I've never heard of Mixtape, but I'm surprised to see such a weirdly contemptuous post about a video game get so much traction on HN. At a glance, critical review aggregators are showing 80+ on this game. Is there some drama or culture war issue here that I'm missing?
Isn't that a pretty well-established genre going back at least to the 1980s? I'm pretty out of date on modern games, but I do remember Heavy Rain being widely acclaimed 15 years ago. There's gotta be something else that explains the vitriol against this new game.
I liked Heavy Rain at the time, I thought the story was compelling, the thought of losing two sons mixed with some horrible stuff à la Saw to try and get one back was interesting.
Mixtape's story isn't interesting, nor are the characters. The protagonist has a superiority complex based on her musical taste, she doesn't have an arc and doesn't evolve/grow by the end. The supporting cast is either annoying or a non-entity. For a game grounded in reality, the characters don't act much like real people.
I think this type of game had its time in the spotlight and then people got bored by it. Same thing happened to point-and-click adventure games and Telltale-style narrative games.
Heavy Rain garnered good reviews, but has aged worse than most of it's contemporary games from 2010. David Cage, the game's director, had his reputation dumpstered and hasn't directed a game in 8 years.
Similar studios like Telltale also ran out of funding, even with recognizable IP like The Walking Dead at their disposal. Just reading the economic tea leaves, Mixtape is the type of oddity that does direct some scrutiny towards the publisher that pushed for it.
Ah, well that must be it then. The stench of culture war was pretty strong in the original comment, so I'm not surprised, although I'm a bit disappointed to see it so front and center on HN (especially given that it was set off by a tiny mostly irrelevant mention in an Apple press release)!
