MindsEye Has Just Achieved an Unfortunate Record

MindsEye has achieved an unfortunate record as it officially becomes the worst-reviewed game of the year so far. The newly released action-adventure game is the first title to be released by studio Build a Rocket Boy, which was co-created by ex-Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies, but MindsEye‘s launch has been plagued by poor performance, bugs, and negative reviews.

With the release of Grand Theft Auto 6 delayed to 2026, fans of the series were hoping to fill the time with MindsEye. Not only does the new title have a former Grand Theft Auto developer at the helm, but it also has striking similarities to the series, with some calling it a mix of Grand Theft Auto and Cyberpunk 2077. Unfortunately, fans quickly became skeptical of MindsEye after previews labeled it a “broken mess” that is “filled with bugs.” While Build a Rocket Boy’s co-CEO Mark Gerhard believes the negative reactions to MindsEye were a paid effort, its launch has shown that simply isn’t the case.

MindsEye’s PS5 Refunds Place it Among Rare Company

The recently released MindsEye’s controversial launch has led to Sony issuing refunds, with only a select few titles having ever experienced this.

MindsEye Becomes Worst-Reviewed Game of 2025

It didn’t take long for the negative MindsEye reviews to begin rolling in from players, but it has taken a little longer for official critic reviews to be published, as the studio didn’t send any early review codes out to the press. However, more and more reviews have been making their way online over the last few days, and they haven’t been great. In fact, the critic reviews for MindsEye have been so negative that the title has officially become the worst-reviewed game of the year so far. As spotted by TheGamer, MindsEye now has a Metacritic score of 43, which makes it the lowest-scoring game of 2025. To put things into perspective, the second-worst-reviewed game of the year is Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator, which has a Metacritic score of 44.

Its launch has been such a bug-ridden disaster that the PlayStation Store has begun offering refunds to MindsEye players. While this might not seem like a massive deal, Sony has a pretty strict policy on offering refunds after a game that has already been downloaded to the console. The only other title to become an exception to this rule was Cyberpunk 2077, which also had a catastrophic launch in 2020. CD Projekt Red’s futuristic RPG had such severe performance issues on PlayStation consoles that Sony temporarily removed the game from its storefront and offered all players a no-questions-asked refund.

MindsEye doesn’t appear to be going down the same route as Cyberpunk 2077, as it still remains purchaseable on the PlayStation Store, and that’s likely thanks to the studio’s fast-acting response to the controversy. Build a Rocket Boy’s first game hasn’t even been out a week yet, but the studio has promptly outlined its plans for new patches and has already deployed the very first post-launch update for MindsEye. The game’s first update included CPU and GPU performance improvements, memory optimizations, memory leak fixes to prevent crashes, and a handful of bug fixes.