No, it describes it just fine. I played the darn thing.
Mixtape; Ovehated piece of art! Now where's the gameplay?
- Thread starter FakeSympathy
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I have returned from playing Mixtape.
I like it. I kinda like it a lot.
Now, I'm not gonna make excuses for what it is. It is blatant memberberries of an idealized 90s teen in a small town experience that only exists in the nostalgia goggled memories of the people who lived its less rosy realities. And that is not me. I'm early to mid 00s European metropolis. But there's enough overlap, enough things I can relate to, for the vibes to hit home. The awkwardness of the first time I made out with someone. Stealing shopping carts and other, sometimes a little more serious, mischief. Rocking out in the car on the way to a party. Crashing at a friend's home. Getting shitfaced at the old spots. The last time I would hang out with a friend because they, I, or both, were moving on to a new stage of life, with the major difference that I usually didn't realize it would be the last time we would hang out.
It's bait, but I can't deny it worked on me. I got some feels out of it, and I like it when a game gives me feels and thoughts and such.
Gotta nitpick about one thing tho and that's that for a game all about 90s vibes most of the soundtrack is not 90s music.
I like it. I kinda like it a lot.
Now, I'm not gonna make excuses for what it is. It is blatant memberberries of an idealized 90s teen in a small town experience that only exists in the nostalgia goggled memories of the people who lived its less rosy realities. And that is not me. I'm early to mid 00s European metropolis. But there's enough overlap, enough things I can relate to, for the vibes to hit home. The awkwardness of the first time I made out with someone. Stealing shopping carts and other, sometimes a little more serious, mischief. Rocking out in the car on the way to a party. Crashing at a friend's home. Getting shitfaced at the old spots. The last time I would hang out with a friend because they, I, or both, were moving on to a new stage of life, with the major difference that I usually didn't realize it would be the last time we would hang out.
It's bait, but I can't deny it worked on me. I got some feels out of it, and I like it when a game gives me feels and thoughts and such.
Gotta nitpick about one thing tho and that's that for a game all about 90s vibes most of the soundtrack is not 90s music.
Oh I have a lot of thoughts about music and the 90s..
The game doesn't specify the year but I'm putting it in the late '90's. This was the time, I think, when genre walls fell apart among young people
You see before circa 1996, young music fans were really uptight about style and genre and things like authenticity. Rap vs rock, metal vs punk, mainstream vs alt, real alt vs grunge, etc.
But then Kurt Cobain, Tupac, Biggie and Aliyah died. MTV's Total Request Live got a new generation of kids seeing pop musical factions smash against each other moment to moment, and then Fred Durst sharing ear space with Christina Aguilera was normalized. Nu-metal and boy/girl groups took the superficial silliness of their genres to extremes, and the scenes that fed the musical subcultures died under the weight of CD sales and marketing hitting their commercial peak. Then any social stigma of raiding your parents' vinyl collection and unironically liking old stuff was in, and dissing others' musical was taste. All this leading to file sharing and poptimism, which flattened all of recorded music into CONTENT.
It is VERY late 90's to have music from all over the time period.
To me, the thing lacking in the soundtrack is hip-hop. But then again, these characters are SO white. But, then again again, white folks were listening to hip-hop in the late 90's, as this is also the time when hip-hop overtook rock as the defining sound of mainstream pop.
Silverchair's "Freak" was released in 97 so I reckon you're pretty spot on there.
Also, message received, we all need to go back to teenage musical tribalism! Death metal is the best! Everything else is shit! Graaaahhhh!!!
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I'll have to take your word for it because over here that very much did not happen. Quite the opposite. Previously somewhat homogenized, teens here strongly factionalized in the late 90s. You had the mainstream/pop kids, the kids into electronic music, further divided between those into EDM and harder styles like hardcore/gabber. And the alternative crowd made up of a mix of skaters, punks, metalheads and goths formed because few places catered to any of them and they all started hanging out together in the few places that did. Hiphop wouldn't really become popular here until the 2010s, except among poor inner city migrant youth, but they did French hiphop, not American. What you described did eventually happen, but later, more towards the very end of the 00s to early 10s.
Being from the UK, I wonder if we got a mix of the US and European experience. I remember the early 90's being quite tribal, mid 90s being quite mixed and open to anything, then the late 90s being very focused again.
That said, I remember the early 90's alt crowd all hanging out together even if I was a dick about death metal being superior. Mid 90s I chilled out and matured a bit, less teenage identity anxiety, and started listening to a lot more variety. Then late 90s it was drugs and gabba all the way as I'd left school and could really cut loose.
So maybe it's all very subjective and largely dependent on where you were in life. *Shrug* it was a long time ago and I was off my face for most of it anyway, so my sense of what was going on may have been a bit off.
In Detroit, we had a mix of everything. It's still more or less the same today. Now, when you reach out to areas outside of Detroit or more suburban areas, it changes a bit.
Mixtape is primarily a story based game that plays out through cutscenes featuring simple context interactive gameplay. You'll use the sticks to guide a couple through an awkward first kiss, or you'll press context face buttons to interact with items in the environment to enhance the story. Other times you'll be steering a shopping cart down a hill avoiding objects and timing jump presses. Nothing can be outright fails as the experience on the whole is about telling a story through an interactive movie so those looking to dip their toes into gaming for the first time will have a welcome no-stress game here, even hardcore gamers who just want a break from the buttonmashing intensity of their favorites could enjoy a relaxing adventure as well.
So there is gameplay, but just gameplay you're not into. There's nothing wrong with that, but really no need to set off the panic button either.
How so? Everything in it about Mixtape is true.
I dunno, I kinda find it fascinating the difference distance makes. Tho imo still similar enough to be relatable to each other, in a "Yeah, we did stuff like that too" way, as opposed to say a Japanese teen, whose experience is much further removed from ours.
Given some of the reviews I posted and watched, I doubt that. Even your precious Skill Up loves the game.
Play whatever you want, but just because I don't like most professional reviewers doesn't mean if i'm gonna let them live rent three in my head whenever they give a game a high score, I either don't like or i'm not interested in playing. The rage baiters in angry grifters really aren't much better (tend be mych worse) and they can fuck off even more so.
I took an educated guess based of screenshots.
I'm only advocating for better written reviews from professional outlets, not really critiquing the game. i couldn't give two shits about the game itself. It's whatever.
A pleasant enough summary of the game, and one which I think has only slightly more focus on the gameplay aspect than the GameSpot review.
For someone who didn't give two shits, you sure as hell freaked out a lot over nothing. I heard you the first time around in your recent explanation, but you still flipped out more than you should have. Also, your boy Skill Up was pretty thorough and didn't hide nor lie about anything. A little more detailed than some professional reviewers, but about the same. He even points out at the beginning of his video that this game is not gonna be for everyone and a case of love it or hate it. Though considering positivity is coming from across both boards, then it means this game is doing fine and most normal and sane people don't have a problem with it.
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He is allowed to have an opinion like anyone else. I'm not making excuses for his Cup Head video, but let it go people and move on. If he's already moved on, then what does that say about the people who did not move on?
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I remember Freak Show being huge when it came out. I was 11 but I swear most of my friends had that album, and the die-hards had Frogstomp from two years prior. Me personally, I remember Neon Ballroom the best because of Anthem for the Year 2000.....man I bet Daniel Johns hates being right about that video.
So, is this like the "Big Red" for the anti-games journalists crowd? The one example as to why games journalists are wrong and we just shouldn't listen to them?
Bare in mind that Mixtape got a bunch of good reviews. That's it - that's what sent so many people into a tizzy.
Also, he who has never missed an obvious solution in a game cast the first stone. Fucking gamers are gatekeepy little cuntbags.