A Snapshot of Adolescence
Or "The Most Important Time in Your Life Has Never Felt Less Like It Mattered, in Hindsight". A review of "Mixtape", discussing pretention, and subjecting the masses to your curated playlist.
I’ll give credit where it is due: “Mixtape” is one of the best directed, paced, and most visually pleasing narrative indie games I have played in a bit. This shopping cart sequence is a highlight, especially.
Mixtape is a lot of things. The first thing is that it’s not a game for just anyone. There has been a certain degree of pointed ire thrown its way from a small section of the gaming populace (the usual dregs of digital society, like the Gamergaters, and recurring Twitter gaming fiends— assholes, really), about Mixtape, and they all say the same things about it. “It’s barely a video game”… “it’s cringe and misses the mark”… “it’s shitty nostalgia bait…”— the list goes on and on from these people. Most of it I dismiss out of hand, due to it being the ‘flavor of the month’ targeted gaming hit campaign these folks launch into on the regular. But there is a feeling of unrest here that I want to understand. It’s also fascinating to see how it’s resonated with the games media, who have all roundly praised this game: giving it high scores like 9’s and 10’s from all around the industry. I am less interested in why they liked it all so much. I am more interested in hearing why and how it’s repulsed so many people.
Like a roving band of low-IQ bandits, these folks emerge from their digital bunkers to levy harsh criticism at video games they have no intention of playing so that they can participate in the ‘fight against woke media’. It’s all a bit tiresome, but the very crux of the feeling I get from these people is that they all fundamentally hate the same thing about Mixtape, at its core: They hate feeling pandered to, and offered nostalgia for an era they have no fondness for.
This last bit I can understand. While I don’t agree with them weaponizing their shitty opinions, I can relate to this sentiment when it comes to some media that uses specific periods of time and the items of the era to relay a certain dated mood or feeling. ‘Nostalgia bait' is a term we often see in our current media landscape, and it’s usually a label placed at the feet of the worst offenders of these habits.
Franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Stranger Things, and the like are chief offenders of the most heinous modern crime of seeding their well-worn universes with cheap tricks to woo longtime fans, in hopes of currying some lost favor with them. It reeks of series, stories, and creators who don’t have many new things to offer, so they peddle their old ideas and sell reliable, popular iconography to lure back stubborn minds who appreciate more of ‘how it was back then’. I can get how it feels to have your favorite series run out of ideas, show you the old shit, and talk about ‘how good it was’. It gets old. It gets annoying. I get the sentiment here.
The issue with how folks view Mixtape, in my opinion, is that they are missing the point of it. It’s not really a game that is trying to bait you. I think it’s more than that. Mixtape is trying to capture a specific time and place for a small group of people on the brink of adulthood. Now, how well you think an Australian studio (Beethoven and Dinosaur) has captured a slice of America in the 1990’s is another thing entirely. It’s not period accurate, representative, or consistent with its era, really, but that’s not a bad thing. Mixtape leans into the fantastical in its narrative, and using the ‘90s as a guide rather than a rulebook for its aesthetics makes it feel more genuine to the story it’s telling. It deviates from the truth. That’s okay, though. It’s more interested in making the ‘90s a place represented by the characters of the time depicted, rather than being slavishly accurate to the time period itself. The '90s are just set dressing here. Let’s not get too hung up on that choice.
It can feel pandering at times, but I do think this game has its heart in the right place, mostly— cringe as some of the aspects of the total journey can feel, admittedly. I also think some of the ire directed at this game has to do with how some of the main cast are portrayed here, as well. It’s a specific trio of archetypes that the developer is attempting to display here, which is not for everyone. I think inherently, pretention comes with the subject matter here, and that, as a result, pisses some people off. It’s not always fun to engage with a piece of media that contains depictions of people with personalities you can’t or don’t relate to. I think attacking the makers of the game for its particulars, however cringe the content may seem, is just in bad faith, though. I feel as if the characters in the game are deeply misunderstood, given the contextless nature of social media, and grifters, hellbent on mischaracterizing aspects of a game they won’t play. I welcome media that challenges me and depicts an era that even I can’t relate to. That’s interesting. I am more interested in a discourse that wants to talk about that. But let’s get to the actual game.
The premise of the game is this: you play as Stacey Rockford, a self-proclaimed musical connoisseur (or “know-it-all”), obsessed with all things to do with symphonic arrangement, and the particulars of the medium. She is on the verge of assembling the magnum opus of her current moment: a curated mixtape, which is the impetus for the events of the game, and marks the further happenings of the story with full melodic style. The structure of Mixtape is ordered just so, like a curated order of events. Every single moment that happens in the game is punctuated by some licensed song and set piece moment with the selected song that Stacey has included, to imbue the time spent in the experience with some sort of higher meaning or infuse the situation with just the right flavor of a backing soundtrack.
Rockford is obviously a very driven gal, full of vim and vigor, in pursuit of her goals. She wants to become a ‘music supervisor’: an occupation that curates music and arranges each song in a specific order. She is a music snob, really, and deigns to get paid for her taste. She is a person who has a lot of opinions about her favorite genres, musicians, bands, and the like. At her core, I find Stacey deeply unserious and pretentious, even as she desperately seeks recognition and approval of her tastes and choices of music. All she wants is to be understood, and to recommend to you the best song you had no idea existed. She finds herself so serious that it is laughable at times. I admire her zeal, but her insistence upon herself and her ‘correct opinions’ is amusing. She speaks in fact and labels all her opinions as such.
The character of Stacey is the gamer’s lens into viewing this snapshot of a suburban life, and I can understand why people find her cringey. She is all about herself, her opinions, and her goals. She is written like a character who thinks she’s got it all figured out, and her depiction in the game has polarized people. She is very unlikable to start, and out of context, if you misunderstand her whole deal, it can come off as off-putting, especially since she is the main protagonist of the tale, but that’s why I find her and the rest of the main cast of the game so fascinating. They are all trying to be both their own people and move into adulthood with a better grasp of themselves. Vocalizing that transitional aspect, at times, is extremely cringey as a result.
The fact is: teenagers are… embarrassing. It’s a transitional period of life, and with so much change comes discomfort. The cast all latch onto bad catchphrases, act unruly and childlike, and they all have a rebellious streak to them that is deeply felt throughout the story. They’re all trying to push the envelope in their own way, and I think showing their trials and tribulations can come off as extremely cringey. But that’s okay.
I think the most fascinating aspect of Mixtape’s characters and their personalities is that they all share the same issues. They are all dreading the same shared inflection point of latter adolescence (that is slowly inching closer to them by the day), and they each pretend to be more of the archetypes or characters they are understood as being (or labeled as being), rather than being their own people. The times they lean away from their understood roles of being: the snob, the goody-two-shoes, and the loser burnout, are when the characters start becoming more relatable. They all have a certain pathos of genuine personhood hiding beneath their respective facades.
When they aren’t pretending to be character types, Rockford, Cassandra, and Slater share real, genuine moments of what it’s like to be human, and especially a teenager in that moment in time, and the essence of that dynamic is the real strength of Mixtape, thematically. The characters love each other. They love hanging out with each other too. They muse about dumb shit, they get deep and introspective, they become deathly serious about unserious topics— all of the writing and conversations in Mixtape between its cast are the true heart of the story. When they aren’t pretending and get real, that’s when great dialogue happens. The writing isn’t perfect, or even good, some of the time, but when genuine moments like these happen, sincerity abounds.
The actual plot of Mixtape is simple. The last big party of high school is about to happen, and to make an impression, the trio of Rockford, Slater, and Cassandra make up their minds to furnish the shindig with alcohol, to curry some favor with the older crowd, and be seen as more ‘cool’. The particulars are the interesting bits. It’s more character-centric than plot-oriented, and having the simple setup is a big strength of the game. Along the way, the trio reminisce about the situations that have marked their friendship up until that point, and that’s where the gamey part of Mixtape crops up. At its core, Mixtape is a game about mood, music, and set pieces.
The whole thing is masterfully paced and edited, as well. I can’t remember a better flowing indie game in terms of structure, design, and fluidity in its narrative, all while juggling so many tones and gameplay quirks. In no particular order, you go from bounding and flying across a lush forest prairie to dodging the cops after a teen party and driving recklessly around town in a supermarket shopping cart to drunkenly stumbling around an old video store in search of new releases (my favorite part of the game for sure), all in the span of 3 to 4 hours.
The pace of the journey is breakneck, yet considered, and you never feel bored because of how often they shake up the small bits of gameplay they include. At its core, for the gameplay, it’s an ideas game. You play little bits of the game in different ways. All in the span of a few hours, you stay busy: skipping rocks across a shallow pond, sweeping leaves at your forest hideout (charging it up as you go), you jump and levitate across wide swathes of land cinematically, and you even simulate the act of ‘French kissing’ in a deeply inspired interstitial flashback that was incredibly funny. It’s all very, very inspired. The gameplay set pieces are of a slightly dreamy quality, where the fantastical blends with the real, and some of the choices the developers make to heighten the events in the game may be seen as odd, for some, but I feel as though it works most of the time.
There are many instances of fantasy laced throughout remembered moments in the story, and the way the game shows off Stacey’s dreamlike projections is inspired. You blow up trash cans, cars, and fire hydrants with a well-timed middle finger, yelling ‘fuck you!’ while riding on a skateboard and ‘bombing’ a hill, you levitate in a monochromatic sequence of ennui: rewinding backwards past the downtown square of your local town, bumping into objects as you go, and you cinematically stomp like a fearsome kaiju attacking a diorama of a small Polynesian archipelago in an abandoned dinosaur theme park, crushing minature dinos as you go. It’s all really clever execution on the dreaming and projections of the protagonist. It’s like the last vestiges of playing make-believe as a child, manifested into video game form. I really have played nothing like these moments, and I appreciate how fresh it all feels.
The developers Beethoven and Dinosaur execute many fun, bite-sized ideas that never outstay their welcome. I understand the gripes of those who just say it’s a ‘movie’, but in truth, it’s more of a lightly interactive narrative experience that constantly varies up the journey as you play. It’s wacky, extremely inspired, and great fun to play in these segments, and the whole affair is deeply memorable as a result.
It’s a huge step up in every way from their previous effort, too, for Beethoven and Dinosaur. The Artful Escape is their previous musical adventure, and I really like that game. You see the shared DNA between that game and Mixtape if you have played both, and seeing just how much they have leveled up as developers is satisfying. It’s more than incremental, too. It’s graphically impressive, musically inspiring, and most of all, engaging to play. I think if Mixtape were to be just an animated movie, it wouldn’t be nearly as impactful as it is as a game. I think the real achievement of the title lies in the fantastic direction, editing, and pacing of the game, especially. The whole game is just a triumph of a developer that knew what they wanted to make, and did just what they set out to do, with a style all their own.
I could take or leave some of the actual music, but the soundtrack, full of licensed songs, is all good for the moments they appear in the game. I will admit, the music selection is a bit of a generational divide for me. I am not a fan of bands like DEVO, the Smashing Pumpkins, or Lush, and I don’t pretend to be. But in context and situation, all the music works beautifully. It’s the point of the game, anyway; if the music were to be bad, it would kind of cause the whole thing to go up in smoke, right? They nail that aspect here, though, I am glad to say.
There is a lot to say about Mixtape, but I will end my review like this. It is by no means a game for everyone. I recommend it with some caveats. If you are disturbed by bold narrative choices and cringey writing, this is not the game for you. In fact, stay far away from it. But if you spend some time understanding what the game is trying to do, there is a deep meaning behind the veneer of assumed ‘nostalgia bait’ that gets at what it means to be a teenager in a specific time and place. That really resonated with me, even if the people depicted do not, for one reason or another. It’s a challenging game full of wonderful ideas and great execution, and I am very happy I saw it through. Beethoven and Dinosaur are true artists and auteurs in their own right, and I commend them as such. I think I see what the fuss was all about in the discourse, but the whole thing seems like much ado about nothing. It’s a great, memorable time that I will remember.
“It’s been a thin slice of Heaven.” Shoutout, Shek.