When Mixtape released, a lot of drama quickly appeared around it. Besides how it was developed and by who, the more interesting topic for me is how it was reviewed and what the game actually is. The game is basically all story with very little gameplay, where most of the time you do not even have to do anything to get through the interactive section.
First of all, I am fine with games like Mixtape existing. I am not at all interested in "playing" it, but other people might be. I see the video game market as one of the most free markets we have, because a single previously unknown person can make and publish a game that will outsell even the games from the largest publishers. Yes, marketing still matters and publishers with lot of money have advantage there, but it is possible to pull off and it happened multiple times already. This high competition brought us large variety of games filling all kinds of niches, so a single game is not important, no matter why it was made, how well it sells or is reviewed. There will always be copycats, pet projects and outright bad games, but that never stopped good games from being made.
Is Mixtape even a game? Well, if you categorize anything interactive as a game, then yes. Barely, but yes. The fact, that it does not really allow you to fail, does not change anything. You can make a highly interactive game, where there is no failure, just different outcomes and the game continues instead of forcing you to replay the section. There are also plenty of games, which are linear, so they do not have multiple outcomes at all.
Is Mixtape a 9/10 or even a 10/10 game? Here is the problem - the answer is both yes and no. It depends on what games are you comparing it to. If you are scoring it in comparison to similar walking simulator games, then yes, it could have a high score, if the parts like story and presentation are truly some of the best we have seen so far. If you are scoring it in comparison to all games though, then it is nowhere near the top, because of its huge lack in the gameplay department.
Fun fact – we must compare games in order to review them. It is impossible to objectively review a game, because we don’t know what is possible. Take a look at highly rated games that are now 30 years old. Many of those are still pretty good and worth playing, but are not really 10/10 anymore, because they have various features, which were done the best way they knew at the time, but now we can do it better. Things like the control scheme, graphics, some game mechanics etc.
Why so many professional reviewers are rating it so high? Maybe they are just shills, maybe they truly think that the game is very good as far as walking simulators go. Or maybe there are still many people, who do not recognize games as art, even though they already explored so many themes, from lighthearted children games to disturbing philosophical games. So instead of seeing the beauty of a well designed gameplay loop, they still only look for movie-like qualities when they judge the merit of a game.