It's been a while since I sat down to write an actual blog post, with work, other writing projects, streaming and soon to have a roommate. But after playing Mixtape, I thought it would be better if I wrote what I thought instead of doing a video.
For those unaware, Mixtape is an 'interactive mid 1990s nostalgia focused narrative experience in the guise of a 'video game'. Now why did I choose those particular words to describe it? Simple, because that is exactly what it is, it is every single trope one can associate specifically with Late Generation X, those born 1976 to 1980, from the fashion, to the music selection to the lingo and even the angst. If this was something targeting Millennial nostalgia of the mid 1990s, the music would've been a hell of a lot of better and the characters would be better dressed.
But let's focus on the nostalgia that Mixtape features because it's narrative is completely dependent on Ferris Bueller Day's Off and Wayne's World style fourth-wall breaking which is done by the main character Sally, and just like Ferris and Wayne in their movies, Sally is a typical depiction of a Gen-X teen: completely self absorbed in every single way, wanting things perfect. They are 'never wrong', even though they are. The story is a typical 'one last hurrah' before folks go their separate ways, with broken promises, expectation, a typical argument where everyone is an asshole. You have typical tropes such as Officer Moreno, the father of a side-kick character Cassandra, who has a change of heart over being so strict because he 'remembered what it was like to be a teenager'. Hell much like the two movies I'm comparing Mixtape to, everything just 'works out fine' for the protagonist. And this is not even getting into the 'run sequence' that is beat for beat a rip off of Ferris' run in the climax of that film.
This leads me to the music, and the developers, Beethoven & Dinosaur, putting out a Tweet stating that will not be a streamer mode, claiming Mixtape is about 'music', it's about Devo, Smashing Pumping, Lush and Alice Coltrane, that they could not change the 'levels' because they were 'designed around the songs' and they could not replace them. To which I say, that's just being lazy, because with the money spent on licensing songs from Devo, The Cure, Stan Bush, BJ Thomas, Iggy Pop, Roxy Music and Rainbow, the developers could have had a proper alternate soundtrack, because no Twitch Streamer on YouTuber in their right mind is going to risk DMCA claims to a mediocre tune by Mitch Murder or Harper's Bizarre.
Which leads to the 'levels', and boy we're using that term loosely. What that is referring to is extended sequences where you may be on a 'rail', skateboarding, riding in a shopping cart, headbanging, triggering fireworks, running fancy free in a field, flying in the or the aforementioned Ferris Bueller style run... and thes sequences are timed to roughly fit the length of the song. And for the most part, well 95% of it, you don't have to do anything, you don't have to press buttons, maybe just move the analog stick slightly to avoid 'crashing' in the skateboarding or cart sections, but Mixtape 'plays itself'. Sure, there are rooms and areas where you can 'explore', areas where you are walking around (such as the abandoned dinosaur theme park) but everything is so linear where you are shown exactly what you need to fine to advance the narrative. Oh and you get some 'mini-games', like skipping stones in a lake, throwing rocks at bottles, or batting practice, or sweeping leaves. But with the exception of the 'skipping stones' bit where you can spend as much time there as you want, everything progresses as soon as its done.
I would dare say, less than 10% of Mixtape features genuine game play, which is atrocious when compared to other narrative heavy games that people are comparing this favorably too, such as Telltales' The Walking Dead. There is nothing about Mixtape that comes close to that level of story telling or game quality. Hell, one can't even compare Mixtape to What Remains of Edith Finch of the two Life of Fly games, because both of those had actual game play. Because there was effort to give a player anything to do, I can't even compare it to Death Come True, which is an FMV game.
The only positive I can truly say is that at least I didn't 'pay' for it, since it was on Game Pass. And I'm not really all that incline on going back to get the achievements I missed for the 1000 Gamer Score.. In fact, Mixtape joins a short list of games I will never play again, which includes The Last of Us, South Park Snow Day and TellTale Game's The Expanse.
In closing, I say this, if you're an Xbox gamer and want three to four hours to fill, Mixtape will at least do that, otherwise, if you're on Steam, Nintendo or PlayStation consoles... skip it unless you get it almost nothing. Like I'm talking 90 to 95% off.
