Every now and then, you come across a game that tells you exactly what it is within the first five minutes. You are either going to think, “This is amazing, I strangely relate to this, and I want to experience more,” or you are going to think, “This is the most annoying thing I have ever played, and I want my time back.” Calling Mixtape polarizing is probably being nice, because this is the kind of game that will split people almost entirely based on whether they connect with its style, tone, and emotional wavelength. As for me, Mixtape hit me in the feels at a very specific time in my life, when I had been thinking a lot about memory, growing up, and how much certain moments only become meaningful after they are gone.
At its core, Mixtape is about the last night of high school for three friends: Rockford, Slater, and Cassandra. That premise alone already gives the game a built-in sadness, because even before anything dramatic happens, you understand that this is not just another night. It’s saying goodbye to a part of growing up. The characters are standing on the edge of adulthood, about to leave behind the version of life where your friends are always nearby, your town still feels like the whole universe, and the future is scary, mostly because it has not happened yet. That is the emotional hook of Mixtape: it captures that last burst of freedom before life starts becoming more complicated.
The game also does something that has not really been achieved at this level since Hi-Fi Rush: licensed music is not just background music, but part of the game’s entire identity. However, while Hi-Fi Rush used music to power a stylish action-rhythm combat system, Mixtape uses music as a form of memory. The songs are not just there to make the game seem cool or nostalgic. They shape the way you experience each scene. A simple moment like skating down a road with your friends can feel bigger and more alive because of the music surrounding it. That small detail says a lot about what kind of game this is. It is not trying to make teenage life look realistic in a boring way. It is trying to capture how those moments feel when you remember them years later: louder, funnier, brighter, and more meaningful than they probably seemed at the time.
That is probably the best thing about Mixtape: it understands how memory actually works. When you look back on your life, you do not remember everything in a clean, objective order. You remember songs, colors, jokes, embarrassment, arguments, and random tiny details that somehow become sacred. A regular night with friends can become legendary because the right song was playing. A dumb decision can become one of your favorite memories because it happened before everything changed. Mixtape seems built around that feeling. It is not simply telling a coming-of-age story; it presents youth as already half-mythologized.
Visually, the game has a very distinct style that will likely be another make-or-break factor for players. It is not aiming for realism. Its animation has a stylized, slightly stuttered quality that makes movement feel like a mix between a memory, a music video, and an animated sketchbook. That works perfectly for a game like this because Mixtape isn’t meant to feel like documentary realism. It is supposed to feel like a half-true story your friend tells at two in the morning, where everything is exaggerated, emotional, and somehow more honest because of it.
The writing and tone will probably be what divides people the most. This is a game about teenagers, and from everything shown so far, it seems very committed to the drama, awkwardness, and emotional exaggeration of being young. Personally, I think that is the right approach. Teenagers are annoying. They are dramatic. They say things too intensely. They believe their friendships are the most important friendships anyone has ever had. But that is also what makes them sincere. Mixtape seems to understand that being young is at once embarrassing and beautiful. It does not look down on its characters for feeling everything too strongly. It lets them be messy.
As a game, though, Mixtape seems more focused on experience than mechanical depth. It has classic adventure-game-style moments, like hanging out in Rockford’s room, looking for collectibles, talking with friends, and then suddenly jumping into something much more chaotic, like a shopping-cart chase where the trio tries to escape the cops after Cassandra gets wasted. That mix makes the game feel less like a traditional challenge-based experience and more like an interactive album of memories. For some players, that may feel thin. If you are looking for complex systems, difficult gameplay, or a huge amount of player freedom, this probably will not be that kind of game. But for players who are willing to meet it on its own terms, the simplicity may actually help. It keeps the focus on mood, music, character, and emotion, which seems to be the whole point of Mixtape in the first place.
What stayed with me most about Mixtape is how it treats growing up as both beautiful and devastating. It is not just saying, “Remember when things were better?” It is more complicated than that. Nostalgia hurts because you usually do not realize you are living through something important until it is already gone. You do not know which car ride, which song, which late-night conversation, or which stupid adventure will become the memory you return to years later. Mixtape seems to understand that the past is not powerful because it was perfect. It is powerful because it was temporary. That is why I think this game is going to hit very hard for a specific group of players and completely miss for others. Some people will find it too stylized, too sentimental, too quirky, or too light on traditional gameplay. But for me, everything about it feels aimed directly at the part of your brain that keeps old songs attached to old versions of yourself. Mixtape is not just about the last day of being a teenager. It is about how music preserves memory, how friendship becomes myth after it ends, and how growing up means learning to carry the past without being able to return to it.
Score: 9 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5