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"M6 features a powerful, larger 12-core GPU that provides higher geometry rates and updated Dynamic Caching to deliver stunning visuals and fluid frame rates in

"M6 features a powerful, larger 12-core GPU that provides higher geometry rates and updated Dynamic Caching to deliver stunning visuals and fluid frame rates in demanding games like Mixtape." Why choose the worst game of the year? Just because it's made by the daughter of Larry Ellison?

kridsdale1 22d ago
Just the other day I mentioned how odd it was that Mixtape felt just like AI-Art. At first glance it has great visual style and seems cool. But spend more than 5 minutes with it and you’ll agree there’s nothing there. It has zero ART inside. It’s one hundred percent vibes. I’m not claiming this title was made by GenAI. I’m saying something much more insulting: that the human artists who made it have no talent.
docmars 22d ago
That's pretty embarrassing. It's such a poor representation of gaming. I'm surprised anyone is still talking about it.
- bigyabai 22d ago
  It would have been funny to see Tomb Raider return for it's 12th annual performance comparison in a 2026 Apple keynote.
  - rxyz 22d ago
    They should have used Cyberpunk or Control. They are few years old now but are native Mac games with ray tracing
- SockThief 22d ago
  Well, there's 24 people still playing it now on Steam
  - dprkh 22d ago
    I never even heard of this game.
tshaddox 22d ago
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?
- boobsbr 22d ago
  It's not a game, think of it as a long FMV sequence which barely requires any input at all through it all, except in one quicktime event.
  - tshaddox 22d ago
    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 I'm pretty out of date on modern games, but I do remember Heavy Rain being widely acclaimed 15 years ago.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.
    - bigyabai 22d ago
      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.
    - boobsbr 20d ago
      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.
surcap526 22d ago
[dead]
JauntyHatAngle 22d ago
Whether or not you don't like the game, it's a weird misrepresentation to say it's made by Megan ellison. She's been the co-founder and major backer of Annapurna for a decade. She's not a developer, she's a publisher, and this game is one of the tons of games Annapurna has put out over a decade. I get that Annapurna is a lightning rod of politics due to ellison and is increasingly under scrutiny for many debates but they are a mainstay of the industry, hardly a blow in, and like it or not, a lot of the games industry and media really like these kinda of artistic pieces, with this being yet another instance of the age old walking simulator debate. It should be judged on its own merits. Not it's Annapurna link and it's not a shock to see it come up in an artsy Apple Mac hipster circle.
- chmod775 22d ago
  Despite all the exposure the game has gotten, it currently has less online players[1] than games like "Tennis Elbow 4"[2] (by a factor of 4). It's not even in the top 5000, because it is objectively terrible. People would rather play the original Life is Strange one more time (despite a remaster being out), than play this game. At some point you really have to start getting suspicious why it keeps coming up. The number of reviews vs. number of actual players online doesn't make sense when compared to peers in its genre either. It has a similar number of reviews as Life is Strange Remastered, but it loses to the 4 years old re-release of an 11 years old story-based game by an order of magnitude. For a genre that that has extremely top-heavy player count charts this doesn't make sense. Funnily enough Life is Strange Remastered had a bit of a revival around that game's release, probably because people decided they'd rather play LiS. Entertainment media entertaining nobody is just objectively bad at its job and the blatant astroturfing and nepo-baby-pampering adds an unsavory dimension to it. 1: https://steamcharts.com/app/2582320 https://steamcharts.com/app/2582320 2: https://steamcharts.com/app/760640 https://steamcharts.com/app/760640
  - JauntyHatAngle 22d ago
    It's not objectively terrible. It's subjective - entirely. It is a 3 hour long game with 4k or so reviews. Life is strange original has 70K reviews and is 14 hours long. The remaster has 4000+ reviews and again, is 14 hours long. These games are also all time favourites that fans do replay from time to time. If has more replayability than mixtape, despite it being fairly linear. A 3 hour one time only game does not retain players on the charts like a game that takes multiple play sessions to finish. Or a game like "tennis elbow" which has far lower max concurrent (like, nowhere near the concurrent max mixtape has) but is a sim game that if it's your jam you will repeatedly come back to. Its very simple - it's not a game for you, and you have to understand that these types of games absolutely have their niche fandoms who love this kind of stuff. There is no conspiracy here, artsy titles like this have always, across all mediums, got a disproportional critical appreciation vs more traditional titles. It's just the same old story. Yes people do like these games. No they are not the majority. Yes you can just ignore it, no it's not a conspiracy.
throwfaraway135 22d ago
The game is considered part of the culture war, but that's not the reason I was surprised to see it, apple is a left leaning company so there is nothing strange about them choosing it from a political perspective. What was surprising was to showcase a game that would run on a potato as the "look it's a capable gaming machine" segment. While you could have choose BG3, any newer AC, The Last of Us remasters etc. all of which are a much better fit. Of course they don't have the name of Larry Ellison associated with it.

kridsdale1 22d ago

Just the other day I mentioned how odd it was that Mixtape felt just like AI-Art. At first glance it has great visual style and seems cool. But spend more than 5 minutes with it and you’ll agree there’s nothing there. It has zero ART inside. It’s one hundred percent vibes. I’m not claiming this title was made by GenAI. I’m saying something much more insulting: that the human artists who made it have no talent.

docmars 22d ago

That's pretty embarrassing. It's such a poor representation of gaming. I'm surprised anyone is still talking about it.

bigyabai 22d ago
It would have been funny to see Tomb Raider return for it's 12th annual performance comparison in a 2026 Apple keynote.
- rxyz 22d ago
  They should have used Cyberpunk or Control. They are few years old now but are native Mac games with ray tracing
SockThief 22d ago
Well, there's 24 people still playing it now on Steam
- dprkh 22d ago
  I never even heard of this game.

tshaddox 22d ago

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?

boobsbr 22d ago
It's not a game, think of it as a long FMV sequence which barely requires any input at all through it all, except in one quicktime event.
- tshaddox 22d ago
  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.
  - bigyabai 22d ago
    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.
  - boobsbr 20d ago
    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.

surcap526 22d ago

[dead]

JauntyHatAngle 22d ago

Whether or not you don't like the game, it's a weird misrepresentation to say it's made by Megan ellison. She's been the co-founder and major backer of Annapurna for a decade. She's not a developer, she's a publisher, and this game is one of the tons of games Annapurna has put out over a decade. I get that Annapurna is a lightning rod of politics due to ellison and is increasingly under scrutiny for many debates but they are a mainstay of the industry, hardly a blow in, and like it or not, a lot of the games industry and media really like these kinda of artistic pieces, with this being yet another instance of the age old walking simulator debate. It should be judged on its own merits. Not it's Annapurna link and it's not a shock to see it come up in an artsy Apple Mac hipster circle.

chmod775 22d ago
Despite all the exposure the game has gotten, it currently has less online players[1] than games like "Tennis Elbow 4"[2] (by a factor of 4). It's not even in the top 5000, because it is objectively terrible. People would rather play the original Life is Strange one more time (despite a remaster being out), than play this game. At some point you really have to start getting suspicious why it keeps coming up. The number of reviews vs. number of actual players online doesn't make sense when compared to peers in its genre either. It has a similar number of reviews as Life is Strange Remastered, but it loses to the 4 years old re-release of an 11 years old story-based game by an order of magnitude. For a genre that that has extremely top-heavy player count charts this doesn't make sense. Funnily enough Life is Strange Remastered had a bit of a revival around that game's release, probably because people decided they'd rather play LiS. Entertainment media entertaining nobody is just objectively bad at its job and the blatant astroturfing and nepo-baby-pampering adds an unsavory dimension to it. 1: https://steamcharts.com/app/2582320 https://steamcharts.com/app/2582320 2: https://steamcharts.com/app/760640 https://steamcharts.com/app/760640
- JauntyHatAngle 22d ago
  It's not objectively terrible. It's subjective - entirely. It is a 3 hour long game with 4k or so reviews. Life is strange original has 70K reviews and is 14 hours long. The remaster has 4000+ reviews and again, is 14 hours long. These games are also all time favourites that fans do replay from time to time. If has more replayability than mixtape, despite it being fairly linear. A 3 hour one time only game does not retain players on the charts like a game that takes multiple play sessions to finish. Or a game like "tennis elbow" which has far lower max concurrent (like, nowhere near the concurrent max mixtape has) but is a sim game that if it's your jam you will repeatedly come back to. Its very simple - it's not a game for you, and you have to understand that these types of games absolutely have their niche fandoms who love this kind of stuff. There is no conspiracy here, artsy titles like this have always, across all mediums, got a disproportional critical appreciation vs more traditional titles. It's just the same old story. Yes people do like these games. No they are not the majority. Yes you can just ignore it, no it's not a conspiracy.

throwfaraway135 22d ago

The game is considered part of the culture war, but that's not the reason I was surprised to see it, apple is a left leaning company so there is nothing strange about them choosing it from a political perspective. What was surprising was to showcase a game that would run on a potato as the "look it's a capable gaming machine" segment. While you could have choose BG3, any newer AC, The Last of Us remasters etc. all of which are a much better fit. Of course they don't have the name of Larry Ellison associated with it.