REVIEW | Just Die Already

LifeisXbox’s Just Die Already Review | Prepare yourself for chaos, destruction, and outright madness beyond belief in this mayhem sandbox title, Just Die Already. Being in a retirement home is painfully boring, especially when there is a whole world outside just waiting to be explored. With that said, when the retirement home decides they have had enough of your unconventional and disgraceful behaviour around the residents, you find yourself being kicked out. In your quest to seek out retirement tickets that ultimately provide free retirement care, you will have a bucket list of challenges to accomplish and achieve should you wish to cover your living costs. Society decided you were not worth their time. While everyone is waiting for you to die and have no respect left, I could not think of a better opportunity than to show them you aren’t ready for life to be over quite yet. Just Die Already has been developed by Double Moose and published by Curve Digital to allow you to be as old and disgraceful as they come. With the whole world at your fingertips, the possibilities are endless and as crazy as you want them to be. 

Most Memorable Moment

Ok, this might not sound brilliant but in the moment, I couldn’t stop laughing. There is an achievement for scoring ten shots in the basketball hoop without missing and I thought I would have a small play around; testing just how easy or difficult this would be. As I missed (yet to score one), the ball landed on the guy below, instantly killing him and leaving a blood splatter where he once stood. Now, if this wasn’t ridiculous enough, he then respawned. He proceeded to walk up to my character and slap her in the face. I don’t know why but it just had me in absolute hysterics that he had died and then suddenly remembered what happened.

ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox One S | Review code provided by PR/publisher. This review is the personal opinion of the writer.

What we Liked!

• Leisurely objectives | The whole idea behind how Just Die Already should be played is casual, with your ‘bucket list’ being there should you want something to work towards; I welcomed the idea. It means you can have fun exploring your surroundings at your own pace while passively completing tasks you perhaps weren’t even aware existed. Of course, you can focus on goals whenever the mood takes you. There are different areas for you to explore and specifically themed achievement-related tasks; some involve hazards and life goals, for example. Exploration is the key to uncovering areas and objects to make your bucket list that much easier to complete in the long run. Take your time causing chaos as it’s all part of the entertainment.

• Amusement central | Although sometimes maybe bordering on the line of being offensive for some, Just Die Already is a hugely comical title tasked with making everything over-the-top and topsy-turvy in any way imaginable. The ragdoll effect and physics are fantastic and can be enabled/disabled depending on whether it’s suitable for what you’re doing. Taunting is another command that acts out some disgraceful actions by your character to showcase your behaviour to innocents passing by. Last but certainly not least, the limb dismemberment that occurs as you fling yourself from cars to air vents, sharks to explosive land mines. Walking around with no head or a severe lack of other body parts can be interesting at times and may even grant you access to otherwise locked areas.

• Interactive surroundings | Almost everything in your environment is interactable in some way shape or form. There are multiple vehicles for you to drive, NPCs that can be either friendly or hostile towards you, a variety of shops with different usable items, buildings for you to navigate upwards, and hazards that could potentially be deadly. Items include a wide range of utility should you want to wear silly hats, run around dual wielding pirate swords, or throw C4 around to name a small amount. By exploring and completing challenges, there can be plenty at your disposal to play around with. Plus, with some locked doors hidden, it gives you even more incentive to find out what you could be missing out on.

• Online multiplayer and crossplay | A feature I can imagine everyone is happy to see included in Just Die Already is online multiplayer, including its boasted crossplay capabilities to mix with other platforms. It means you and either friends or randoms can team up to cause mischief and ragdoll around the area together. I’m not sure but I’m under the assumption some bucket list objectives could be done easier in cooperative play. I didn’t play the coop element much as I prefer solo gameplay but how can you not have fun seeing others being thrown around like a dummy, dismembered limb from limb, and inappropriately taunting civilians all for your amusement? 

Mixed Feelings

• Vibrant cartoon visuals | Just die already has colour bursting throughout and uses a brilliant art style to bind together, creating its excellent appearance. Everything is bright and appealing to the eyes; even the gore effect is rather glaring. Although eye-catching with the rich colours, I couldn’t decide whether I liked the art style from a personal perspective. I believe slightly more detail could have been nice, but I also understand why this may have been difficult to incorporate due to the physics and disfigurement. Overall, all visual elements complement one another. However, I’m just not sure it’s quite to my liking.

• Vending machines | As you make progress through your bucket list, you will unlock items that can then be purchased at vending machines with tickets you’ve earned. This is a nice addition should you want to spice your game up further or can’t find what you’re looking for in and amongst your surroundings. Unfortunately, after making decent headway, my game decided to put me back into the retirement home from the beginning with my progress still saved. However, when I checked the vending machines, the items I had earned/claimed were no longer registered to my annoyance. I’m unsure if there is even a way to get these back now without restarting/deleting my saved data.

What we Disliked

• Severe lack of audio | This absolutely astounded me but not in the right way; there is very little background sound and no music to accompany Just Die Already, other than in the main menu. For a game that has a theme revolved around comedy and messing around, I would have expected the audio to enhance the atmosphere; to be more lively like all other elements but there was just nothing. A couple of small moans and yelp when you get hit that almost feel they were added purely for the sake of it, nothing more. In my opinion, a huge opportunity was lost and overlooked by the developers.

• Becomes lacklustre | Being the sandbox style of the game Just Die Already presents us with, I did find myself over time becoming insubstantial. I mean, I still like the idea behind the ‘bucket list’ process of doing objectives but other than this, there isn’t much else you can do and this made the gameplay stale after some time. It also sadly impacts the absence of replayability as there are no achievements that can’t be obtained playing through the first time. I understand you need to do a fair amount should you be aiming for the full completion but that doesn’t make anything fun to me, just progressively duller the longer I spent playing.

• Rough controls | I will put down some of the frustrating movements and controls to the dominant ragdoll effect seen throughout Just Die Already. Climbing I found to be the worst thing to navigate as this always automatically set your character into ragdoll mode, that was not pleasant to control as I ended up throwing myself upwards in the end, hoping to get up. It’s almost like your having to adjust yourself to the bad controls, and even then it’s incredibly hard to master the movements. Finally, there is the inevitable motion you experience when you’re not quite your full self. Let’s just say, I found myself garbage-resetting consistently if I was aiming to accomplish anything.

• Bugged environment | There were multiple occasions where my character would get stuck in various parts of the environment that no one wants or expected should happen. From hedges to air vents, between objects and in buildings. I’d be trying to open one of the limb-specific doors, spend ages trying to lose said limbs, and then get stuck somewhere – only to have to respawn and start over again. You can at times see the edge of objects and map have clipping issues with no colour or detail. Seeing a shark come out of nowhere because underwater appeared white was absurd.

How long to beat the story | Approximately 15-25 Hours
How long to achieve 1000G | Approximately 15-25 Hours