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

Nobody Wants to Die has sort of come out of nowhere, hasn't it? The brand-new IP, developed by an entirely new studio, has largely been kept under wraps since its initial announcement earlier this year - and in truth, that had us a bit worried about what we were in for. Well, that worry was needless; Nobody Wants to Die is a great little detective cyberpunk thriller that immerses you from beginning to end - and it's absolutely gorgeous on Xbox to boot.

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 that lives with that burden. Citizens here effectively switch bodies when issues arise, and that results in some aging inhabitants - one New Yorker has surpassed 300 years old and their birthday is being celebrated like a public holiday. And yet, the picture certainly isn't that rosy for most people in Nobody Wants to Die - the rich are profiteering from body transfers and the poor are living diminished lives as a result.

It's quite an intriguing concept, and one that definitely matches the moody atmosphere of Nobody Wants to Die. The sun doesn't shine here — night time and heavy rain are also eternal in this world — and the whole game has that seedy feel to it that you'd expect to see from a gritty cyberpunk thriller. This might be a small game from a small studio, but its Unreal Engine 5 backing is doing some real heavy lifting - Nobody Wants to Die is gorgeous on Xbox Series X and feels very 'AAA' from a technical perspective.

Where the title pares things back somewhat is in the gameplay department. Nobody Wants to Die revolves around solving cases as an axed police detective gone rogue, and that means lots of your time is spent simply walking around environments and finding clues. The various different mechanics used to piece those clues together are novel at first — there's lots of rewinding time and reconstructing scenes here — but once it's all been introduced early on it does become a tad repetitive. We're only talking five or six hours total for a playthrough so repetitiveness is never really a big issue, but yeah, don't expect Nobody Wants to Die to start layering on any complex mechanics as it goes on.

There is one other key element to the gameplay, and that's a 'case board' type of scenario that it throws up a few times when you return to your in-game apartment to figure things out. It's a bit like what we saw from the 'Mind Place' in Alan Wake 2 but a tad more simplistic - we often just cheesed our way through these scenes by using trial-and-error with all of the clues rather than actually using much detective work. Again, the mechanic is somewhat shallow, but we did like that little bit of apartment downtime; soaking in the atmosphere that Nobody Wants to Die layers on thick.

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