“It’ll ruin my soundtrack!”
Video games have always been my favorite form of art. The way it uses interactivity has given me experiences and emotions that no other art forms really have, and my love for it has been there ever since I was little. Because of this, I find that the most frustrating video games are the ones that feel ashamed of that interactivity, games that really have no reason to be a game and would be better served as a movie. A game that just doesn't really enjoy the medium that it’s in and becomes a miserable experience because of it. When I was looking into Mixtape, I ran into a lot of discourse on it barely being a video game. Scenes that could be completed by putting the controller down, barely any interactivity, it was something I saw constantly and as someone who was curious about this game, it sort of puzzled me. I don’t like following mass opinion though without experience and curiosity ended up winning over and I ended up installing a copy. Was Mixtape really something that deserved all the hate it got, or is there a hidden gem buried under all the outrage?
Where do I really begin with this story? You play as Stacy Rockford, a 90’s teenager who spends her days committing crimes and causing chaos with her friends Van Slater and Cassandra Morino. These fun times are not meant to last though as Stacy plans to move to New York in order to head to college, ditching a road trip the group has planned out for awhile now and leaving her friends behind entirely. Not wanting things to end on a sour note, the group sets out for one last hangout before fate separates them forever. The plot stays standard and while that isn't something I mind, it does mean that the characters have to make up for it in order to make it worthwhile and I don’t think Mixtape really makes up with its characters. These groups of friends just feel so surface level, it’s hard to really gauge anything about them besides that they knew each other for a while and that they say cool lingo. It feels so cliche, and if you’ve seen any standard 90’s slice of life movie then you know the exact plot beats it’s going to follow. There’s going to be the fun hangout sequences, there’s gonna be a falling out, there’s a cool party scene, it’s all stuff I’ve seen done before and I don’t think Mixtape really does anything to set it out from the mold. What am I meant to get from these characters, what are their motivations, how deep does this bond go? These are questions I kept asking myself while playing through it and I don’t think Mixtape really answers them. They feel like stale caricatures of what people think a stereotypical teenager acts instead of actual characters with depth to them. I don’t know much about them except that they're close friends and that’s it. It’s sometimes even hard to care for them beyond that because they can act incredibly unlikable (Stacey). It feels like every single scene is just the same exact thing repeating with no real growth coming from it, I was in an infinite time loop and the only escape out was to beat the game.
I find the visual style of Mixtape to also be rather messy in execution. Characters move like a Spider-Verse character does, while everything else moves at normal speed and this creates a weird sort of mismatch between the two. The game opens with you riding on a skateboard at the start and since you’re moving at a lower FPS while the skateboard isn’t, it ends up looking rather strange, though I’m also willing to admit that this could just be my general preference with animation in general. In terms of its accuracy to the 90s, I can’t really confirm. I wasn't a 90s kid, I don’t know if this game is accurate to it and I’m not going to speak on if it is, that’s just not fair of me to do I feel. I will comment though on how it handles its references here. You see the game is built around a music playlist and I don’t mind that as a concept! I think you can do incredibly creative things surrounding music with games and releases such as Unbeatable are proof enough of that idea being used well I feel. Here though, your character will just kinda stop time to stare at you and tell you what the song is and when it’s from before starting it and this takes me out of the experience immensely. I feel less like the music is being integrated with the game, but instead feel like it’s just pointing something out for the sake of it, creating an awful tone shift with what the game wants me to feel. So much of the game feels like this too, whether it be incredibly serious scenes involving abuse where your character has to bring up a reference, or whether you have that falling out and your response is just to name a song you’re listening too, it feels very heavy handed in how it references the time period, and I felt conflicted and confused on what exactly the game wanted me to feel in these moments. All of these songs are from the 80s too which for a game about the 90s I expected a few 90s songs? From what I gathered a lot of 90s kids liked the 80s, but I do feel if you’re going to lean hard into 90s nostalgia you wanna have your soundtrack reflect that too right?
I wanted to dedicate a section specifically to talk about our main character Stacey here, someone who I found incredibly awful to control throughout the game. Now, I don’t mind playing as a shitty person to tell a narrative, I think this can be done rather well a lot of times, but I don’t think Mixtape really knows how to do that. Stacey is a bad friend who constantly hurts the people around her and makes situations worse and the game tries to leave a lot of this unsolved. There’s a scene where she witnesses a friend get hurt and her response is to simply say her soundtrack is being ruined now. You then go on an angry vandalism spree around town over it, and this conflict never really gets resolved! The overall arc does, but Stacey as a character doesn't and it’s treated kinda like a good thing that she’s a dick. The main friend fallout is related to something completely different with her, and her response to that fallout is to just tell her friend what song she’s going to listen to before walking away. What did that add to the scene? Why did you need to tell them what you’re listening to as you’re being criticized, what do you gain from this? She never even really grows from this, your friend is the one that has to apologize for you and I just feel jaded and bitter because of it. I can’t latch onto a main character if they're going to be presented as such an asshole and not learn anything from it. It doesn't feel intentional for them to be like this too, as I said everyone else apologies instead of her having to do that. She has one moment of change sometime near the end, but that in turn gets undermined because she has to throw in a single reference at the end anyway, completely sucking out any tone the game wants to throw at me. Stacey feels more like a vessel to shout out these song references or these old movies she enjoys instead of being a character, and it makes her feel like she was plucked out of Ready Player 1 instead of being an actual person I should cling to and relate with.
What sets a game apart from other art forms is its use of interactivity. The best games for me are the ones that take full advantage of it, you can’t really replicate the feeling a game is going to give you in another medium and it’s a big reason why I find games specifically to be so incredible to me. Mixtape is a game that feels ashamed to be a video game. There is barely any interactivity here, and for a vast majority of these segments, the game ends up playing itself. Take the beginning of the game where you open up riding a skateboard. I was able to complete a good 90% of the segment without pressing a single button, watching my character automatically move and swerve around upcoming obstacles. Sometimes I’d have to move out of the way in order to not get hit, but most of the time I didn’t and there felt like there was no real purpose to interacting with the game. There’s an auto-runner segment later on where I put the controller down for the entire moment and the game just completed it for me with 0 inputs being pressed to get to that end point. Every interactive moment in this game feels like it, and when they do have moments of interactivity, it’s always the most basic form of it, or it ends in about 5 seconds, telling you to get a move on so you don’t get bored pressing buttons. I’m not opposed to “Walking Simulators” or "Interactive Movies” or even “Visual Novels” but with those I feel like I’m engaging with the game. When I play Ace Attorney, I still have to use my brain in order to solve these cases and they function like a point and click. When I play a David Cage game, my choices do matter here and there are genuine consequences to messing up a good bit of the QTEs, to the point that it can even kill your character if you don’t do well enough. These games understand that they are video games first and foremost, that interactivity is an important aspect with them, but with Mixtape none of that is really here. The most interaction the game ever gave me was when I had to move a couch and even then it ended in less than a minute. Most of the “gameplay” here is you walking around a room and looking back on old memories. They feel less like intentional gameplay segments and more like TikTok sensory videos that stop you from falling asleep. I’m not asking for anything too complex here, I’m not asking for anything crazy, I’m just asking for something more than walking forward. I want to engage with what the game is offering to me, but the game never allows me to do that, and that hurts.
I did not enjoy my time with Mixtape here. The way the game presented itself and every decision just kept going and going without much interactivity to it made the game feel like it was taking 5 years to get to the end. The games only lasted about 3 hours at most, but so much of that time felt wasted, and by the end I still don’t know much about these characters beyond the bare essentials. All I know is that they’re good friends when I should know more in order to properly care for them. Whatever gameplay is here is nonexistent with barely any interactivity required, and the constant slew of references undermined any emotional beat this game tried to instill in me. I would not call this game an industry plant, I really don’t think that ever existed, but I do struggle to see much enjoyment in it. I suppose I can see how it might resonate with someone on a very basic surface level and I’m glad people can relate to that experience, but for me I just felt wasted. Maybe the 90s just aren’t for me, maybe this game was just doomed to fail for me playing it, but my low expectations still felt broken. If you’re that curious about the game, I’d say wait for a sale as I feel 20 dollars is asking for quite a lot for what little game offers here. I will forget this game as the days go by, and I’m very happy to have my time done with Mixtape.
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