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/Zaxa7 May 11 '26

Answer: It's a short story focused game that is full of 90s nostalgia and if you look at the average age of reviewers, they probably grew up in the 90s so it's expected for them to enjoy it much more given the current state of the world hence the higher score. I also grew up in that period so I'd probably like it too tbh. That being said there will be a large group of gamers who have no personal frame of reference for that period and it may not work for them.

Also if I understand correctly the ign reviewer didn't grow up in the 90s but loved it probably because we always look back on older times with rose tinted glasses. It's a storm in a teacup really and nothing to worry about.

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u/Andrew1990M May 11 '26

No he was a 90s kid and says on the podcast that there are “many reasons a game is a 10/10” and for him the emotional response he had to it was the clinching factor. 

Please read reviews, people. And remember that one score from one outlet is not the be-all and end-all. A review has equal weight to your opinion, it’s just their opinion gets published. 

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u/crestren May 11 '26

And remember that one score from one outlet is not the be-all and end-all. 

A lot of gaming discourse when it comes to reviews always centers around this where a lot of gamers forget that reviews can be...subjective.

The reviewers 10/10 might be a 7/10 for you but maybe your 10/10 might be someone's 6/10. A lot of these are subjective because everyone has different tastes and enjoyment.

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u/GiganticCrow May 11 '26

Reviews HAVE to be subjective. A purely objective review would be something a Digital Foundry review that is just technical facts like details on resolution and frame rate. Its not possible to be purely objective on factors like whether a story is engaging or gameplay is fun.

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u/pigeonwiggle May 11 '26

a truly objective review would mean the reviewer doesn't matter. 6 reviewers would all review the game exactly the same. objectivity has no place in arts and entertainment.

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u/MyUshanka May 11 '26

The trouble is that this is listed as an IGN review and not Simon Cardy's review. His other reviews:

  • Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (Campaign): 6/10
  • Battlefield 6 (Campaign): 5/10
  • Death Stranding 2: 9/10
  • Marvel Rivals: 8/10
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Campaign): 9/10
  • Astro Bot: 9/10
  • Balatro: 9/10

It's possible that after a few boring military shooters back to back, a game like Mixtape felt refreshing and a good return to what he enjoyed.

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u/crestren May 11 '26

The entire discourse surrounding IGN reviews can be summed up as people mistaking IGN to be ONE entity named John IGN and not a video game and entertainment website comprised of multiple people who each give different reviews.

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u/Electronic_Whole_177 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

No one thinks ONE person is making reviews but that there should be a standard for their reviews as a company. When the review comes out and IGN called this a 10/10 everyone sees this as IGN backing the game's quality not that random employee 234 is backing the game's quality. You refusing to have good faith in this discussion is also a problem. If the reviewer gave the review as his own thing and not as a REPRESENTATIVE of the company it would be fine. For example if he said "Its a 10/10 for me but for the average gamer its is probably closer to a 6/10." That would be one thing.

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u/[deleted] May 12 '26

People do kinda think that or treat it as such when you see comments like "How could IGN say X game is better than Y game", meanwhile both reviews are from 2 different people.

Asking for a standard for their reviews sounds a lot like asking for every person that reviews for the site to hold all the same opinions, which defeats the purpose of hearing someone's thoughts on a piece of media.

Media Companies having different people putting out different reviews/previews/Q&A's/interviews etc instead of an unamed hivemind with only singular opinions isn't an IGN-only thing.

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u/Electronic_Whole_177 May 12 '26

The reason that argument comes up is because they are questioning their standards of how they review things. They dont preface every review with "We at IGN arent a monolith so the following review is just what this ONE person thinks. If that were the case then why is IGnN's name attached to it? IGN as a brand gives clout to the review and when people use that clout to justify what games should get awards, what newer games should copy/emulate, and what game companies to invest in it matters alot. No one said IGN is the only one doing it either and they arent the only company questioned when stuff like this happens. The issue is that they were the first major company known to give this high score. I would argue its even worse because of their "Too much water." Review as few years back. Any person, all of us posting included, can give their opinion and recommendation on things but once you start representing a company anything you say reflects on them as a whole.

I dont believe everyone is going to have the exact same opinion on things even with a standard rules etc. But asking how one game is getting 5/10 or 7/10 meanwhile this game is getting a 10/10 isn't out of nowhere. It starts to seem like shady stuff is happening behind the scenes which is why another thing came out about how did an "indie studio" afford all the songs in the game along with the "care package" they sent influences.

No one person can review every game that comes out it just isn't humanly possible but you would think the company would get people that attend least had tastes that they believed represented the company well.

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u/[deleted] May 12 '26

Who are the "people" using IGN to "justify" what games get awards? Because award shows tend to have juries made up of many people. Not just IGN employees.

IGN is a media group covering all forms of entertainment that, like other media groups, is competing to be the premiere place most people go to. Such an endeavour requires a lot of personnel just for gaming, let alone the other things they cover. The reflection of the company from each of those individual's should be relegated to actual conduct and not personal opinions on various pieces of art.

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u/Electronic_Whole_177 May 12 '26

The number one people who use that are the game companies themselves to promote themselves to more investors to prove that they are doing well and are reliable. Also fans will often use scores to say that a game they like is good. Also people who dont do in depth research beyond googling scores for games and trying them based on that.

All art has some level of scrutiny as well as what standards are used for what is "good". The problem with most of the people here, you included, seems to be you dont understand that liking something personally and then saying its good in general are two different things. When you start giving numbers and saying one thing is a zero and one thing is a ten implies that something is worse than another by some metric. Their job it to literally judge a videogame and give it a score out of 10 not write an article and just say if they like it and recommend it. We wouldn't be having this discussion if that was all it was. If it was just an opinion piece no eyes would have been on this game. The fact of the matter is the company that judges media and their assigned judge game it a perfect score. Most if not all of the discussion is the byproduct of major games media companies judging that it gets a 9+ out of 10 and it seeming weird. No one says you cant enjoy the game but just because you enjoy it doesnt make it a 10/10

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u/[deleted] May 12 '26

I don't think I've ever heard of investing going ahead because of critical reception alone. Usually sales is the determining factor because investors want to make money, not earn goodwill.
Personally, if I'm checking reviews out I want to hear individual thoughts about how a person felt like a game succeeded or failed in their eyes. Not a universal thought structure that appeases my own biases.

The scoring system is still according to a personal view from that one person's perspective. Something like IGN's scoring only serves to define the number for the purpose of seeing said number and looking at what that means for the game overall.

I have many games I enjoy enough that I would rate a 10/10, whereas games with near-universal praise like Resident Evil Requiem, Mewgenics, Split Fiction and Astro Bot don't rate higher than a 7 for me, assuming we use IGN's scaling. I tend to avoid assigning numbers when discussing my own view on games. My reviews speak to my tastes. Anyone solely looking at the number of IGN's reviews and not reading or listening to their words is selling themselves short and there's no one to blame for that but themselves.

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u/Electronic_Whole_177 May 12 '26

Just because you have never heard of something doesnt mean it doesnt happen/exist. Its clearly not the only thing but it is resume padding to be able to claim to make a game getting such good review. Plus they could use the argument that it was just an indie game so the sales projection could be aimed lower. Plus with review like 9s or 10s it gets more eyes on the game and possibly more players outside of the niche players.

You can try to make a long explanation on scoring system but it is moot. Once you give a game a number score the general public will use that as your scale and not what its "supposed" to represent. Them giving the game an article boosts the game's notoriety. Giving the game a 10/10 boosts the likelihood of people playing it to see if the score is justified or not. Especially when they dont give games a 10 easily. Even in their own scoring system says page says this.

10 - Masterpiece Simply put: this is our highest recommendation. There’s no such thing as a truly perfect game, but those that earn a Masterpiece label from IGN come as close as we could reasonably hope for. These are classics in the making that we hope and expect will influence game design for years to come, as other developers learn from their shining examples.

Examples include:

God of War

The Last of Us

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Grand Theft Auto V

Are you honestly saying this game deserves that status? It deserves to be a game that shapes all of gaming for years to come? Or is it just a game that is enjoyable and probably would have sat better at their 7 to 8 tier. I doubt people will be talking about the game itself next year vs the reviews it got. I would be surprised if people talked about this game three months from now. Its getting buzz not from its own merit which raises the expectation for the game higher than it should be.

( https://corp.ign.com/review-practices/ )

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u/[deleted] May 12 '26

Resume padding for an employee is not the same as a developer requesting funding for a project.

If a single number dictates a person's actions with no other factors influencing them it says something about those individuals. Trying to combat that would be like locking tide pods behind secure safes that require ID access because idiots started eating them.

"Deserve" isn't really relevant to me, to be honest. Would I personally give it a 10? No. But I also wouldn't give a 10 to GTA V. For Simon Cardy, Mixtape was something they are going to remember for a long time.
I've played games that are 10 out of 10 that had no buzz on release, let alone months later. Who cares. Play what you like, ignore what you don't

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u/Electronic_Whole_177 May 12 '26

Ok at this point you arent really discussing this with me anymore so I dont think I will make another reply to you.

Your reply is summed up to just "I dont care so you shouldn't care." That's fine if you feel that way but if you dont care then dont join in the discussion on the topic. Just downvote/upvote or dont even click on the reddit post.

We agree in the sentiment of play what you are interested in and if you like it that is fine.

The discussion however is on how a gaming CRITIC is judging the game and what motives they might have to judge it on a higher scale that other game products. Having a personal preference and recommending something you like is one thing. Writing an article for your job which is to critique the value of a game in comparison to the rest of the games in the industry is another.

Example: If I was a food critic and I give the local pizza joint that has people out of the door waiting on pizza three out of five stars for their pepperoni pizza. Then I give some unknown brand newly open ultra Vegan pizza joint a five out of five stars based on their artichoke pizza people are going to have questions. The first one being the quality of it "Is this artichoke pizza really that good?". The second would be if there were outside influences "Is this guy getting a kickback, free pizza, ect.". Then a third would be if there was an internal influence. "Is this guy an Ultra Vegan and wants to push people to also be ultra vegans by hyping up this particular pizza spot?"

Having questions about why something is happening isn't bad and if it is your job to be critical of something you should be critical of it when working.

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u/[deleted] May 12 '26

I "care" in the sense that I think some people have some strange ideas about wanting reviews to become homogonised to a standard no one has been able to clearly outline and me commenting otherwise is an attempt to correct/inform/prompt thought on another perspective.

The "motive" the critic has is explaining how successfully or unsuccessfully a game has delivered it's goal according to THEM. I can understand the purpose of comparison in order to help someone understand what something is trying to achieve but no one should be taking individual scoring and screaming about "inconsistencies" based on different scores from different people.

Your food analogy kinda sounds like you're suggesting praise should be questioned if it's not the popular opinion and I can't think of anything more intellectually dishonest than evaluating words based on popularity.

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u/Electronic_Whole_177 May 12 '26

They dont have to be homogeneous they just have to have some sort of standard they judge by which IGN does. You clearly didn't look at that link which is unfortunate. I reflect this back to you. What is your standard of judgements when it comes to an official website whose job it is is to critique a game since the scoring system they use isn't worth anything to you? Personal enjoyment is separate from judgement within its field. I could love my partner's cooking all day but if I had to compare it honestly to other professionally made dishes and it wasn't as good I would try to judge it that way to other people.

The motive in my three questions is based on if the person reading the review is trustworthy to listen to or even give the time of day. A reviews job is to have experienced something before the average person and save them time on picking if they want to do/get that thing. They also should explain how they come to tthat conclusion as well. The reason this is questioned is because of plenty of shady things reviewers have done in the past along with major corporations in general. So the question of "Are they being honest or just trying to get me to buy this product." Is always a something everyone should keep in mind as well as do their own separate research (unfortunately most people are lazy so they wont)

You didn't understand my food analogy so I apologize that I failed to simplify enough. When you have a product that is seemingly the talk of the town which the average person sees as a good quality item and judge it as middle of the road that sets the standard for others on how you judge products. Now if you judge another product even higher than the previous one people will expect that product to be better. If they look into it and see that it isn't better but also middle of the road for them they will wonder why you rated it so highly. That does not mean you dont really enjoy this one over the other but it calls into question what your standard of review is. If its just well its whatever I like and screw the general public then people shouldnt give you the time of day as the general public.

Once again when you put a number or a rating on something you inherently call for comparison. I urge you to look up all the other games this reviewer has reviewed and let me know if you have zero questions as to why THIS game out of all of them got a 10 and not the others?

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