There are a few ways to deal with a bad video game launch. Some studios dedicate themselves to rehabilitating a bad game they still believe in; others cut their losses and move on to the next project knowing what not to do next time. Or, you could do… whatever MindsEye developer Build a Rocket Boy did instead.
After the disastrous launch of MindsEye, a third-person shooter directed by former Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies, a typical flop turned into a circus over the course of nine months. Rather than taking a loss with grace, Benzies began spreading conspiracy theories that the game was sabotaged by internal and external forces. Studio co-CEO Mark Gerhard even went as far as to suggest that some of the negative reception to the game was being financed by malicious actors.
A tantalizing mystery rose from a flop that was far more interesting than MindsEye ever was: Who wanted to kill MindsEye and why?
Build a Rocket Boy promised to deliver some of those answers in the game’s first DLC expansion, Blacklisted, which is available now as a free update. Gerhard has spent the last month hyping up the shooter’s new mission as a must-see event, claiming it would contain real “evidence” of sabotage. He even teased that it would include the names of some of the people involved with the behind-the-scenes drama.
The reality is much more mundane than that. Gerhard’s salacious comments have proven to be little more than a cynical marketing tactic for a paltry mission that doesn’t attempt to address any of MindsEye’s real problems. Aside from peppering in a few poorly coded references to real people, the only thing that’s shocking about Blacklisted is how boring it is.
In Blacklisted, you play as a brand-new super spy named Julia Black. She works for an agency called Meridian, who has sent her to the Las Vegas-inspired Redrock to assassinate two people behind a new designer drug that’s spreading through the city. The spy mission plays out like a repurposed Hitman mission, as Julia bounces between a few locations, gathers intel, and executes the bad guys. Along the way, she learns that there’s a much bigger conspiracy theory happening behind the scenes that’s bigger than euphoria-inducing drugs. Intrigued yet?
