Nobody Wants to Die Review (Xbox Series X|S)

Nobody Wants to Die kind of came out of nowhere, right? The brand new IP, developed by an entirely new studio, has been kept largely under wraps since it was first announced earlier this year – and to be honest, we were a little worried about that. Well, those worries were unnecessary; Nobody Wants to Die is a great little cyberpunk detective thriller that will keep you hooked from start to finish – and it plays beautifully on Xbox, too.

The world of Nobody Wants to Die — set in the year 2329 — revolves around the idea of ​​eternal life and how such a concept would affect a society living with that burden. Citizens here effectively swap bodies as problems arise, and as a result, a number of residents are aging — one New Yorker is over 300 years old, and his birthday is celebrated as a national holiday. And yet, the picture is far from rosy for most of the population in Nobody Wants to Die — the rich profit from organ transplants, and the poor live diminished lives as a result.

It’s a pretty intriguing concept, and one that absolutely suits the bleak mood of Nobody Wants to Die. The sun doesn’t shine here – night and heavy rain are also eternal in this world – and the whole game has that seedy atmosphere you’d expect from a gritty cyberpunk thriller. This may be a small game from a small studio, but the Unreal Engine 5 backing really does the heavy lifting – Nobody Wants to Die runs beautifully on Xbox Series X, and feels very ‘AAA’ from a technical perspective.

Where the title does dial things back a bit is in the gameplay department. Nobody Wants to Die revolves around solving cases as a fired police detective gone rogue, and that means you’ll spend a lot of time wandering around environments and finding clues. The various mechanics used to piece those clues together are novel at first – there’s a lot of time rewinding and scene-reconstructing here – but once it’s all introduced early on in the game, it does get a little repetitive. We’re only talking about five or six hours total for a playthrough, so repetition is never a problem. Real a big problem, but don’t expect Nobody Wants to Die to add complex mechanics along the way.

There’s one other key element to the gameplay, and that’s a ‘case board’ type scenario that’s thrown up a few times when you return to your in-game apartment to sort things out. It’s a bit like what we saw in the ‘Mind Place’ in Alan Wake 2, only a little more simplistic – we often found ourselves struggling through these scenes using trial and error with all the clues rather than doing any real detective work. Again, the mechanics are a little superficial, but we did enjoy that bit of downtime in the apartment; soaking up the atmosphere that Nobody Wants to Die lays on thick.

Despite the simplistic gameplay, we never found ourselves bored with the experience, which we think speaks volumes for the world Critical Hit Games has built here. Even though you only get to explore small chunks of rain-soaked 2329 New York, the game world feels larger than life in many ways – some scenes almost remind us of that introduction to Rapture in BioShock, where a living, breathing city filled the landscape – even if much of it has never been explored. If a cyberpunk, BioShock-esque walking simulator with a light detective element sounds like your thing, then we can heartily recommend Nobody Wants to Die – especially at just €20 / $25!

Conclusion

Nobody Wants to Die’s short announcement-to-launch period and ambitious concept made us cautious, but that caution was ultimately unnecessary. It’s a tight, immersive adventure that knows exactly what a great sense of place can do for an experience like this, and we had no trouble finishing the game in one sitting. A little more gameplay depth wouldn’t have gone amiss, and Nobody Wants to Die is a fairly short game overall – but it’s one that’s definitely worth picking up if the visuals and themes on display here appeal to your gaming sensibilities. Now we just need to see some sunshine after we’ve blasted through this one!