooter takes place in the year 2031 and seems to make a few nods to Deus Ex and its associated near-future conspiracies. Governments are falling, corrupt powers are taking hold, and conspiracies are rampant. You and your team of special agents are out to uncover a mystery, though it's unclear right now exactly what that mystery might be. In MindJack, you'll be able to hack into enemies and control them, whether they are armed foes, civilians, or even vehicles. Apparently, your own gameworld can be altered by the actions of other players, and you can do the same to them, though the details of this system remain unclear. While there will be a single-player campaign as well as seamlessly integrated cooperative play, the demo on the show floor was competitive multiplayer only.

The match seemed a variant on team deathmatch. What made it intriguing was that as a hacker, you can pull a trigger when near an AI-controlled teammate and take him or her over. On this sci-fi-flavored office building map, there were different types of combatants available to control. As a scantily clad vixen, we took aim with a sniper rifle, while the more fully clothed male soldiers possessed submachine guns and pistols. (And of course, you can pick weapons up off the ground.) You can leap out of a body at any time by clicking both sticks, which returns you to your spiritual form--sort of a hovering, pulsing ball of energy. Of course, you also return to that form when you are killed, though there is a slight delay before you can jump into another body.

The shooting itself is standard third-person fare a la Gears of War, with standard Gears-like tumbling, cover, and roadie-run sprinting. The cover system was very sticky, so we snapped into cover multiple times without intending to while sprinting, and movement controls were more floaty than expected. Yet it was pretty simple to get into the swing, and soon we were taking aim at both AI foes and human ones. We did encounter several intriguing happenstances, however. One AI character, a femme fatale, was able to take infinite damage, spraying blood everywhere but never going down, though it was unclear whether this was a purposeful occurrence or a bug. And at one point, another player took control of a giant ape-like creature, whom we were able to fell with a rocket launcher from the corridor above. All in all, the shooting was what you would expect, so we're looking forward to seeing the elements that will dress it up--the story and the setting, for example--as well as finding out more about how the hacking will work on a larger scale.

With such a limited demo it's hard to get a feel for a game like MindJack, but the concept is interesting enough to make this one to keep an eye on. Hack into GameSpot over the coming weeks to find out more about this upcoming third-person shooter as we learn more.