Review of “Nobody Wants to Die” – A Slightly Different Cyberpunk

Somewhat subtle marketing meant that I only learned about the detective adventure game Nobody Wants to Die a few weeks before its release. But as soon as I saw the trailer, I knew I wanted to play it. And I’m certainly not the only one who was drawn to the game from Critical Hit Games at first sight. It’s also the first work of these Polish developers, at least under the banner of this team, because they don’t hide the fact that they have several veterans in their ranks. In addition, the release was taken care of by Plaion, a company part of the Swedish giant Embracer Group. We may have had high hopes from the enticing trailers, but did the game live up to them?

• Platform: PC (tested version), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
• Publication date: 17.07.2024
• Developer: Critical Hit Games
• Publisher: Playon
• Genre: First person adventure game
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: No
• File size: 26 GB
• Play time: ~6.5 hours
• Price: 24.99 EUR (Steam)

Played in the lineup:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-13600K
• FRAME: 32GB DDR5 6000MT/s
• Graphic card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 (16GB VRAM)
• Storage: Solidigm P44 Pro (2TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD)

Dystopian New York

The title takes place in the distant future, namely in the year 2329. The Earth has changed greatly in that time, the growing problem of air pollution has led to the extinction of many plants and animals, and humans, at least those with a little wealth, have moved from the garbage-strewn soil of the American big city to the upper floors of New York skyscrapers, between which they travel in flying cars.

However, the greatest convenience today is something completely different – achieving immortality, at least theoretically. A person’s consciousness is preserved after death and can be transferred to a new body. This is the third time that detective James Carr has experienced such a situation, who, together with his new partner Sarah Kai, gets another case. Instead of a routine case, it turns out to be a search for a serial killer who managed to kill a high-ranking politician. And forever.

When Cyberpunk Meets Art Deco

But before we get into the story, I would like to start with the visuals, which already stood out in the trailer and certainly did not disappoint in the game itself. The action takes place in a dirty dystopian New York, combining cyberpunk with a touch of art deco, it is extremely attractive and thanks to this, you will sometimes simply enjoy the view of a living metropolis or the luxurious interiors of local skyscrapers.

But style is only one part, and the visuals are so strong mainly due to the absolutely top-notch technical side, which surprised me a lot. It should have no problems even compared to AAA games, including other games running on UE5. Excellent lighting, detailed environments, carefully designed character models, great facial expressions and other animations – it’s everything and more than I could ever wish for. In addition, the atmosphere is enhanced by excellent sound design and ambient music.

Starring immortality

But this is an adventure game, so the story is one of the main aspects, and there are unfortunately not many caveats here. At the same time, the basis sounds very promising, and the developers have managed to build a very complex dystopian world, which you learn more about through various documents, newspapers, radio and other sources of information. New York is currently in crisis, the situation is tense and there is a constant threat of protests by ordinary citizens, which may not be entirely peaceful. All this sounds great, but all the “drama” happens only in the background, and we can essentially only see the general action peripherally, which is a shame.

Of course, the big topic is immortality and its positive effects, as well as subtle pitfalls. In this sense, there is nothing revolutionary. That with an idyllic at first glance life everything will not be so rosy, we can read, for example, in my favorite book “Veca Makropoulos” by Karel Capek, but it must be said that “Nobody Wants to Die” focuses on slightly different aspects, mainly related to body swapping, and not a bad one at that.

The characters hold a point of view that they simultaneously refute.

Moreover, although it is understandably related, the game focuses on the psychological side of James Kara, his overcoming of the loss of his partner and the gradually developing relationship with his colleague Sarah Kai, who at first keeps her distance from him, but then usually, they still find their way back to each other. The story certainly could have been like that, if not for a rather fundamental problem – the script.

I admit, I don’t think this has happened to me in any other game, at least not recently, but in Nobody Wants to Die I found myself dwelling on what just came out of a character’s mouth a few times. It’s not uncommon for a character to utter a meaningful sentence only to have it immediately followed by the complete opposite or just plain nonsense that doesn’t fit the character. I don’t want to throw out the entire script here, because there are some very strong, emotional moments or funny dialogue, but the weaker ones are too obvious.

In any case, it should be added that all this is often saved by the extraordinary acting, especially that of James and Sarah, but also by the secondary characters, who have nothing to complain about and who fit the characters perfectly. Philip Sacramento as James acts like a real noir detective, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes consciously parodying the heroes of old films.

Choosing a plot, or the traditional double-edged sword

This is not the end of the story, unlike many other adventure games, Nobody Wants to Die is not completely linear, during the game you will have to make a relatively large number of choices. Whether it is small disagreements in dialogues or a relatively fundamental moral decision. At least that is how they seem at first glance.

Several times in the story you come to a point where you have a seemingly important choice to make, and the game lets you know about it with the traditional indicator that this decision will mean something later, as we know from games by Telltale, Supermassive, or Dontnod. The problem is that, unlike those three companies’ titles, this system doesn’t quite work. Any decision marked this way usually results in only a minor mention in mid-dialogue and ultimately has no impact on the plot. That is, except for one decision.

The game has several endings, but only one of them can be called a true ending, the others, unfortunately, feel very unsatisfactory. Personally, I got probably the worst option, although I made, at least in hindsight, very strong decisions during the game. But it depends on one single thing you do about an hour before the end, and you have absolutely no chance of knowing that this is the key choice that will determine the outcome of your journey. I was really disappointed in this aspect, and it would probably have been better if the game had been strictly linear.

Games with time

But I would finally move on to the gameplay, which I was quite pleasantly surprised by. Instead of the classic “walking simulator”, you will find several game mechanics. In addition to investigating the crime scene and subsequently found evidence, you will be able to use three devices. The UV lamp will help you control the blood, and the X-ray will be used for hidden cables and wires. But, of course, the most interesting is the reenactor, who, as the name suggests, can reconstruct past events.

This is the part that is really fun, as you get to seemingly disparate moments of the whole event through various victims and objects, and then piece together the full picture. Although the game guides you with yellow markers, there is nothing stopping you from walking around the scene and rewinding time to find out what each character was doing at any given moment. And that there is no shortage of all sorts of details. It actually worked, perhaps only if I ignore the fact that the reconstruction is tied to a slightly annoying and repetitive “rhythm” minigame.

Aside from the investigative sections, there are also parts where James collects evidence and creates theories about what happened. Basically, you just feed the right evidence to a question that pops up on the screen, but the system works very reliably. In the end, there is only one correct solution, but the game will let you agonize for a while with a theory that leads nowhere, which is great because, of course, this could happen in reality and you will feel like a real detective afterward.

Technical side

In conclusion, I would like to traditionally dwell on the technical side. It is at a very high level, even if I ignore the graphics for now. I have encountered almost no bugs or visual glitches, and most importantly, I have not experienced any unpleasant crashes. As in other new games, the shaders are pre-compiled, and, fortunately, there are no classic freezes when bypassing UE5. For this, I take my hat off to the developers, since this problem occurs in the vast majority of games on the Unreal Engine.

They also deserve credit for implementing all the important scaling technologies: Nvidia’s DLSS, AMD’s FSR, Intel’s XeSS, and Epic’s TSR. Unfortunately, there’s no image generation, which is a shame, as this game would definitely use it. In my setup, I had to set the scaling to a fairly aggressive Performance setting to be able to play at max detail in 4K and a stable 60 FPS, but the resulting lower internal resolution was barely noticeable.

PC Checklist:

• Pre-compiling shaders: Yes
• Stuttering when compiling shaders: Nobody
• Traversal stuttering: Nobody
• Upscaling technology: DLSS, FSR, XeSS, TSR
• Image generation: No
• Ultrawide Monitor Support: Yes
• Motion Blur Settings: Yes
• Field of view settings: Yes
• In-game frame limiter: 30, 60 (a little unstable)

Case is closed

Overall, I was a bit disappointed after playing Nobody Wants to Die. After all, I had slightly higher expectations, but when I was let down, it was basically just the story, or more specifically the confusing script and the failed election system that ruined everything. Although the gameplay is minimal, it is very functional and often very entertaining, and the audiovisual effects are simply top notch. And that is why I would definitely recommend the game to fans of detective adventures or an attractive cyberpunk setting.