The drunken antics and first kisses of a trio of tenacious teens make for silly yet undeniably enjoyable gameplay, framed by a playlist of bona fide bangers
The older we get, the more we tend to romanticise our teenage years. As bills pile up, we yearn for the simple days of drinking cider in parks. We often tend to forget the bad parts: the frustrating lack of autonomy, the unrequited crushes and the doofuses you’re forced to tolerate in the playground. But after four hours spent hanging out with the pretentious teens in Mixtape, I felt pretty relieved to be in my 30s.
Set in a nondescript town in northern California, Mixtape follows the exploits of tenacious trio Rockford, Slater and Cassandra as they head to a legendary party on their last day of high school. With Rockford about to leave her friends to move to the big city, she wants to immortalise the gang’s time together in musical form. Every song on a carefully curated mixtape triggers a totally tubular flashback to one of their shared memories.
Whether you’re breaking into an abandoned dinosaur theme park or skimming stones across a picturesque river, the world of Mixtape is consistently visually stunning. Combining warm hues with Into the Spider-Verse-esque stop-motion animation, each new frame is a joy to behold, exuding a cartoony, laid-back energy. Early scenes offer an impressive mixed media element, too, splicing real-world footage with gameplay, Metal Gear Solid style. Yet instead of grainy second world war footage alongside hulking mechs, here it’s a teenager teaching you about the wonders of the Compact Disc.
Despite clear cinematic influences (Dazed and Confused is an obvious reference), Mixtape never forgets it’s a game, using its songs to create a series of playable music videos. As Freak by Aussie grunge band Silverchair blasts out, you headbang along in Slater’s car in a fun Wayne’s World pastiche, tapping buttons in time with the crashing symbols and crunching riffs. A flashback to Rockford’s disastrous first kiss is another highlight, with players controlling a duo of wildly flailing tongues with each analogue stick, mashing the saliva-soaked organs together in amusingly chaotic fashion.
Other flashbacks are a bit more out there, reimagining typical teen misadventures as fantastical, dreamlike vignettes. When the police show up at a house party, for example, there is a minigame in which a panicked Rockford and Slater sling a passed out Cassandra into a shopping trolley, drunkenly steering her across roads, Frogger-style, hurtling over ramps and screeching across a highway. It’s all fairly silly stuff – but undeniably enjoyable.
After a parent won’t let one of the teens out to play (ugh!), Smashing Pumpkins’ Love blares out, oozing angst as Rockford and Slater skate down the street giving the world the middle finger, each obscene gesture causing distant cars to explode in their minds. Subtle, Mixtape is not.
Half of the appeal is, of course, hearing which 90s bangers have made the cut. Whether it’s Portishead or Devo, each new song is introduced by Rockford staring straight into the camera, narrating the chosen track in a snarky and irreverent tone. It’s a nod to films like High Fidelity and Juno. Yet where High Fidelity uses protagonist Rob’s music picks to reveal more about his failed relationships, Mixtape’s song selections feel impersonal and pretentious – closer to a pun-filled Wikipedia entry than something that truly enriches Rockford’s character.
There is a life-affirming, reflective joy to be found in watching characters grow before our eyes, reminding us that it’s never too late to better ourselves. Yet the lack of an emotional throughline lets Mixtape down. While it is filled with pithy one liners, its writing fails to evoke anything deeper. When our gang finally arrives at the party in the finale, it isn’t a euphoric and heartwarming moment, the cathartic culmination of our trio’s trials and tribulations, but merely a booze-filled box-ticking exercise.
This mixtape, then, plays it safe, curating a crowd-pleasing compilation of teenage tropes and homages to coming-of-age cinema. It’s a beautiful and inventively silly series of musical vignettes – but without any real conflict at its core, the adventure fails to match the memorable heights of Life Is Strange. Much like an evening spent scrolling through classic music videos on YouTube, there’s a simple, nostalgic joy to be found. But once this four-hour spectacle is over, you might be left wishing that you’d spent your time more wisely.
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