I think it’s time to talk about Mixtape, the recently released narrative adventure from Annapurna Interactive and Beethoven & Dinosaur.
More than almost any recent release, the game has become another flashpoint in the endless “games as art vs. games as games” debate that constantly circles around the industry online.
But honestly, what stands out to me most isn’t even the game itself, it’s how impossible it feels for people to talk about games normally anymore. Every discussion instantly turns hostile. If you like the game, you’re apparently pretending.
If you dislike it, you “don’t understand art”. Everyone is throwing insults at each other instead of actually discussing why the game resonates with some people and completely misses others.
That’s why I don’t really want to focus on the gameplay mechanics, the art direction, or even the soundtrack itself, even though the soundtrack is undeniably one of the strongest aspects of the experience. What I’m more interested in is the critical reception surrounding the game and what those review scores are actually supposed to mean.
When I see a flood of near-universal 10/10 reviews, I naturally assume the game is something generational: a title so exceptional, innovative, or influential that it pushes the medium forward in a major way.
To me, a 10/10 game is something like Elden Ring, Super Mario Odyssey, or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Even if someone personally dislikes those games, they can usually still understand why they are considered landmark releases.
That’s where my disconnect with Mixtape begins. I don’t hate the game. In fact, I can appreciate a lot about it. At its core, it’s a short, four-to-five-hour coming-of-age story about three high school friends spending one last night together before their lives go in separate directions.
Emotional Relatability vs. Objective Quality in Video Games
One of the hardest things about discussing modern games is separating emotional relatability from objective quality. A game can deeply affect someone personally while still not being revolutionary from a design perspective. And I think Mixtape perfectly represents that divide.
The game uses music as emotional glue, building memories and moments around tracks from bands and musicians like DEVO, David Gray, Iggy Pop, and The Cure. The soundtrack absolutely nails the tone the game is aiming for. There’s no denying that. The music carries the emotion of the experience and helps sell the bittersweet nostalgia of youth, friendship, and growing apart.
The problem is that, mechanically, there’s barely a game here. Most of the experience consists of simple interactive scenes, musical montages, skateboarding sections, shopping cart chases, awkward party moments, and scripted sequences where the player’s input barely matters.
In some chase scenes, you can practically put the controller down and still move forward. It feels less like a traditional game and more like an interactive movie or a curated nostalgia playlist. And that’s fine, not every game needs complex gameplay systems to be meaningful.
I enjoy narrative-driven games. I love visual novels. I appreciate slower, arthouse-style experiences like What Remains of Edith Finch or Firewatch. Games like Life Is Strange, Dispatch, The Walking Dead, and titles from Supermassive Games prove that you can tell emotional stories while still using interactivity in meaningful ways. Those games understand how to take advantage of the medium itself.
That’s why I struggle with the idea of Mixtape being called a masterpiece. It doesn’t really do anything new within the narrative genre, visual novel space, or interactive storytelling format. It combines familiar ideas well, but it never evolves them.
The story itself also didn’t feel especially profound to me. It’s ultimately about teenagers hanging out during their final night together before adulthood begins. There’s nothing particularly complex, shocking, or emotionally devastating about it. Some moments are charming, some are funny, and a few might make you smile, but I never felt like I was experiencing something unforgettable.
A lot of people clearly connected with the game because it reminded them of their own friendships, teenage years, first loves, or emotional connection to music. That kind of experience can absolutely be powerful. Games, like movies or music, are capable of triggering memories and emotions that stay with people long after the credits roll.
One person may walk away saying, “This game changed my life because it reminded me of being young,” while another walks away asking, “Okay, but what actually makes this game exceptional compared to others in the genre?”
Generational Disconnect and Why Some Players Just Don’t Connect With Mixtape
What fascinates me is how much of the praise seems tied directly to nostalgia. I spoke with older players, especially millennials, who connected deeply with the game because music was such a huge emotional outlet during their youth. For them, Mixtape feels personal. I can understand that.
Art becomes powerful when it reflects parts of our own lives back at us. But I also wonder whether critics are sometimes reviewing their memories instead of the actual game in front of them. That’s where some frustration starts to creep in for me.
When critics in their 30s and 40s give universal 10/10 scores to what often feels like a lightly interactive collection of music videos, it creates this disconnect between the critical conversation and the actual player experience.
Especially when the game’s writing uses modern slang and modern sensibilities while trying to recreate a nostalgic version of youth culture. At times, it almost feels more like an aesthetic recreation of adolescence than an authentic one.
The problem begins when that deeply personal nostalgia starts being treated as universal quality. Younger players, especially those who didn’t grow up with that culture or those exact emotional touchstones, may simply not connect with the experience in the same way.
For someone younger approaching Mixtape today, the game can feel less like a groundbreaking experience and more like a stylized memory piece aimed at people reliving their teenage years. The soundtrack, awkward parties, reckless nights out, emotional conversations, and youthful chaos all hit differently depending on who you are and what period of life you come from.
I’ve also seen some players argue that if you can get essentially the same experience by watching a full playthrough on YouTube instead of actually playing it yourself, then maybe the game isn’t fully utilizing the strengths of the medium.
I think there’s a fair point there. If a visual novel removes meaningful dialogue choices, minimizes player agency, and reduces interaction to basic movement prompts, people are naturally going to question what separates it from simply watching a movie.
At the same time, I think parts of the online backlash have become completely unreasonable. Some criticisms surrounding “wokeness”, politics, or certain character moments feel reactionary and disconnected from the actual conversation worth having.
The Modern Fear of Criticizing “Artsy” Games
There’s also a strange culture surrounding modern indie and narrative-driven games where criticizing them sometimes feels socially unacceptable. If you dislike a big blockbuster action game, nobody cares. But if you criticize a slower, emotional, “artsy” experience, people often act like you simply “didn’t understand it.”
Players might feel pressured to praise artistic narrative games because disliking them risks making you look shallow, immature, or incapable of appreciating art. Online discussions quickly become hostile, with people assuming that criticism automatically means someone only values explosions, combat systems, or fast-paced gameplay.
You can understand exactly what a game is trying to do and still think it doesn’t fully succeed. You can appreciate atmosphere, music, emotional storytelling, and presentation while also questioning whether the gameplay itself is meaningful or engaging. Very few people are willing to exist in the middle ground.
The real debate shouldn’t be whether Mixtape is “ruining gaming.” The interesting discussion is whether review scores still communicate value properly when highly personal, emotionally driven experiences receive the same universal praise as games that redefine mechanics, systems, or genre design.
Because ultimately, I don’t think Mixtape is terrible. I just don’t see it as a generational masterpiece. I see it as a stylish, emotionally sincere, nostalgia-heavy narrative experience that will deeply resonate with a specific audience while leaving others completely cold. And maybe that’s perfectly okay. Not every critically acclaimed game needs to appeal to everyone.
But when nearly every major outlet calls something a 10/10, people are naturally going to ask: what exactly are we measuring anymore? Innovation? Emotional resonance? Artistic intent? Personal relatability? Or simply whether critics connected to it on an individual level?
Games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Elden Ring, Super Mario Galaxy, or Red Dead Redemption 2 earned those scores because they fundamentally shifted expectations around what games could achieve. Increasingly, a 10/10 can simply mean: “This game emotionally affected me.”
That’s not necessarily wrong, but it changes how audiences interpret scores. Many players still see review numbers as measurements of overall excellence, innovation, and craft. Critics, meanwhile, may be using scores more as emotional reflections of their personal experience.
I think that’s the real conversation here, not whether Mixtape is good or bad, but whether the language and scoring system around game criticism still means the same thing to everyone reading it.
Mixtape was just released for Windows PC (via Steam and the Microsoft Store), Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, and PS5.
This is an editorial piece. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of, and should not be attributed to, Niche Gamer as an organization.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
