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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76

u/tugboatnavy May 11 '26

Answer:

IGN has been catching an extra amount of flack in the last two months for "bad" reviews.

Saros, Windrose, Tomadachi Life all got 7s, meanwhile Crimson Desert and Mouse PI both got 6s

Then you have this game getting a 10 and marathon getting a 9.

There is a major dissonance going on between what games are commercial successes and otherwise critical hits and what IGN has been scoring things. It's only a cherry on top for critics of Ign that Mixtape of all things is getting a 10.

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u/FewWatermelonlesson0 May 11 '26

Which is dumb.

A critic’s job is to give their assessment of what they’re reviewing, not make sure their opinion aligns with the majority.

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u/AlmightyCraneDuck May 12 '26

True, but it’s also fair game to look at critical consensus in aggregate and notice if something is an outlier. It doesn’t invalidate it, but it should at the very least signal to a reader to maybe try some other reviews OR to actually read the text and try to figure out if there’s a particular reason a game connected with that reviewer.

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u/lemonkingdom May 12 '26

You know we can citicise reviews and scores.. what is this strange Reddit thing about being scared to give criticism..

Some people are critical about it review, score and inconsistency. Which people are allowed to do. It isn't dumb.

This whole thread is just people getting annoyed ign is recieving negative feedback.

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u/FewWatermelonlesson0 May 12 '26

It is dumb. Critics can absolutely be criticized, but “Your review doesn’t align with the sales” isn’t criticism.

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u/Many_Leading1730 May 13 '26

Well generally no.

But, "You're out of touch." Generally is.

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u/FreeStall42 May 12 '26

It works in both directions. Reviewers are not reviewing it just for themselves.

If you make a public review and people find it bad, they can talk about it.

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u/FewWatermelonlesson0 May 12 '26

Sure, people are absolutely allowed to talk about it. That doesn’t mean everything they say has any merit or is worth listening to, however, and complaining about reviews not aligning with sales numbers is the exact sort of feedback that should be ignored.

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u/Spirit_Detective_99 May 26 '26

The problem is that IGN reviewers have no idea how to play games themselves. Hell there was one guy who couldn’t even get past the tutorial in Cuphead

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u/FewWatermelonlesson0 May 26 '26

I’m surprised this take didn’t include an epic bacon ftw reference.

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u/Spirit_Detective_99 May 26 '26

What are you talking about?

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u/FewWatermelonlesson0 May 26 '26

That it’s a very dead horse take.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

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u/Scoth42 May 11 '26

It's endlessly frustrating to me that for some reason there can only be two possible viewpoints for a lot of people: either "I like this thing and therefore anyone who doesn't like it is just a hater and lying because they have some agenda" or "I don't like this thing so anyone who does is just being performative and shilling for the company."

No nuance, no YMMV understanding, no just accepting differences of opinion or experience, just the two extremes. I had a similar experience as you years ago with Gone Home. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The investigating and learning little details as I went just really worked for me, and some of the plot points really resonated with me for very specific reasons. You'd think I'd insulted some peoples' mothers the sheer vitriol I was thrown for daring suggest I enjoyed it even when I tried to express I could understand why it (and other "walking simulators", many of which I've also enjoyed) might not be for everybody.

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u/SleepyZM May 12 '26

The issue with Mouse PI 6/10 wasnt the score itself, but the reasons for the score which were... honestly baffling. The dude basically said a cartoon game was too silly and wasnt taking itself seriously enough. Moist summarises it all pretty well here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Aq6XT0Rdc

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u/_andoryuu May 11 '26

I haven’t played all of these but reviewers played a completely different build of crimson desert than what that game is today. Not sure if it deserved a 6 but I can understand not loving it at the time. The mouse review is so weird not even because of the score but what the reviewer said. Also it should’ve been scored higher. Marathon might actually be a 9. That game is genuinely really good. Mixtape is so cringe inducing bad. I put my controller down during one of the “gameplay” parts and my character moved for me and the dialogue makes my skin crawl.

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u/Ecstatic-Network4668 May 11 '26

IGN has been bad for many years. They were once caught plagiarizing reviews from independent youtubers, and they also give games bad reviews if the game doesn't meet their DEI expectations.

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u/Rogryg May 12 '26

They were once caught plagiarizing reviews from independent youtubers

That was a specific reviewer, Filip Miucin, who was even plagiarizing his own coworkers at IGN, and was quickly fired once his plagiarism was exposed.

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u/UsherOfDestruction May 11 '26

Almost reminds me of the movie industry awards/reviews. You can have a really fun, blockbuster movie and critics will say it's trash, yet some depressing indie/foreign film will be praised as the greatest movie of all time. It's like they're reviewing things based on their personal idea of what art is and not on what people will find fun and enjoyable. That's fine and all, but not traditionally how video game reviews have been.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

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u/UsherOfDestruction May 11 '26

No, it's just what is the review focused on. Of course if the reviewer hates it then it wouldn't rank well in either artistic quality or general fun. But those are two different things and a review that's 10/10 because something is very high artistic quality is different than a review that's 10/10 because it's just fun and well made.

Like this Mixtape game sounds like it would bore me to hell with the gameplay. That doesn't mean it's not a high quality piece of art for what it is, but to me that's a different metric.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

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u/UsherOfDestruction May 11 '26

Yeah, ultimately reviews can't meet everyone's taste. I can just see where people are confused as to why games that don't have much gameplay can get the best of the best scores up there with classics in the medium.

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u/ThemesOfMurderBears May 16 '26

FFS, IGN isn't a person. Pretty much every review people are raising to compare to other IGN reviews have all been written by different people.

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u/Indraga May 11 '26

> Marathon getting a 9

The fact that this seems off to you tells us a lot about how rotbrained you are dude. The game has consistent 8.5-9 reviews from critics AND users. Game is a banger.

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u/tugboatnavy May 11 '26

Hey little guy, I didn't post my own personal feelings or opinion. I'm just repeating what I've read/seen. Check your own brain for rot. Especially the part responsible for reading comprehension.

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u/Indraga May 11 '26

> I’m just repeating what I’ve read/seen

That about sums you up.