{"id":943924,"date":"2026-05-07T14:06:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T14:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/943924\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T14:06:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T14:06:21","slug":"mixtape-review-switch-2-nintendo-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/943924\/","title":{"rendered":"Mixtape Review (Switch 2) | Nintendo Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mixtape<\/a>Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld\/Undocked)<\/p>\n

Wherever you are, whatever you\u2019re doing, you should always make a soundtrack. That\u2019s the advice of Stacey Rockford, the star of this latest musical adventure from Australian studio Beethoven & Dinosaur. Tie every event to a carefully curated track list and \u201cpretty soon,\u201d she advises in her teenage wisdom, \u201cyou won\u2019t be listening to music: you\u2019ll be listening to who you were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Presented as a 3D, third-person adventure, what unfurls \u2014 soundtrack present and correct \u2014 is the story of ’90s high school friends parting ways, and the big blowout on their final night together. Stacey leaves tomorrow to seek fame and fortune as a Hollywood music supervisor. Her two friends, Cassandra and Van, will take an epic road trip down through California from the suburb where they\u2019ve grown up.<\/p>\n

So a party is absolutely called for. And a party is going to require alcohol \u2013 alcohol they can\u2019t legally get their hands on, being under 21. The quest for the hallowed booze is therefore the backbone of the story for most of the game.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s just what you do. As Stacey would tell you, that matters less than what music you do it to. She wastes no time getting the point across, introducing in her musical know-it-all narrator\u2019s voice That\u2019s Good<\/strong><\/a> by Devo. And with those pumping, synthy strains as the accompaniment, you\u2019re off bombing the hill on your skateboards through autumn leaves in the magic light of the low evening sun.<\/p>\n

Gameplay in this first section sets the tone: easygoing, simplistic, and with no real fail state. That said, you can pull tricks, dodge oncoming cars (announced by your friends with endearing shouts of “CAR!”), and scatter leaves. None of its racking up points or anything \u2013 it\u2019s all just for fun.<\/p>\n

\"Mixtape<\/a>Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)<\/p>\n

And this is a game full of fun, living off pure vibes. It works brilliantly, but just be aware what you\u2019re signing up for. With 25 or so licensed tracks put to use, it\u2019s a substantial series of relaxed vignettes, sometimes thrilling, sometimes hilarious, always chill. This is not a game of teenage angst: for the most part, we seem to have some rather privileged kids on our hands, with peachy lives. What drama arises comes later in the story, and doesn\u2019t seem like too big a deal.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s just my old-headed view, since, as Van observes, for teens, everything\u2019s heavy \u2013 \u201ceverything\u2019s the end of the world\u201d. It might all be a bit too dreamy to be relatable, but then the whole game does feel like a dream, like a rose-tinted, misremembered youth. Those easy lives and easy gameplay are on-theme, making for a complete, if emotionally soft, picture.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s the fantasy: a teenagerhood of relative ease. Social confidence, no actual school, and big, beautiful bedrooms (for some, anyway) full of the relics of happy exploits over the years. For those of us who were in fact teenagers in the ’90s, there are some blasts from the past: things you\u2019d like to imagine you remember, like a helicopter police chase in a stolen shopping trolley, and things you actually do remember, like rewinding an audio cassette using a pencil.<\/p>\n

\"Mixtape<\/a>Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld\/Undocked)<\/p>\n

It would be a spoiler to set out all the gameplay ideas or list all the music, since Stacey has the whole night planned out for you on her ultimate mixtape, but you will be, amongst many more things, skateboarding a fair bit, floating rather a lot, seriously rocking out in the car, and creatively squirting slushie masterpieces. The controls are somewhat varied between these moments, but the real variety comes in the form of the wonderful animations and overall visual design.<\/p>\n

The range is impressive. One moment, you\u2019re pinging home runs to The Touch<\/a><\/strong> by Stan Bush, the next you\u2019re detonating fireworks from a flying convertible to Roxy Music\u2019s More Than This<\/strong><\/a>. Yes, some control schemes are repeated \u2014 there really is a lot of floating \u2014 but when you consider there\u2019s about 25 songs\u2019 worth of fun to be had, it\u2019s remarkable that the energy is kept up. What\u2019s repeated doesn\u2019t quite outstay its welcome.<\/p>\n

Equally impressive is the sense of a single, coherent game. Like a great mixtape, this is not just a run of disjointed snippets \u2013 it flows holistically and takes you on a meaningful journey. The worldbuilding is enhanced in slow-paced sections where you need to explore environments, selecting hotspots for a dose of flavour. In a blissful refusal to let any tedium set in, all the hotspots you actually need to hit to progress have been given the yellow paint treatment. These ones are usually objects that trigger a playable flashback or a rewarding cinematic, driving the story along without dawdling.<\/p>\n

\"Mixtape<\/a>Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Docked)<\/p>\n

With progression requirements clearly marked and zero-stakes gameplay, you do need to be ready to buy into the vision here. You need to be up for listening to someone else\u2019s mixtape and accepting their strict curation of your experience. Beethoven & Dinosaur\u2019s last game, The Artful Escape<\/a>, was another low-friction, music-driven game \u2013 a 2D platformer. That game had you \u201cHold Y to shred\u201d \u2013 basically do nothing and watch your character wail on guitar while you run. Mixtape maintains that general attitude, but if holding ‘Y’ to shred wasn\u2019t enough for you, maybe this, with its far greater variety of interactions, will win you over.<\/p>\n

A game verging on ‘interactive experience’ territory had better have great production values, and Mixtape definitely delivers here. The characters look a little like they\u2019re carved from wood or cut from clay, and they\u2019re animated at a low frame rate, resembling stop-motion. The world flies past smoothly and feels responsive; it\u2019s just the characters who have a jerky sort of style. Facial expressions and postures bring endearing characters to life with a sense of fun.<\/p>\n

The audio design is, critically, wonderful. It must have been tough to finesse effects and barks that don\u2019t just irritate when you\u2019re supposed to be enjoying a great tune, but it\u2019s been achieved. The numerous recordings of \u201cCheeseburger!\u201d stand out in delivering a brilliantly playable joke (of which there are a few). Original music has to hold its own against the licensed tracks as well, slotting into the interstitial moments. It does so confidently.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/p>\n

Mixtape\u2019s greatest accomplishment is that it more than lives up to its name. This is a thoughtfully curated collection of music, sure, but before that, it\u2019s an exciting, sentimental, funny game. Rather than simply twiddling your thumbs while the licensed music plays, you\u2019re living life with a soundtrack \u2013 the only way Stacey Rockford would have you do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Captured on Nintendo Switch 2 (Handheld\/Undocked) Wherever you are, whatever you\u2019re doing, you should always make a soundtrack.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,263622,128,270,6082,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-943924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-mixtape","10":"tag-nintendo","11":"tag-nintendo-switch-2","12":"tag-reviews","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116533684224534668","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}