Jon Landau of "Rolling Stone" magazine assessed the songs on "Mind Games" as "his worst writing yet" and considered that Lennon was "helplessly trying to impose his own gargantuan ego upon an audience … is waiting hopefully for him to chart a new course". While finding the music "listenable", Landau identified the album's lyrics as "misguided in so underrating his audience's intelligence" and added: "But then, perhaps Lennon's didacticism, preaching and banality are part of the mind game of the album's title …" More impressed, "Melody Maker"s Ray Coleman found that "The raw nerves of a Lennon battered by America's curious logic and sheer hard-heartedness seem to have spurred him to write incisively …" Coleman concluded of "Mind Games": "Musically or melodically this may not be a stand-out album, but if you warm to the rasping voice of Lennon and, like me, regard him as the true fulcrum of much of what came from his old group, then like any new Lennon album, it will be enjoyable and even important." In "Creem" magazine, Robert Christgau described the album as "a step in the right direction ... but only a step. It sounds like out-takes from "Imagine", which may not seem so bad but means that Lennon is falling back on ideas (intellectual and musical) that have lost their freshness for him: Still, the single works, and let's hope he keeps right on stepping."