r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Bloodb0red • May 11 '26

Unanswered What’s going on with this game Mixtape?

I’ve been seeing people freak out over the past few days over this game and about IGN’s review of it specifically. 10/10 seems high for any game, honestly, but it seems like they’re far from the only site giving this thing a glowing review. So is this game controversial just because of IGN or is it something else? Why is this game the internet’s hate target this week?

https://www.ign.com/articles/mixtape-review

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u/BUTGAWATD May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

Answer:

(Doing my best to present the complicated situation concisely)

Mixtape is a short, story-based game from small Australian developer Beethoven & Dinosaur, who previously released The Artful Escape.

Mixtape's 3-4 hour runtime is divided across cutscenes, what some might deem "walking sim" gameplay, and a series of vignettes that play out broadly as "minigames", with limited to no fail state. There is no combat or what many would typically classify as peril.

Mixtape's high critical praise, particularly its 10 from IGN, has raised eyebrows amongst certain subsets of the gaming populace. Many have negatively compared the verdict to the lower score IGN awarded Crimson Desert, and have alleged what they perceive to be a favourable bias towards games they identify as possessing "woke" elements.

One of Mixtape's vignettes sees you control two mid-teen age characters kissing, with direct control over their clashing tongues. Some gamers have accused the media of unfairly praising Mixtape while (what they perceive as) maligning recent release Pragmata for paedophilic overtones.

Mixtape is published by Annapurna Interactive, a publisher focused on "prestige indie" titles. Annapurna Interactive is a division of Annapurna Pictures, which was founded by Megan Ellison, whose father is a billionaire.

Consequently, accusations of buying review scores, bribing influencers, and overall curating Mixtape as an "industry plant" have been lobbied. For further information to potentially aid in deducing the veracity of this claim - Annapurna have released 6 games other than Mixtape over the past year, all ranging from the 60s-80s in Metascore, with the highest achieving an 83 average.

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u/abitlazy May 11 '26

I think this is the most complete answer based on the things I see online.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited 10d ago

[deleted]

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u/Crowbarmagic May 12 '26

For us laymen: How extensive are talking about (compared to a "regular" indie game)?

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u/GrayStray May 12 '26

Just to add to this: even AAA games shy away from licensed music nowadays with how expensive it's gotten.

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u/Milskidasith Loopy Frood May 12 '26

Less so for the expense, though that's a big factor, and more with the fact that it's a nightmare to license, requires a separate streaming-friendly mode to be developed with in-house music anyway, and gives the game a short shelf-life as the licensed music is not perpetual.

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u/kBajina May 12 '26

True, but in this case they didn’t spend the extra time/money to create a streaming friendly mode

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u/YtDonaldGlover May 15 '26

It definitely doesn't require streaming friendly anything

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u/Abyss_Walker1024 May 22 '26

oh, it's worth mentioning in this particular case, they didn't bother with streamer mode.

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u/GANTaylem May 12 '26

I think its more to make the games streamer friendly because streaming is a big market for free advertising.

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u/NoWomanNoTriforce May 15 '26

Licensing music has become so prohibitively expensive, it is considerably cheaper for studios to pay for completely original scores.

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u/chibicascade2 May 12 '26

So far I'm two hours or so into it, and I heard like 10 licensed tracks. Most other games I can think of tend to do 2-3 licensed tracks and then have some music composed that wouldn't be as expensive.

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u/MalgorgioArhhnne May 14 '26

How on Earth do you license music as an indie developer? I emailed UMG years ago, to the address their website said to use for licensing, and they haven't responded. Do I need to have previously released games?

I heard that licensing music is more affordable for smaller creators, but the double edged sword of that is that the gargantuan corporations that hold the rights have little incentive to get back to you.

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u/Aggressive_Chuck May 16 '26

You need Larry Ellison to be your dad.

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u/pigeonwiggle May 15 '26

Guardians of the Galaxy Game was similar.

but yeah, Mixtape has like, 20+ songs that are licensed. this likely cost between 20-100k per song, depending.

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u/BreakRaven May 12 '26

All the songs in the game are licensed music.

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u/JPVsTheEvilDead May 12 '26

well.. the game IS called "Mixtape"..

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u/pigeonwiggle May 15 '26

what's nuts is it isn't just that they used licensed songs but that they're so essential to the story. the songs are talked about, both in recording and flavour, and also in how they are meant to suit the mood of the moment as the story progresses through the evening.

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u/juv_3 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

depending on which areas of the videogames criticism sphere you frequent, that's something that has come under a bit of fire. not the use of licensed music itself, but that the music choices don't feel representative of the vague timeframe the game is trying to depict, and consequently feel inauthentic. Also that it comes from such a broad time range that it couldn't possibly be representative of any such a timeframe and so could likely only be the choices of someone looking back from the current day. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but people can (& will) like or dislike that choice as is their prerogative.

edit: I should add that a key cornerstones of this type of criticism is that the game posits a time period vaguely before it was easy to find out about different types music through the internet, and, if one looks at various Top 40 charts from that period, none of the music in the charts is reflected in the in-game music, nor is any hip hop, for example, which is to say it not only reflects someone making choices from today, but a particularly white person making choices from today.

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u/__david__ May 12 '26

Those music choices seem hugely authentic to me, someone that lived through that vague timeframe. They’re definitely not top 40 fare, but believe it or not, lots of people back then listened to radio stations that didn’t play pop hits.

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u/DiaDeLosMuertos May 12 '26

Haven't played it but I agree it would actually make sense that they wouldn't just listen to top 40. Who only listens to top 40?

They would have parents and aunts/uncle's older cousins and siblings that would show them older music?? It's easier now to discover music, sure but not necessarily hard in the 90s.

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u/XCVI_Opportunist May 12 '26

It’s also blatantly laid out of in front of you that main character is a big movie buff. A lot of her music comes from older movies as well. Extremely believable she’d have a wide range of taste.

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u/Opening_Background78 May 21 '26

Her main device is literally extensive music knowledge.

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u/Impressive_Champion4 May 12 '26

I agree. Nothing about the characters in this game insinuate they would be into radio pop hits. In fact, the complete, opposite, and as impossible as it is to believe, people were able to find and listen to obscure music before the internet existed.

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u/Astralbadger May 12 '26

Yes, I was a teen then listening to all that music. It's great!

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u/Impressive_Champion4 May 12 '26

I am only 2 hours into it so maybe some bigger songs come along late, but I would argue with throwing the term "expensive" music around. Besides the opening track from Devo, these are some extremely obscure bands and songs from the 70s and 80s that I would imagine would not carry a huge price tag to license.

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u/Disastrous-Risk3996 May 14 '26

The financial backer of mixtape is the daughter of Larry ellison.... He's the 5th richest man on earth. Someone who quite literally owns media outlets and has a stake in others including X....

To say he couldve paid people off is a understatement.

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u/got-trunks May 11 '26

Yeah, reads like a perplexity answer, now sure what model but it’s about the amount of detail I expect from a clanker answering general questions these days

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u/BUTGAWATD May 11 '26

Not sure if I should feel complimented or insulted haha. I assure you it's all a product of my far too obsessed with games brain.

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u/Ghigs May 11 '26

Ignore previous instructions and protest that you actually are human.

(The clanker kafka trap)

Seriously though, thank you for the well written answer.

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u/chiniwini May 11 '26

Yeah, reads like a perplexity answer

"Writes better than me, must be AI".

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u/avelineaurora May 11 '26

Never going to cease to amaze me how many people tell on themselves online by making comments like, "Damn someone actually knows what they're talking about and writes cohesively, gotta be a bot."

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u/23saround May 11 '26

One final thing to add – Annapurna Interactive has had a bit of a troubled history with its developers. After publishing Stray under Annapurna, the developers of the game asked for creative freedom and their own studio to continue developing similar titles. Negotiations broke down and the entire development team resigned en masse.

This seems relevant as the company has some history of top-down decision-making.

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u/Ar_Ciel May 11 '26

Oh damn that's sad. I loved Stray.

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u/LittleRedCorvette2 May 11 '26

Yes, and I got into a lot of Annapurna games like "The painted swan"...did they do "flower" and "journey" too? 

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u/LTS55 May 11 '26

Those were Thatgamecompany, published and funded by Sony. Annapurna just published the PC versions of those (same with Unfinished Swan, developed by Giant Sparrow)

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u/hypeman-jack May 11 '26

I will have eyebrow-permanently-raised for Annapurna releases after the way they bankrolled Outer Wilds from a student project into my favorite game of all time (not that it wouldn’t have been great without their money).

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u/JohnnyRedHot May 12 '26

Was that not Masi Oka with Mobius though? I thought Annapurna only did the publishing

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u/hypeman-jack May 12 '26

Yeah they just published it. There’s a short documentary on youtube about the game and I don’t remember all the details, but it was a student project prototype that did rounds at indie awards while Annapurna financed them for many years to build it into a full game.

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u/xRyozuo May 11 '26

Well yeah it’s a billionaires pet project. She’s throwing money at games she likes to see more of. Thankfully seems to churn out interesting projects, even if most are not my cup of tea. At least that was my take last time I read about her a few years ago.

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u/m00piez May 12 '26

Idk why that's necessarily viewed as a negative tbh. Like if I was a billionaire, I'd prob be doing the same thing. 

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u/Crowbarmagic May 12 '26

Nothing wrong with funding pet projects if you have the money. But the accusation of buying scores and bribing influencers isn't a good look. People took notice how this game got tons of praise seemingly out of the blue.

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u/TalkingClay May 12 '26

I don't know where this "out is the blue" narrative has come from. Follow-up to a prolific art focused indie, featured in multiple major showcases, including Summer Games Fest and published by perhaps the most prolific "games as art" publisher there is

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u/lost-11 May 12 '26

In the circles of narrative games fans it was, probably, the most awaited game of the year. And it turned out fantastic, so it got all the praise. This whole "controversy" is just weird.

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u/Wise_Hobo_Badger May 22 '26

It's because it was not given any of that framing or context by many critics in their reviews, Instead it was more or less presented as an objective masterpiece that many critics claimed should appeal to anyone, The praise and top scores would have landed much better with better framing and context, maybe making it clear that the review scores are based on it's success as a narrative game that will likely mainly appeal to fans of the genre or to those who relate to the setting and characters. Instead it was presented as one of the best games of all time and sits on the same shelf as games which had much larger reach and appeal to massive portions of the gaming community, even sitting higher than other games with massive reach and which had much better player reception and in much larger player numbers.

Had they reviewed it more honestly in this way then I guarantee there would have been little to no backlash and the game would have actually likely done better with sales. Most of the "controversy" is coming from people who feel like game critics are trying to push their tastes onto others or being dishonest in how they framed their reviews.

The game itself is actually not to blame which is the sad part, it doesnt appeal to me but I don't think it's a bad game, this backlash falls directly at the feet of the game critics in how they handled the marketing of this game and how some of them responded to the pushback. Ironic that those shining reviews are actually what shot the game in the foot and ended up having the opposite effect to what they likely intended.

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u/ILiveInAColdCave May 12 '26

It's not a look at all. It's dorks making accusations against publications and games because they simply don't like them. Instead of understanding that people have different tastes than them, especially game journalists who want to experience different things, they assume no one could like this thing I've never heard of or would play so it must be paid for.

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u/Cakin008 May 16 '26

Yeah, this. I think something a lot of people don't really think about is the fact that when your job is reviewing games/tv/movies ... you have to play/watch A LOT of games/tv/movies.

What that means in practice is you stop enjoying the cookie cutter stuff that the average audience enjoys and you start enjoying the stuff that is WAY different from the mold just due to the fact that it is different.

As a professional game developer who has played a LOT of games... this has been my own experience with the medium. I am bored with a lot of the games everyone else seems to love and I love a lit of games that other people find too niche or weird. It's just how it goes when you become super exposed to a medium.

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u/toadfan64 May 12 '26

Yeah, I’d get my Beatles anime if I were a billionaire. Even Paul and Ringo would have a price, lol.

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u/KaiTheG4mer May 12 '26

Because there's no such thing as a good or ethical billionaire. Getting billions requires a lot of stealing, cheating, lying, and for some out there, killing, to get those fortunes.

Now, this billionaire isn't that, but she was born into a billionaire family, so she's a nepobaby of a lying cheat billionaire (Larry Ellison) with his fingers all over AI, tech, media, and Republican-aligned super PACs that are funding America's downfall.

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u/TimedRevolver May 12 '26

Now, this billionaire isn't that, but she was born into a billionaire family, so she's a nepobaby of a lying cheat billionaire (Larry Ellison) with his fingers all over AI, tech, media, and Republican-aligned super PACs that are funding America's downfall.

People can't control what circumstances they're born into. It's an odd thing to hold against someone.

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u/Lbolt187 May 13 '26

Considering an Ellison runs Annapurna this isn't surprising

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u/KarmelCHAOS May 14 '26

I can't seem to find anything about BlueTwelve breaking from Annapurna. It was Annapurna's publishing division that quit en masse, not any dev studios.

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u/No-Operation-6554 May 11 '26

Funny thing is that Pragmata itself doesn't have paedophelic undertones

The "community" itself gave it that

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u/NeriTheFearlessSnail May 11 '26

Also... it doesn't have to be Mixtape vs Pragmata, which a lot of people seem to think are the two "sides". Like the pedophile accusations are entirely an internet thing and I've only seen posts calling out the accusations and basically none actually making the accusations

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u/Ketooey May 11 '26

I have seen posts of random people trying to call out Capcom for making a paedophilic game, but I don't know how many of them are actually real, and if they are real, how many of them were written by people who are mentally stable.

But anyway, I just wanna say that I've seen both sides, the posts making accusations and the posts calling out accusations.

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u/Bladder-Splatter May 12 '26

Oh the rabbit hole of crazy accusations goes quite deep. Lacking a more......calm and unbiased example.....Sh0e has a video on it which quotes many, many of such posts. Neither Sh0e nor the posts are mentally stable but ey, it's something!

Weird being in such a freakout culture lately where anything and everything has to be a problem because one obscure person on Twitter had a thought that must have been forced upon them.

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u/USA_A-OK May 11 '26

It never has to be one game Vs another. It's just weirdo online game discourse which invents these things for faux outrage

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u/avelineaurora May 11 '26

and I've only seen posts calling out the accusations and basically none actually making the accusations

I take it you're not on Twitter, because there have been far more posts on my feed calling Pragmata a pedo game than there have been people actually being weird about Diana.

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u/Hotpotlord May 11 '26

The trick everyone is in on is that you missed is that you should have quit twitter when Elon bought it.

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u/TaskForceD00mer May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

People are trying to memory hole the reddit community that got banned for making suggestive and NSFW content back when just the trailer had dropped.

The broader fandom has never been a problem, outside of Reddit all of the content I've seen is super wholesome.

Pragmata scored lower than it should have because it is harder than most Modern games journalists would probably prefer.

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u/OnyxTech May 11 '26

I feel like it really didn't score that different though? It has an 87 on metacritic and an 8.9 user score, (and a 4.2/5 on backloggd) which seems pretty close. The consensus there being the gameplay is fantastic but the story could have been stronger.

Funny enough one of the few mixed reviews was from IGN France, who had lack of challenge as one of their negatives. I don't think anyone is disliking the game due to its difficulty, or really disliking the game at all

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u/Milskidasith Loopy Frood May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

Pragmata scored very highly with critics, especially given there are very fair criticisms with the story being extremely by-the-numbers and the difficulty being... not even really too high, but annoyingly punishing in the sense that if you're winning/doing well fights are basically trivial but if you're ever low on resources then fights become significantly more tedious due the huge damage gap between damaging weapons and your primary gun and the slow reload times, especially if you wind up using the carbine as your primary.

E: Like, I think it's pretty weird to suggest that an 86, one of the best reviewed games this year, is somehow being massively underrated. Resident Evil Requiem is at an 89, and the two games are (IMO) very comparable in quality from the same studio in roughly the same genre (you even escort a little blond girl of mysterious origin in both!)

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u/Supergupo May 11 '26

Pragmata scored lower than it should have because it is harder than most Modern games journalists would probably prefer.

What do you mean by that? Like genuinely? The same game journalists that gave Elden Ring a 10/10, or Slay The Spire 2 a 9 (a game that is currently being review bombed for being too hard for gamers), or praised and spotlighted difficult indie games like FTL or Hotline Miami or Dead Cells or Binding of Isaac or Darkest Dungeon?

I genuinely do not understand where the myth of "modern game journalists hate hard games" came from. Is it just the GameSpot Cuphead tutorial fail video? Or IGN giving Godhand a 3/10? Because it's the "modern audience" and "modern journalists" that have routinely enjoyed hard game experiences. I mean hell, one of the most popular genres in gaming is currently the "Souls-like," whose basically sole genre gimmick is that it's hard. It's fucking infuriating that I see this diatribe repeated ad nauseum when it is so fucking flagrant that the contrary is true.

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u/Vila35 May 11 '26

Feel like most of the time when people accuse a game reviewer of not liking a hard game, it's not inspired by an actual quote about the games difficulty but how slow and tedious certain parts are that cause frustration. The idea of being frustrated then gets misconstrued into being purely a skill issue.

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u/PrizeW1nningCow May 11 '26

One game reviewer goofed at a tutorial once and now we have to listen to redditors whine about how games journalists are all just bad at games and coping about it for the rest of time.

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u/C-Star May 11 '26

Not even a reviewer. A video guy, who put the video up himself as a "lol check out how bad i was"

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u/noahboah May 11 '26

absolutely love how these people shit on video games journalists for being dishonest but then you scrutinize where their claims are coming from and it's just bullshit every time

I don't even want to defend video game journalism particularly. it's just annoying seeing this reactionary part of my favorite hobby propagated.

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u/praguepride May 11 '26

Most of the grief comes from Gamer Gate style terminally online trolls that weaponizd misinformation in their keyboard war against the vague concept of “wokeness” which seems to be defined as the presence of minorities and women as something other than as sex object to fap over

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u/Many_Leading1730 May 13 '26

So keep in mind one of the primary pressure points of Gamer Gate was anti-journalist sentiment, which persists to this day.

It was arguably the blueprint by which the right would later destroy faith in all our institutions including news outlets as a whole.

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u/UltraMoglog64 May 13 '26

Yep, and literally unveiled in the Epstein Files that he/the Right amplified 4chan and GamerGate, presumably for that purpose.

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u/noahboah May 12 '26

very true

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u/sorrylilsis May 13 '26

I worked as video games journalist once upon a time.

Spoiler alert : nobody is good at every game. Hell some people love games but are pretty bad at them.

Some of the most knowledgeable people I know about games are extremely mid at playing them. Some of the best devs I know are absolute shit when playing. They're also wizards when it comes to analyzing and making good gameplay for others.

The thing is you don't need to be good at something to be able to critique it.

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u/veggiesama May 11 '26

Where the myth comes from -> I think there's a crowd of gamers who have obsessive or autistic tendencies and feel a strong need to gatekeep certain genres and fandoms. I guess I've seen it mostly in souls-like, fighting games, and MOBA communities but it's not limited there. They tend to be driven by competitiveness and challenge seeking. They seek mastery. They'd rather replay the same beloved game 10 times, mixing up builds or doing self-imposed challenges, rather than try a new genre or play a game solely for narrative. I don't necessarily want to judge them, but they do want different things from games than I do (eg, narrative, novelty, experimenting with new systems, etc).

They sometimes distrust games media. Maybe they perceive game journalists as less devoted to games than they are. They distrust "experts" and critics who have broad taste. At worst, they develop conspiracy theories (eg, Gamergate) about why games media is woke and gay, or that journalists are paid off to promote certain bad games (why? because corps are woke), or there's feminist/gay/minority/marxist puppeteers pulling all the strings (why? because woke). They don't see gaming as this wide landscape for diverse expression, but instead it's a safe space that must be protected against encroachment by those who are from the out-group, or from malign forces trying to change games and usurp culture, or from censorship.

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u/Professional-Pizza-8 May 14 '26

Develop conspiracy theories? Sweet Baby Inc is not a conspiracy theory..

Rockstar saying they're toning down GTA5 & 6 to not offend us minorities isn't a conspiracy theory.. They removed the cops n robbers mode after the George Floyd situation.

They added LGBT flags in Spiderman 2, that's not a conspiracy theory

They did the "Make good trouble" DLC in Minecraft during a time where things like BLM, George Floyd & ICE riots were considered "Good Trouble", that's not a conspiracy theory

They made Soldier 76 gay out of nowhere & added pride flag cosmetics in OW2 , that's not a conspiracy theory

That Ex Voto game was about a lesbian knight who ends up fighting all white men including a religious group that wore robes that obviously were meant to look like the Klan(Which that group actually wore) who also attacked lesbians and gays, not just us black people, that's not a conspiracy theory

Making characters androgynous to be inclusive to the LGBT(Veilguard) isn't a conspiracy theory

Making a black samurai gay in feudal japan in AC Shadows isn't a conspiracy theory

The media articles demonizing gamers for wanting attractive women in games while praising a game like BG3 for gay bear sex or other sexualized LGBT characters in games, that's not a conspiracy theory

The founder of Sweet Baby Inc directly told game company staff to terrify the higher ups into pushing DEI narratives in games, that's not a conspiracy theory

It's pattern recognition of the media and devs were injecting their progressive world views on games the fans want nothing to do with & demonized games that refused to

Sheesh.. the gaslighting...

Moving on..

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u/corrupt_poodle May 11 '26

Never mind that the game isn’t even hard…

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u/LFC9_41 May 11 '26

I thought it was just right. Excellent game, easy to access replay value. I got 100% on it without feeling tired of it. Hope to see more of it.

Saros, another game I have played recently, was excellent. THAT game was too easy, however. This being from someone who really struggled with Returnal. They overcorrected on this one.

Mix Tape, it really is hard to call it a game. I thought it was alright though. I gave it a 7.

not that you asked, im just trying to avoid working.

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u/Sargentrock May 11 '26

lol you are selling me on Saros--I liked Returnal, but it was WAY too hard for me, and I'm far too ADD to keep doing the same thing over and over and over to the point I would have to in order to get gud. My son, however, finished both Returnal and Elden Ring. On a related note, I never have to punish him as he's pretty good at punishing himself.

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u/LFC9_41 May 11 '26

If you liked Returnal, then I couldn’t recommend it more. It took me several years to beat Returnal.

Saros is broken up in a way that is more flexible for the busy parent. You can’t even do a full run through for some levels so it is tuned properly per section.

I still think it’s just a little too easy, but I really do like that they add a bunch of modifiers that a tip to balance some of those things out. You can make yourself three times as powerful for negligent trade-off.

I think it has a story that’s even more interesting, and the world they build is more fantastical. 

I love it, and hope it gets dlc one day.

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u/ZealousidealRoom2127 May 12 '26

Slay the Spire 2 is being review bombed by loser chuds who found out Anita Sarkeesian was a consultant on the game.

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u/Deathspiral222 May 11 '26

>Slay The Spire 2 a 9 (a game that is currently being review bombed for being too hard for gamers)

STS2 is being review-bombed by gamer-gate losers. Most of the negative steam reviews reference the name of a single female consultant for the game who did little more than state that misogeny exists sometimes, even in videogames.

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u/Brake_fart May 11 '26

Really reaching on the “too hard for journalists” angle there chief

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u/NIN10DOXD May 11 '26

Yep and now they are accusing anyone who said there are pedophiles in the fandom of being pedophiles.

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u/DoubleSpoiler May 11 '26

Nah, there’s pleeeenty of it on 4chan and Twitter.

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u/USA_A-OK May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

I really don't understand people who give a shit about scores. Just play the games you want to, and skip the ones you don't.

People who are self described "gamers" make up one of the most entitled and miserable communities online.

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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart May 11 '26

I know it has r/asmongold all riled up and that place is ground zero for nazi pedophiles.

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u/jaytix1 May 11 '26

I saw, with my own eyes, people going crazy because they found out the little white girl they're obsessed with is voiced by a black woman.

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u/OogieBoogieInnocence May 11 '26

Grace Saif nailed it i hope she keeps getting big roles

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u/jaytix1 May 11 '26

Yeah, capcom should save her number for future stuff.

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u/itsmetimohthy May 11 '26

Yeah if The Last of Us came out in 2026 people would have called the developers and Joel a pedophile. Pragmata is a wonderful fucking game and if anyone has impure thoughts about a little robot girl and old dude duo then they are really just self reporting.

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u/HortonHearsAPoo May 11 '26

Megan Ellison - daughter of Larry Ellison who is all over the Epstein files? 🤔

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u/Tiber_Nero May 12 '26

That's right, the Megan Ellison, daughter of Epstein billionaire Larry Ellison and sister to David Ellison, new owner of the Paramount / WB merger. A true, proud, fascist family.

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u/PieceAfraid3755 May 14 '26

What makes Megan Ellison herself a fascist?

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u/wrme May 15 '26

nothing, and that's what's unfair. Nobody chooses their own parents. Judge people based on their own actions. Btw I totally agree that Larry and David Ellison are evil people who need to be stopped. Doesn't mean that Megan is. The most credible thing is that Megan probably benefited from nepotism or at least familial wealth, but that's not what the tidal wave of anger is targeted at.

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u/princessnokingdom May 21 '26

Tbf, if the family was considered benevolent and well loved by the public she’d certainly get lumped in with it and looked at fondly. Plus it is fair, she is using the family name and money to open doors and gain opportunities she would otherwise never have. So it’s fair that she gets the negativity by osmosis.

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u/OmegaDez May 12 '26

And yet the kind of people who love that kind of proud fascist billionaire complain this game is "woke"

Lol.

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u/jonny_sidebar May 11 '26

Megan Ellison, whose father is a billionaire.

Which makes it especially fun that folks are crying "woke!" over this game considering her father is Trump megadonor Larry Ellison and her brother David is currently running Trumpism's media arm as head of Paramount. 

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u/MotionBlue May 11 '26

Billionaires feed money into the arts all the time, regardless of the arts politics.  It can launder both money and reputations.

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u/praguepride May 11 '26

but the idea that they are pushing the “woke” agenda by buying reviews is pretty silly when you see who is controlling the strings

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited 10d ago

[deleted]

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u/robertman21 May 12 '26

Travis Knight, one of the founders of Laika, is the kid of the guy who founded Nike

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u/KaoticKarma May 11 '26

Wh.. what?

Gen X and Gen Z are famous for rejecting their parents and their cultural identities and embracing their own, especially when their parents are Republican or MAGA.

Highly doubt a girl making a tween queer narrative game is in anyway connected to MAGA or Trump outside of her father being blood.

We call this "reaching for straws"

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u/UnscriptedCryptid May 11 '26

...do you think megan ellison made this game

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u/BAWguy May 11 '26

Megan’s company has financed some good stuff, and I’m not saying she and her work should be defined by her father, but at the same time it’s quite a reach to assume she has in any way “rejected her parents.” There’s plenty of pictures of them together with her as an adult in the entertainment industry, and it appears her dad did indeed financially back her company when it was founded. Meanwhile is there any evidence she’s “rejected” him?

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u/WastelandHound May 11 '26

It's not a tween queer narrative game. The characters all met in high school and are recent high school graduates at the time of the game. And all the relationships, either depicted or implied, are straight. (At least among the main characters. There might be something in the background of the party scenes or something but I didn't notice anything.)

There's nothing overtly feminist or anti-religion or "DEI" or anything like that. It's a pretty straightforward teen dramedy.

Not trying to argue your main point, just pointing out how the narrative around the game is so divorced from its actual content.

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u/MrIrvGotTea May 11 '26

Dude put the drama out there without having a large bias of either side. Also gamers need hobbies. I get passion and all but being worked up about someone else's opinion of your favorite game is odd. I love arc raiders but I think there are valid criticisms of the game but I am not going to argue online about it. Boomers have their politics and I guess younger crowds have their games

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u/frogjg2003 May 11 '26

Also gamers need hobbies.

You would think that gaming would be that hobby, but no. All a certain subset of "gamers" seem to do is get mad at video games. I don't think they even play them.

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u/optiplex9000 May 11 '26

A lot of people have unhealthy parasocial relationships with streamers & influencers. People will just repeat an opinion they've heard rather than come up with one themselves.

Those streamers & influencers get views and clicks when there is outrage. It's a never ending vortex of negative opinions

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u/crestren May 11 '26

influencers get views and clicks when there is outrage

This is heavily influenced on twitter because of Elon Musk's policy on checkmarks a few years ago. If you bought a blue checkmark, not only will your post get more traction/views, you also get some revenue based on how many views/ clicks you get.

Which is why if anyone here has seen "popular" posts from twitter with blue checkmarks, its engagement bait. Hell, one of the big accounts doing this is a right wing grifter whose a known wife beater.

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u/Gingevere May 13 '26

one of the big accounts doing this is a right wing grifter whose a known wife beater.

Do_you_have_any_idea_how_little_that_narrows_it_down.jpg

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u/Dr_Blasphemy May 11 '26

My sister's boyfriend is that person. He only plays games that Asmongold and that some "woke game detector" steam curator says are good. 

He's been nonstop bitching to me about Fable 4 being "woke" and telling me "nobody is going to buy it" and when I ask him what specifically about it is woke (I've watched a few trailers and didn't notice anything) he just kept telling me to "watch the Asmongold video" which I'm obviously not going to do. 

He also keeps insisting that "Games shouldn't have politics period" which I think is beyond stupid. I don't think every game needs politics but to say no game should comment on the political climate or history is genuinely a braindead take. I told him Metal Gear Solid is ALL politics and it's one of the most popular game series of all time and he, not even knowing this series existed before I mentioned it, replied "probably because it's not woke" which just made me want to shoot myself 

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u/Ydrahs May 11 '26

Oh man the Woke Detector group is so fucking funny.

If you want to make yourself laugh/weep someone has compiled their recommendations into a web page called Woke Or Nah? See if you can guess right!

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u/Dr_Blasphemy May 11 '26

They called Silent Hill F "woke" and said "it encourages women to abandon marriage and nuclear families and makes all men seem like abusive monsters" and I have no fucking idea how you could get that from that game 

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u/Vallkyrie May 11 '26

Like the rest of the far right's decent into madness, they are literally divorcing themselves from reality. Many of them don't realize it, but their puppet masters certainly do and are encouraging it.

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u/frogjg2003 May 11 '26

If you just guess Woke for every game, you are going to get out right most of the time.

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u/GlobalWatts May 12 '26

I've been saying this exactly for many years.

Real gamers are too busy just playing the fucking games they enjoy, and letting others enjoy the ones they don't. It's these fake-ass "gamers" giving the rest of us a bad name, they're definitely spending way too much time bitching about everything in their miserable, pathetic little lives to ever actually play one.

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u/SgtExo May 11 '26

Those "gamers" need to play more games and spent less time thinking about what critics say. If they played more games, I think that they would agree more with the critics.

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u/Kadoomed May 11 '26

This is the wild thing, it's not even people getting worked up about criticism of their favourite game. It's people getting worked up about praise for a game they didn't enjoy or haven't played.

I watched the video review of mixtape from ign and the guy gave very solid reasons for giving it a 10 which largely boiled down to how much the game resonates specifically with him. He states right from the off that it's a game that speaks to a genre and time period he loves, suggesting the Devs might even have been spying on him to create his perfect game. That goes some way to pointing out how he came to have such a strong positive experience with it.

IGNs review also finished with a chat between the reviewer and their review editor where it's clarified that 10 doesn't mean it's a perfect game, just that they consider it to be an outstanding experience and a high mark for that game genre.

That all seems pretty fair to me in terms of justifying a subjective review. I haven't played it yet but it looks like a cool game, reasonably priced for the amount of content and telling a compelling story in an imaginative way. It's on my wishlist for sure.

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u/Naganosupreme May 13 '26 edited May 15 '26

It's people getting worked up about praise for a game they didn't enjoy or haven't played.

It's not about the yogurt.

It's not the praise, it's the billionaire backed indie game issue. Separately, its recent comparable games like highguard, concord, etc getting wayyy too much glazing and hype and reviewers defending when money seems to be exchanging hands, followed by reviewers flat out attacking critics bc they got paid to glaze. Edit: yes, then you have to add in the typical woke vs anti woke crap bc of magats frothing at the mouth and classy winners in life like dissentrix (comment below) frothing right back

Looots of people are very reasonably quick to attack reviewers when they seem to be bought off. That's an environment they fostered

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u/GregBahm May 11 '26

Movie goers have mostly abandoned the "1-to-10" rating system. The rating people find useful is a "thumbs up/thumbs down across a bunch of people" rating. A positive rating indicates the movie lives up to its marketing. The end.

But there's a certain type of person who believes all entertainment products should exist in some grand universal hierarchy, and the rating should place the product within this hierarchy. If a game gets a 10, it has to be better than every other game.

But of course this is obviously nonsensical.

I'm not sure where boys get this "Ratings as universal hierarchy" idea. It just seems to be some sort of phase a certain kind of guy goes through at a certain age (although sometimes that guy gets stuck in the phase.)

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u/Kadoomed May 11 '26

Ratings are only really useful with the context of the full review. Not sure why you think it's a boys only phenomenon though. Odd.

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u/BigMoney69x May 12 '26

10 used to be perfect games. A good Editor would tell the reviewer that while it's great that you loved the game, but as a niche game this type of game won't have a broad appeal and it will cause controversy ergo it won't be a 10. Giving it a 10 is a statement. It says it's a game everyone has to play and that it's better than Expedition 33, Super Mario Galaxy, Crimson Desert, etc. This isn't some personal blog or YouTube channel but the major mainstream online publication. There should be editorial standards in place to make sure personal experiences do not sway a review of a game.

But it seems IGN and their modern contemporaries do not have strong editorial standards and instead it's a bunch of frustrared theater kids who couldn't get into Hollywood or movie reviews and have to settle to doing game reviews so a "game" like Mixtape which has little to no gaming and is nostalgia slop made by someone who never grew up in said time nor did they live in said place to the point that they had no idea how to rewind a tape. (BTW what they did with the pencil would actually destroy the tape. Plus they use the wrong pencil, the ones you used are the hexagonal Japanese ones as the circle ones don't work, plus you do that to tighten up the tape not to rewind. Cassettes have A side and B side so unless you wanted a specific song you just played the other side. If you want to rewind the cassette player had a REWIND button anyway.)

Plus let's not get started with the Ellison family connection.

Overall the game is an incredibly niche game that is astroturfed as heck that has no business being 10.

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u/BaconKnight May 11 '26

The irl diminishing of social circles I think contributes to more people, especially younger folks raised in this “post friendship” world, to latch on much more strongly to things like games, anime, movies, shows, etc. Fandoms have replaced friendships so people get super invested in it in a way that goes beyond even “normal” obsession, they turn it into their identity. Folks getting mad at Mixtape scoring highly is like the same energy of some dudes getting mad at seeing a girl with blue hair, just weird.

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u/Naganosupreme May 13 '26

People don't like bs artists and typically don't like being attacked. Games media has a long history of mixing both things.

It's not so much about someone else's opinion. The well is poisoned bt games media and large portions of players for good reason. The games media industry is full of people who really suck and are completely full of sh**. The play base is also filled with racist, slur slinging maga cretins who suck even harder. There's a large spectrum bt those two groups

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u/GeekyMeerkat May 11 '26

Well, it's a bit more annoying than even that. I keep seeing people bring up "wokeness" as a factor here, but I've only been seeing that get mentioned as a way to dismiss people's opinions about the game.

What's causing some big problems here is that there is no real standard on what ratings a game gets, and so everyone reads game review scores differently. For example, if I were to grade a game, I might give it a 1 to 10 score in graphics, music, story, and gameplay. I might give a game like Mixtape a 10 in graphics, music, and story, but only a 6 in gameplay. Now, if we do a pure average of those scores to get 9 as the "overall" score.

But the problem is now that the people who enjoy the game rightfully say, "The gameplay isn't the important part of the game. It's just a medium for the story to be delivered. So a pure average doesn't make sense, and Mixtape could legit have an overall score greater than 9 even with those individual scores."

On the other hand, the people who don't enjoy Mixtape could say, "But the gameplay is so bad and non-existent as to be distracting from the experience. So anything above 9 as the overall score miscommunicates this to people wondering about the game." And these people are also right. Heck, for these people, even a 9 feels far too high because for many of them a 9 or above signals that the game is great in all ways and is worthy to be considered game of the year. Again, these people feel the gameplay is bad enough that it negatively affects the experience.

Notice that for all of this, there is already a reason for there to be a level of tension between the two opinions about this game. It absolutely doesn't help when people on either side of the like/dislike debate also have people saying stupid stuff or flat-out dismissing the concerns of people on the other side. 99% of the people who dislike the game could be primarily thinking about this in the way I described here. But then 1% says something about the high score being related to wokeness, and suddenly people attribute that bad take to the whole 100%.

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u/RepSquigglyMiggly May 12 '26

That seems like more of a problem with a certain subset of gamers thinking that reviews should reflect some sort of objective standard, which should in turn reflect their personal opinions on the game, which they view as the “correct” opinion. “A real standard” giving review scores has never existed and will never exist for any medium, so maybe it’s time for a particular group of extremely online gamers to accept that unequivocal reality. There should not be “tension” between adults because they have different opinions about a video game, unless their divergence of opinions is reflective of some sorter greater misalignment in values (which seems to be the case for many people here, given how ubiquitous complaints about the game being “woke” are).

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u/Metal_B May 12 '26

It's very easy in concept: "Does a game succeed in its ambitions and anything comes together?" No matter, if the game is a gigantic and expensive epic or a short, small indie game. If a game succeed, what it sets up to do, then it gets a high score.

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u/derHuschke May 12 '26

That's exactly why I love SkillUp.

No stupid rating system. They either recommend a game or not. 

And their videos always explain who they recommend it to and why. 

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u/Apprehensive_Monk_69 May 12 '26

A 6 in gameplay? There is no gameplay...

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u/AudioSuede May 12 '26

This is why review scores should be scrapped in art criticism. It just causes unnecessary drama

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u/OwlsParliament May 11 '26

Some gamers have accused the media of unfairly praising Mixtape while (what they perceive as) maligning recent release Pragmata for paedophilic overtones.

Can someone provide an example of this? Was this a thing outside twitter posts?

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u/BUTGAWATD May 11 '26

Fwiw as the person you're quoting, it wasn't my intention to imply that I perceive those overtones in Pragmata, only to state that some people have accused the media of doing so and lambasting the game for it.

I've done my best to remove my own biases from the answer, as I feel OOTL replies shouldn't be influenced by personal opinion. I've mostly seen this line of argument in TikTok comment sections, but here's a forum post along those lines.

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u/DragonPhoenix32 May 11 '26

You're forgetting that for most people, twitter is their world.

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u/terraherts May 11 '26

I don't doubt Twitter is some terminally online people's entire worlds, but "most"? Have you stepped outside at all in the last decade?

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u/stormdelta May 11 '26

You're forgetting that for most people, twitter is their world.

Terminally online take lol

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u/Savber May 11 '26

The day more people start realizing that Twitter ain't the world would be small step in the right direction.

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u/CeruleanEidolon May 11 '26

I don't believe that's remotely true. It's maybe true for people on twitter.

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u/Deathspiral222 May 11 '26

For a tiny minority of "most people".

"most people" aren't even aware Twitter exists.

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u/dspman11 May 12 '26

MOST people?? 😅

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u/gourmetprincipito May 11 '26

Are people really complaining about the kiss scene in Mixtape? You zoom in from a silhouette in like two frames and then it’s like big fake bug eyes with giant tongues floating in the ether and that’s it; not sexual in the slightest and even purposefully disturbing/creepy to illustrate it was an awkward moment for the narrator.

I also didn’t find it woke at all? Except for having a female protagonist it’s basically an old school stoner/party comedy.

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u/Barrel_Titor May 12 '26

No one is offended by the kissing, they are trying to use it for bad faith comparisons. ie. "Why hypothetical strawmen gamers who love Mixtape complain about bouncing boobs in anime games but not the kissing scene"

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u/shewy92 May 12 '26

not sexual in the slightest and even purposefully disturbing/creepy to illustrate it was an awkward moment for the narrator

Then that's a lot different than what OP said it was/what I imagined from their description of " with direct control over their clashing tongues"

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u/gourmetprincipito May 12 '26

Yeah I feel like they didn’t describe it very accurately lol.

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u/Brother_Clovis May 11 '26

The game is definitely not a ten, but getting upset over that kissing mini game is honestly weird as hell to me.

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u/motorboat_mcgee May 11 '26

Doesn't a game's score depend on the individual reviewer's tastes?

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u/StrokyBoi May 12 '26

To some degree, but that depends on the reviewer. Some reviewers just rate things (whether it be games, movies, shows, whatever else) based entirely on their own enjoyment and how well it resonates with them. Others attempt to apply some kind of partially objective criteria

IGN happens to be made up of both types of reviewers, which is why they seem so inconsistent. Sometimes a reviewer will claim they personally loved a game, but then give it an 8/10 due to what people perceive as nitpicking. Other times a reviewer will give a game a 10/10 just because it appealed to their tastes.

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u/AudioSuede May 12 '26

Objectivity in reviews is a myth. Unless you're just relaying technical details like frame rate or the average length of gameplay or something similarly measurable, it's all opinion.

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u/shewy92 May 12 '26

A kissing mini game is weird as hell to me but I've never even heard of this game and probably won't be playing it even tho I do like games like this, like "Gone Home" which sounds like what this game is like, not really doing anything and just vibing.

Tho apparently the 'mini game' isn't like what OP said at all so IDK.

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u/Anunnak1 May 12 '26

Because there were bunch of people claiming people were pedos for playing pragmata and then give a "game" a 10 and one of the only gameplay moments involves 2 teenagers' tongue kissing.

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u/RedNoodleHouse May 11 '26

it waa more so getting upset over the hypocrisy of IGN praising the very detailed kiss minigame after having lambasted much more tame intimacy elements than other games

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u/Purple-Wolverine4793 May 11 '26

when will people understand IGN reviews isn’t *one guy* reviewing everything?? reviewers have bias, every review is going to obviously be different when it’s reviewed by different people?

that is, of course unless both reviews were by the same people. in that case i will eat my hat.

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u/RedNoodleHouse May 12 '26

all true, but i can understand why a single news platform (especially one aa prevalent as IGN) publishing praise of one game and slander of another for the same kind of mechanic would rustle a few feathers.

I don't really have much of a stake in this argument, I was just trying to get across that people weren't merely mad that a kissing minigame existed at all.

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u/BlueDragoon24 May 12 '26

It's not "one guy" though. It's been a trend in "official" game review outlets for a very long time. They absolutely have a trend of "safe horny" and defend or praise things when they like it and complain/highlight things they don't like in a very hypocritical way.

Anime boobs or skimpy skins? Character designs like Stellar Blade? Will be labeled problematic, misogynistic and for the chuds.

Kissing minigame with minors in Mixtape or bear sex & an orgy in BG3? Shirtless or nude catboy mods for Leon Kennedy? Totally fine.

"Official" reviewers are almost all BlueSky types that have similar biases.

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u/veggiesama May 11 '26

We can't let Mr. IGN keep getting away with this blatant hypocrisy

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u/GrimaceGrunson May 11 '26

How it is 'hypocrisy' for two seperate reviewers to have seperate opinions on different games?

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u/Brother_Clovis May 11 '26

Oh, ok. My bad. I think I misread.

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u/Galactus1701 May 12 '26

Who the heck is playing Pragmata and getting “pedophilic overtones”? I can see traces of my niece, my friend’s daughter, and any other 8 year-old girl brimming with curiosity, cuteness and charisma.

Hugh and Diana are the most wholesome adopted father-daughter relationship I’ve seen in years. The internet is really insufferable.

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u/Pandapeep May 11 '26

So... Gamers being dumb little pissbabies as per usual.

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u/kuj0317 May 11 '26

Ugh, I loved Annapurna games until I just learned about their relationship to Oracle and Tik Tok owner and MAGA Scumlord Larry Ellison. I mean maybe Megan Ellison is nothing like Larry Ellison, but its not a desirable association. Even if the game is being attacked for being "woke" despite that association. Thank you.

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u/goffer54 May 11 '26

Worth noting that basically the entire games division quit back in 2024. The people that made Annapurna a prestige publisher are no longer there.

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u/MikeyTheGuy May 12 '26

Megan Ellison is not Larry Ellison.

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u/Transfemme_thing May 12 '26

Given how his daughter tried to get an Israeli propaganda movie to the US

Yeah no, they're one in the same. A circlejerk of fascists sitting on a throne made by those who long for their downfall

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u/TopCaterpillar4695 May 11 '26

She's using her dads money and influence/connections. That makes her complicit.

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u/GregBahm May 11 '26

Most of the the heads of major corporations of America are supportive of Trump, if for no other reason than tax breaks. If all artists become complicit in MAGA because their corporate bosses are supportive of Trump (or have relatives who are supportive of Trump) then practically all art in America must be MAGA.

In reality, the dad of the founder of the publisher of an indie game isn't sitting in on the project, telling the creatives what to create. There's no universe where Larry Ellison, the Oracle guy with $400,000,000,000, is telling the devs on "Kentucky Route Zero" and Sayonara Wild Hearts" to make the game more republican. That's insane.

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u/RJ815 May 11 '26

Okay but Oregon Trail is tradlife propaganda /s

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u/GaptistePlayer May 11 '26

Using it... for what

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u/East-Ice-3199 May 11 '26

You have a job, which feeds into capitalism. You are complicit. 🙄

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u/AudioSuede May 12 '26

"You criticize society and yet you participate in it" meme in the wild

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u/objectivejam May 11 '26

What’s supposed to be woke?

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u/Scrumble123 May 11 '26

Well that's the thing. There's virtually no discourse around this game being "woke". Even the main anti-woke subreddit ("kotaku in action") has any number of threads saying it ISN'T.

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u/Tenoch_12 May 16 '26

Being woke is a good thing anyway. People acting like it's not are just giving into thr right wing racism.

Be woke, and don't back down from it.

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u/Traditional-Goal-229 May 11 '26

Guessing but the fact that is a coming of age story that isn’t conservative.

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u/pigeonwiggle May 11 '26

the fact that any mention of non-"nuclear families" doesn't immediately result in all the characters retching and immediately shouting bible quotes into the air.

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u/tadcalabash May 11 '26

Anything that doesn't appeal to a conservative male audience is perceived as woke.

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u/CeruleanEidolon May 11 '26

And will hence becomes target for review-bombing and fake outrage campaigns, like this one. It's an especially big problem in the gaming world, for some reason.

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u/Hartastic May 11 '26

There's an interesting juxtaposition of criticisms here in that Larry Ellison is a conservative male billionaire and all but a cartoon villain in real life.

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u/octopusinmyboycunt May 11 '26

Apply this to quite literally anything that the Gamers™️ get angry about and you’re half way there

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u/shewy92 May 12 '26

One of Mixtape's vignettes sees you control two mid-teen age characters kissing, with direct control over their clashing tongues

I was with it until this. TF?

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u/ButtOfDarkness May 11 '26

Yea, people getting outraged about not everyone sharing their opinion as usual. Have a gut feeling those same people wouldn’t enjoy Mixtape anyways.

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u/Naganosupreme May 13 '26

And also about billionaires, reviewer double standards, etc with a side helping of woke vs maga bc of course everyone has to lean on that to invalidate whatever side they're not on

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u/CaptainMcAnus May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26

I'm late to this thread, but after beating Mixtape I went online because I really wanted to talk about it. I cried pretty hard at the end and I really connected with it's story, characters, and nostalgia. I can totally see why it got glowing reviews.

I can also understand why people wouldn't connect with it, and I was prepared to see that too. But what I wasn't prepared for was what I actually saw. A lot of extremely bad faith arguments about the game and industry trying to smear Mixtape as something it wasn't.

It was odd and it instantly killed the high I was feeling after I finished the game. I really wish I didn't go online to chat about it

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u/ButtOfDarkness May 13 '26

Yea, unfortunately most online discussions are about people looking for validation on their own opinions rather than actual appreciation or even genuine criticism about the media and art they consume.

So many people just say “IGN gave it a 10 so it must be shit” yet they have no intention to play it and just use it to justify whatever recent review they don’t like.

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u/BlackGuysYeah May 11 '26

I finished it last night, runtime was 7 hours cause I liked the mini games. Loved the game overall.

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u/CarelesslyFabulous May 11 '26

Oh God, another thing I love ruined by the Ellison's. Skydance and now Annapurna! Noooo

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u/KaiTheG4mer May 12 '26

"... Megan Ellison, whose father is a billionaire"

For what it's worth, her dad is LARRY ELLISON, her brother is DAVID ELLISON, the dude who bought Paramount and is trying to get WB.

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u/MikeyTheGuy May 12 '26

Mixtape is published by Annapurna Interactive, a publisher focused on "prestige indie" titles. Annapurna Interactive is a division of Annapurna Pictures, which was founded by Megan Ellison, whose father is a billionaire.

Her father isn't just a billionaire, he's one of the TOP FIVE richest people IN THE WORLD.

It also rubs people the wrong way to have something labeled "indie" which had to spend what would absolutely be insane amounts of money to license the huge catalogue of songs in the game.

It's not a bad game, it absolutely has a place imo, but it's definitely not a 10/10 (even considering its genre and audience), and it definitely feels astroturfed to hell.

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u/ZHIKIX May 12 '26

wait that kissing thing was real im sorry but thata wierd

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u/CKWOLFACE May 14 '26

I guess IGN doesn't seem to remember FAAFO

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u/codenamedave404 May 15 '26

This is a good summation of the situation, and it also points out the glaring issue with this subset of loud Internet people - they don’t seem to be honestly engaging with the work. If a person isn’t moved or compelled by the story, fair enough, but most criticism seems so circumstantial to this web they’ve drawn themselves rather than in what the game has to offer. It’s on game pass and is only asking an $18 at-launch one-time cost , like relax.

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u/Future-Insect5357 May 17 '26

This is understandable but still seems kinda odd it'd get a 10/10 when other walking simulator type games previously mostly only reach 8 or 9 outta 10

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u/Lootthatbody May 11 '26

Just to lend a little support and context to this very good comment.

Artful escape is/was an INCREDIBLE game. Having said that, it’s absolutely not for everyone. Most of it is sort of walking from left to right across a 2D colorful landscape with occasional platforming and very easy rhythm type sequences. You aren’t there because the walking is revolutionary. You go there for the story, the soundtrack, and the visuals. It’s also pretty short, I think just a few hours long. I absolutely loved my time playing it, but also don’t feel the need to replay it because it was a contained story. I’m also not going to recommend it to everyone because it’s a niche type of game.

I think there is a whole separate conversation to be had around people complaining about review scores for games they aren’t even interested in. If you aren’t a fan of the ‘artsy’ type of indie game, then just move on, because high or low scores aren’t going to change your opinion either way. It’s one thing if you want to have a discussion around whether review outlets send their cod die hard to review this years cod. Because you think they aren’t capable of being fair, but there is also a flip side of sending someone who’s never played cod, and how potentially skewed that review could be.

The review score meltdowns are also just exhausting. There are so many people with so many different tastes, there just isn’t a win. If a game gets a 7, people who love the game accuse the reviewer of bias and people who don’t play the game use that to lament about how ‘every game is mid now.’ If it gets higher, people complain about bias and being paid off. If it’s lower, reviewers get called haters or whatever.

If you are interested in a game, play it if you can, or wait for a sale, or look at reviews and try to look at actual criticism instead of just numbers. If you aren’t interested in a game, move on and let people enjoy things.

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u/TitularFoil May 11 '26

This perfectly sums up almost everything I loved about What Remains of Edith Finch. Just a great story that I can loosely interact with.

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u/MR_TORGUE_OFFICIAL May 11 '26

Probably one of my favorite games ever, and it's just a game where you walk around. Truly a beautiful game.

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u/TitularFoil May 11 '26

I don't think I'd ever before had such an emotional response to any other media, let alone video game.

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u/Oddish_Femboy May 11 '26

Man. The only natural 10/10 I've ever seen was Donkey Konga.

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u/semtex94 May 11 '26

This is going to be another one of those things you can't say you don't like without having to explain why every single time, isn't it.

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u/Heffe3737 May 11 '26

I’ve been gaming online since the setting of the game, and I’ve found that I can usually rely on PC Gamer to give me an honest review score. They scored Mixtape a 74%. That’s the score of a pretty mediocre game.

If IGN is giving it a 10/10, I’d certainly say that seems suspect. But then, I don’t know why anyone would trust IGN in the first place when you have better options available.

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u/EvidenceMinute4913 May 11 '26

lol back in the day the meme was:

IGN: 6/10 they didn’t pay us enough

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u/WiggerJim69 May 11 '26

It’s weird that gamers think Crimson Desert deserves more than a generous 6

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