MindsEye, the worst rated game of 2025, gets a free "starter pack" demo

Usually, the holidays are best spent playing the most underrated games of the year you missed or the best games of the year that were nominated for year-end awards. But… if you want to play the worst-reviewed game of the year, that's also an option.

MindsEye was around $8 at GameStop for Black Friday, and I picked up a copy because why not? For $8, the game can't really be bad, right? right?

That's because, as Push Square first spotted, MindsEye, the highly-regarded debut title from former Rockstar Games exec Leslie Benzies, now has a free “starter pack” on the PlayStation Store that will let you play through a bit of the title, which currently sits at 37 on Metacritic.

Majima wearing a Santa hat from Like A Dragon_ Infinite Wealth

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The free demo, which can be accessed here , allows players to “immerse themselves in the action-packed missions in the campaign and preview a selection of new playable content regularly delivered through ARCADIA.” In total, per ResetEra, this is what you get access to for nothing more than your time:

Campaign Mission – Robin Hood
Garden Party – Drone Race
Chase the Sun – Drone Race
Honor among thieves
Downtown – Goin' Haywire
Crosstown Traffic – Checkpoint Race
Rude interruption
Turbulence – Race
Free Bird – Sky Race
Winging It – Checkpoint Race
Craz-eyed Taxi – Checkpoint Race
friendly fire
Cruise Control – Sky Race
Fractured Echo – Survival Horde
Road to Hell – Res

If, somehow, you like what you play, the full game is on sale starting Monday for $29.99, though you might be better off searching your local Walmart stores, as MindsEye was found on clearance there and is sure to be cheaper by now.

Whatever image you have of MindsEye, this release is pretty bad

When MindsEye, in all its messiness, was originally released, it was immediately slammed for being a buggy, subpar title, and immediately, its lead-up to negative reviews indicated that it was a paid attempt by Rockstar to trash the game.

Things were bad enough that sponsored streams of the game appeared to be canceled, sometimes minutes before they were set to begin. Elsewhere, the game had the unfortunate distinction of joining Cyberpunk 2077 in that the PS Store, which is notoriously difficult to get returns for, was handing out refunds due to games going bad.

For its part, the studio behind the game, Build a Rocket Boy, said it was “heartbroken” at launch and promised to continue to fix the game. However, for all its warts, a surprising number of players managed to pop the game's platinum trophy.

In the time since launch, the game has delayed its post-launch content plans before finally announcing a shift to a user-generated platform called ARCADIA, which is where we currently find ourselves.