Can I keep it so for real with yall?
Mixtape might be one of the absolute worst games I’ve ever played…?
Look, if you like this game, good for you. I’m happy it exists for that reason alone.
For me? This was absolutely miserable. And not for like a ‘oh, this game is too WOKE’ way or something. I find all three of the main characters annoying in their own way, and, I think that was the point, at least in Stacey’s case. And I love me an unlikable protagonist. I think that type of character is great. Stacey is just annoying. And it feels intentional, but in the wrong way. A GOOD writer can make a character annoying to the other characters and not to the audience, but this game does something weird where she’s only annoying to the player and not to any of the characters? Also, the fact that she calls her ‘Jenny Fucking Goodspeed’ every time just drives me up the wall.
But my biggest issue is the gameplay. I get it, this is an interactive story, the gameplay isn’t that important. However, if an interactive story doesn’t have, you know, a good story, then what is there to latch onto? No gameplay, that’s for sure, because this is a glorified movie. I heard from somewhere that this was originally supposed to be a movie but no one wanted to make it, and that tracks, because the ‘gameplay’ is fucking mind numbing. Visual novels are more stimulating than this.
Take the shopping cart escape for example! I decided to test something. I put the controller down and watched the entire section play itself. I literally got an achievement for not crashing one time. If that doesn’t represent everything wrong with this game, I don’t know what does. I feel like most of this game was filler so the runtime would be over 2 hours and you wouldn’t be able to refund it on Steam.
This game just has this pretentiousness to it that I don’t see in a lot of games nowadays. Even some of the most abstract and artsy games like, say, Silent Hill 2 don’t have this feeling of ‘this is the deepest shit ever’.
If you liked it, good for you! Like I said, I’m super happy you can find enjoyment in a piece of art that I couldn’t. I’m just gonna go back to the games i actually enjoy…