Mixtape Review

“All my life I’ve been obsessed with adolescence, drunk on it. Even when I was little, I knew that teenagers sparkled. I knew they knew something children didn’t know, and adults ended up forgetting.”

That was Lorde, ten years ago on her 20th birthday, in a Facebook post titled A NOTE FROM THE DESK OF A NEWBORN ADULT. This piercing observation struck the hearts of many and still floats around today, now part of internet mythology, unknowingly immortalising the bygone Tumblr era of sincere-posting. In just a few short sentences, Lorde captured the electricity of that fleeting, magical time in our lives.

Mixtape, the second title from BAFTA-winning Aussie studio Beethoven & Dinosaur, captures that feeling and ramps it up to one thousand. Set in Blue Moon Lagoon, a small town in California, it’s a 90s coming-of-age story about three friends: Stacey Rockford, Cassandra Morino and Van Slater. It’s the last night of their high school careers, and Rockford’s last night in town before moving to the Big Apple. The stakes are high, but so are the vibes.

Rockford is somewhat of a genius when it comes to creating playlists, so much so that it’s drawing her to New York to pursue a career as a Music Supervisor, and she’s created the ultimate soundtrack to commemorate this most momentous of evenings. Each track serves as a countdown to their final party together, Camille Cole’s Birthday Bash, where they will undoubtedly make memories to last a lifetime. 

Rockford’s playlist is so cohesive that the events of the day leading up to the party, along with a collection of flashbacks from the past couple of years, flow as freely as the sands of time. The tracks change as you move between reality and memory, shifting from present to past and back again. In her own words: “Always make a soundtrack because, pretty soon, you won’t be listening to music, you’ll be listening to who you were”.

You spend most of your time hanging out in one of the trio’s bedrooms or at their secret hideout, The Shitty Ritz, philosophising about life and the future – a time-honoured tradition for this genre of teenager. You explore the spaces, inspecting objects to trigger dialogue and initiate flashbacks of past misadventures and defining moments. 

There’s a sequence in which Rockford and Slater must navigate a shopping trolley with a drunken Cass in the basket to escape from the police, who are led by none other than Cass’s overprotective father. More and more police cars join the chase and set up road blocks, while a helicopter beams its spotlight down on them and the local news broadcasts the footage. The scene reaches its crescendo as they hurtle off the end of the pier, and dolphins leap into the air around them as they emerge from the water victorious.

“At least that’s how I remember it,” Slater says as you snap back to reality. This sprinkling of imagination adds a magical quality to the player experience. Not only are the friends viewing their past with rose-coloured glasses, they’re showing you a half-truth, half-dream that captures the emotion of the moment and the music that goes with it. There were times later in the narrative where I got goosebumps from the feelings these stories stirred up for me. 

At times, these vignettes did go on a little too long, but that allowed for a shift in my consciousness, where I could appreciate the on-screen vibes while I was reminiscing about my own adolescent memories. Granted, my high school experience was an [un]healthy mix of Skins, Euphoria and Summer Heights High, as opposed to the Empire Records, Ferris Bueller and The Breakfast Club aura that Mixtape is emanating. The bittersweet nostalgia in this game is omnipotent.

The dialogue and cutscenes are interspersed with a variety of mini-game-like interactive segments. Refreshingly, all of them are entertaining and further the plot. I particularly enjoyed the drunken visit to the video rental store. I took one look at the “Be Kind, Rewind” sign on the counter before spinning around and knocking over an entire shelf of VHS tapes, much to the dismay of the clerk.

I was fully enamoured by the rock skipping mini-game – something I never thought I’d say. I must have spent over an hour experimenting with it because just when I thought I couldn’t possibly skip the rock any further across the lake, I’d spot a new target in the distance. I’d aim for it, only to feel shock and delight when I managed to hit it. It really is the simple things.

The controls being fine-tuned to this degree of accuracy, ultimately leading to an offhand mini-game turning into a memorable experience in its own right, really just exemplifies what Beethoven & Dinosaur has managed to achieve with Mixtape. It’s so incredibly polished.

The writing from Johnny Galvatron heavily contributes to this sense of polish. The overall narrative follows a satisfying arc, holding up as a spiritual successor to the famous coming-of-age films that inspired it. The characters feel real in their idiosyncrasies, both in how they are written and performed. 

There are hot one-liners scattered everywhere throughout the script. This led me to hunt down every possible interactable object, scouring the screen for dialogue options in fear of missing a zinger. One of my favourites came from the trio discussing the college kids returning to Blue Moon Lagoon for the party:

“Will they seem, y’know, grown up?” Cass asked. “What does that mean? Like, disassociated? Bored of sex and drugs?” Slater replied in his distinctive shaka brah drawl. I couldn’t help but feel a little pained by the accuracy of that statement.

The other major player in the narrative is the music; the soundtrack is its own character. Through a carefully curated collection of songs from the 70s, 80s and 90s, your emotions are moulded like clay in warm hands. You feel all the elation of a teenager zipping through the neighbourhood on a skateboard to That’s Good by DEVO and all the melancholy of being misunderstood as you play with a plasma globe to Roads by Portishead. It doesn’t matter whether the music fits within the cultural zeitgeist of your upbringing, or even if it’s your taste. It transcends all.

Final Thoughts

Mixtape captures lightning in a bottle. For a few short hours, it reclaims the elusive essence of youth, optimism and freedom of a time period that feels so distant now. At one point, Rockford says, “When things are changing, everything you’re losing walks across your mind in a little parade.” That bounced around in my brain like a dizzying Windows 95 screensaver long after the credits rolled. It drew out fond memories and not-so-fond ones, and perhaps even made me reach new conclusions about my own experience. Whatever it is that Lorde proclaims that adults have forgotten about life, I think Mixtape helped me remember it, even if just momentarily.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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