Mixtape
Leading up to my appointment, Mixtape was far and away one of the most talked-about games at Summer Game Fest, and I wasn’t disappointed. Beethoven and Dinosaur’s adventure game stars a group of teenagers in the ‘90s creating a playlist for their final night together. Each song on the mixtape is accompanied by what is essentially a playable music video animated in a distinct, Spider-Verse-like, stop-motion-esque art style. Every segment is as unique and memorable as the song that accompanies it. The songs are attached to flashbacks of the group’s high school antics, and in just the short time I played, each segment was a rolicking good time full of that kind of “us-against-the-world” hope you feel when you’re a teen who hasn’t had that optimism beaten out of you yet. I want it now, but I’ll have to wait until the full game is released later this year.