I'm a child of the 90s. I grew up in that era and lived through a lot of what Mixtape deals with. Even though I wasn't born in the United States, I was heavily influenced by American culture, which has a strong presence worldwide. What this game tries to communicate resonates with a lot of people, and I completely understand why it would be well received. But this piece isn't about saying whether Mixtape is "good" or "bad". What I want to do here is analyze what it's presenting, how the games journalism industry received this title, especially in English-language media, and what that means for people who just want to play video games. Should we trust this kind of review or not? And what does it cause with its elastic effect? Excessive over-praise ends up creating an equally intense backlash, and I believe the truth sits somewhere in the middle. This is my analysis of the situation, not just of the game itself.
In my opinion, this barely qualifies as a game. These are moments where you press a button and, much like a child's toy, something happens on screen so you feel like you're participating. What completely dismantles any narrative of interactivity is that the game plays itself through large portions. There are plenty of gameplay videos online where someone simply puts down the controller and the scene keeps going on its own. It's an experience that doesn't require your input 100% of the time. You don't have to participate if you don't want to.
This is something you can associate with the publisher's own identity, Annapurna. Their last major success was Stray, a game also focused on narrative and atmosphere, but one where you actually interacted with the world: you climbed platforms, jumped, explored the environment, upgraded your character. That is a game.
Mixtape follows the Walking Simulator path, except it's a very expensive Walking Simulator, with a licensed soundtrack that contains over 27 songs from 90s bands and a visual style strongly reminiscent of Spider-Verse, with intentionally low framerates on the characters. All of this could have been told as a film, or a short. I see no reason for it to exist as an interactive experience, other than Annapurna's decision to publish it as a game. And what surprises me is that specialized media, people who are paid to professionally analyze games, don't seem to notice something so straightforward: this "game" should have been a movie.
Other criticisms go beyond gameplay and reach the narrative itself. This coming-of-age theme has been done to death in video games. The game makes no attempt to do anything new. It's a formula that reinvents itself every decade, present in the 80s, the 90s, in 2010, and here it is again. But it's a nostalgia surrounded by false impressions, a somewhat surreal and utopian idea of what growing up looks like. Obviously it's fiction and can be written however its creators see fit, but here it's presented in a completely forgettable way. The humor is entirely built on clichés, and the characters have weak personalities, prisoners of their own stereotypes.
The central issue here is the publisher. Annapurna Interactive was founded by Megan Ellison, daughter of billionaire Larry Ellison, one of the co-founders of Oracle. Mixtape is being marketed as an indie game because of its aesthetic, but it's indie in absolutely no way. It's a game made with billionaire money, which explains the expensive licensed soundtrack, the sophisticated animation techniques, and the use of engines that have a real cost. This is not a low-budget project.
On top of that, Annapurna has built a close relationship with journalists over the years, particularly in American media. That naturally raises suspicion, especially when you know the company distributed expensive press kits containing the game's soundtrack and other gifts. I'm not saying the game gets good reviews because of the presents, but it's hard to deny that this kind of thing makes criticism biased.
And there's more: the game works as the video game equivalent of what we call Oscar Bait in cinema. It has a narrative that plays on nostalgia and completely breaks from the standard. In a market where a journalist has to play two 40-hour RPGs per week, picking up a 3-hour experience that is simple and different feels like a relief.
Just like I'm happy when I get a small spreadsheet at work, that mental break already predisposes the journalist to receive the game well, regardless of its quality. Add to that the press kits, and also the fact that the game's narrative has a progressive lean that is clearly aligned with the dominant worldview of most people who work in this media. That's not a criticism, it's an observation: if a game speaks the language of the person reviewing it, it will be reviewed favorably.
Now do the thought experiment: how would this be received if it were a Japanese game, with teenage characters treated in a comedic way, wearing outfits typical of the anime style, and a similar interactive kiss scene? The media would tear it apart. In Mixtape, because the aesthetic is "artistic" and it comes from Annapurna, it's received in a much more relaxed way.
There is a considerable taboo around putting teenagers kissing in an interactive game where you, probably an adult twice their age, are controlling that interaction. You could argue that Mixtape's context isn't sexual, but in the games I'm using as a counterpoint, it isn't necessarily sexual either. The experience is the same: two teenagers kissing with the player's input.
I genuinely don't believe either case is a real problem. But why is one praised while games featuring medieval armor with shorter skirts are coldly criticized? I'm in favor of everything being judged for what it actually is, within the law, without the double standards that professional critics love to apply.
This game could have been well received without all the forced marketing. If the scores hadn't been so inflated, it probably wouldn't have generated such a negative reaction. That's the elastic effect I mentioned at the beginning. I'm not saying it's a worthless work; it has its audience. But it's a game with minimal interactivity, a worn-out story, and an honest presentation of something funded with a lot of money and sold as indie. And that by itself is far away from what a 10/10 game should've been.
What really bothers me is that journalists are literally gifted with expensive press kits, invited to interviews with the developers, and this happens with major outlets like IGN and relevant YouTube channels. These are human beings who encounter a game that echoes a lot of their worldview and, at the same time, benefit from small perks. That makes the analysis biased. It's something you don't see, by the nature of the work, in investigative or crime journalism. So at what point does games journalism stop being journalism and become paid, or unpaid, propaganda? I'll leave that reflection for you to think about.
The Story of Mixtape
Without giving too much away, the game tells the story of a small group of teenagers who want to spend their last night together before the end of high school in a small American town. One of the characters is planning to go to New York to chase their dreams, and the group wants to make the most of that final night together. The game revolves around that, around small adventures that lead up to the party they've been looking forward to. It leans heavily into the coming-of-age theme that became hugely popular through the 80s films directed or written by John Hughes, like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Pretty in Pink and Weird Science. Those were films about the transition from adolescence into adulthood, and this "game", if we can call it that, channels exactly that kind of feeling, accompanied by an extensive soundtrack of popular songs from the era. The problem is that it doesn't treat any of this with the sensibility of a video game. It behaves much more like an interactive film.Gameplay or The Lack of It
The game doesn't want you to control the character in a dynamic way or through well-crafted mechanics. There's no central mechanic. What you get are simple interactions, like pressing a button to turn on the car's interior light or guiding a character down a hill in a shopping cart. In practice, these are interactive vignettes. It's like those old DVD menus where you press a button to inflate a little balloon.In my opinion, this barely qualifies as a game. These are moments where you press a button and, much like a child's toy, something happens on screen so you feel like you're participating. What completely dismantles any narrative of interactivity is that the game plays itself through large portions. There are plenty of gameplay videos online where someone simply puts down the controller and the scene keeps going on its own. It's an experience that doesn't require your input 100% of the time. You don't have to participate if you don't want to.
This is something you can associate with the publisher's own identity, Annapurna. Their last major success was Stray, a game also focused on narrative and atmosphere, but one where you actually interacted with the world: you climbed platforms, jumped, explored the environment, upgraded your character. That is a game.
Mixtape follows the Walking Simulator path, except it's a very expensive Walking Simulator, with a licensed soundtrack that contains over 27 songs from 90s bands and a visual style strongly reminiscent of Spider-Verse, with intentionally low framerates on the characters. All of this could have been told as a film, or a short. I see no reason for it to exist as an interactive experience, other than Annapurna's decision to publish it as a game. And what surprises me is that specialized media, people who are paid to professionally analyze games, don't seem to notice something so straightforward: this "game" should have been a movie.
Other criticisms go beyond gameplay and reach the narrative itself. This coming-of-age theme has been done to death in video games. The game makes no attempt to do anything new. It's a formula that reinvents itself every decade, present in the 80s, the 90s, in 2010, and here it is again. But it's a nostalgia surrounded by false impressions, a somewhat surreal and utopian idea of what growing up looks like. Obviously it's fiction and can be written however its creators see fit, but here it's presented in a completely forgettable way. The humor is entirely built on clichés, and the characters have weak personalities, prisoners of their own stereotypes.
Why Is the Media Praising This Game So Much?
Mixtape might have been reasonably well received even with its minimal interactivity, if it hadn't been globally praised with absurd scores of 10/10 and 9/10. Meanwhile, other games released in the same period, like Pragmata, received lower scores despite having more original ideas and far superior gameplay mechanics. And that's precisely the reason we play video games: to play them, not to watch them like movies.The central issue here is the publisher. Annapurna Interactive was founded by Megan Ellison, daughter of billionaire Larry Ellison, one of the co-founders of Oracle. Mixtape is being marketed as an indie game because of its aesthetic, but it's indie in absolutely no way. It's a game made with billionaire money, which explains the expensive licensed soundtrack, the sophisticated animation techniques, and the use of engines that have a real cost. This is not a low-budget project.
On top of that, Annapurna has built a close relationship with journalists over the years, particularly in American media. That naturally raises suspicion, especially when you know the company distributed expensive press kits containing the game's soundtrack and other gifts. I'm not saying the game gets good reviews because of the presents, but it's hard to deny that this kind of thing makes criticism biased.
And there's more: the game works as the video game equivalent of what we call Oscar Bait in cinema. It has a narrative that plays on nostalgia and completely breaks from the standard. In a market where a journalist has to play two 40-hour RPGs per week, picking up a 3-hour experience that is simple and different feels like a relief.
Just like I'm happy when I get a small spreadsheet at work, that mental break already predisposes the journalist to receive the game well, regardless of its quality. Add to that the press kits, and also the fact that the game's narrative has a progressive lean that is clearly aligned with the dominant worldview of most people who work in this media. That's not a criticism, it's an observation: if a game speaks the language of the person reviewing it, it will be reviewed favorably.
The Tongue Kiss Minigame
The example I'd like to give to illustrate how the game's progressive narrative appeals to journalists is this minigame. At a certain point, the characters kiss, probably one of their first kisses, and you can interact with their tongues in a bizarre Mortal Kombat-style zoom, you know that X-ray shot that shows the bone breaking? It's almost that. The idea is to be deliberately strange and uncomfortable.Now do the thought experiment: how would this be received if it were a Japanese game, with teenage characters treated in a comedic way, wearing outfits typical of the anime style, and a similar interactive kiss scene? The media would tear it apart. In Mixtape, because the aesthetic is "artistic" and it comes from Annapurna, it's received in a much more relaxed way.
There is a considerable taboo around putting teenagers kissing in an interactive game where you, probably an adult twice their age, are controlling that interaction. You could argue that Mixtape's context isn't sexual, but in the games I'm using as a counterpoint, it isn't necessarily sexual either. The experience is the same: two teenagers kissing with the player's input.
I genuinely don't believe either case is a real problem. But why is one praised while games featuring medieval armor with shorter skirts are coldly criticized? I'm in favor of everything being judged for what it actually is, within the law, without the double standards that professional critics love to apply.
What Can We Conclude About the Current State of Games Journalism?
I reach the end of this piece with a feeling of sadness, because I genuinely love reading game analyses and following people who talk about this subject. I have creators I deeply admire, some I've been following since the days of print magazines. And it makes me sad that political polarization and ideological bias are such significant factors in shaping reviews.This game could have been well received without all the forced marketing. If the scores hadn't been so inflated, it probably wouldn't have generated such a negative reaction. That's the elastic effect I mentioned at the beginning. I'm not saying it's a worthless work; it has its audience. But it's a game with minimal interactivity, a worn-out story, and an honest presentation of something funded with a lot of money and sold as indie. And that by itself is far away from what a 10/10 game should've been.
What really bothers me is that journalists are literally gifted with expensive press kits, invited to interviews with the developers, and this happens with major outlets like IGN and relevant YouTube channels. These are human beings who encounter a game that echoes a lot of their worldview and, at the same time, benefit from small perks. That makes the analysis biased. It's something you don't see, by the nature of the work, in investigative or crime journalism. So at what point does games journalism stop being journalism and become paid, or unpaid, propaganda? I'll leave that reflection for you to think about.
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