What is Nobody Wants to Die, this game halfway between Blade Runner, CSI and old film noir?

Nobody Wants to Die could well be the video game sensation of the summer. This narrative title puts us in control of a disillusioned investigator in a dystopian New York. Its particularity? Its film noir atmosphere and its masterful staging. A cocktail that works up to a certain point. Our mini-test.

New York, 2329. James Kara, an alcoholic detective, addicted to cigarettes and eaten up by his past, is entrusted with a case that is beyond his control. The city’s bigwigs are all being liquidated one after the other. Settling of scores or large-scale conspiracy? It’s up to him to untangle this tangled mess with your help, you, the player.

This is the premise of Nobody Wants to Diethe baby of the Polish studio Critical Hit Games. This is a title that bets everything on its narrative and wants to immerse the player in its universe halfway between Altered Carbon and the noir films of the 1940s. In this retro futuristic universe, old age is no longer a problem. It is possible to buy a new body when you feel the end coming, provided you have the means. However, this does not prevent murders and it is up to you to solve them.

Directional gameplay, but fantastic atmosphere

The first few minutes of the game put us behind the wheel of our old car, in front of a drive-in showing a rather unexciting black and white film. After a dialogue that familiarizes us with our hero’s patter, we get out of our jalopy and realize that we are not in the 1940s, but in a futuristic and nightmarish New York where the buildings are so tall that its inhabitants no longer even see the sun. A wonderful panorama that sets the mood: Everything in Nobody Wants to Die is designed to impress us, surprise us with breathtaking shots. The least we can say is that this first scene succeeds.

Nobody Wants to Die is a first-person game that is divided into small, diverse segments. Some will ask you to investigate crime scenes, to analyze the sequence of events by going back in time using your bracelet in the style of Cyberpunk 2077. Others will ask you to find links between several elements of the case via an interactive puzzle reminiscent of the mental palace in Alan Wake 2. Finally, many scenes are purely narrative, breaths punctuated by dialogues which, depending on your answers, will influence the story.

It is these moments of calm that make Nobody Wants to Die truly powerful. Critical Hit Studio has a crazy talent for setting the mood. The artistic direction is fabulous; each level is a painting in front of which we like to stop, all served by a high-flying graphic quality. The adventure dives 100% into its film noir proposition, skillfully taking all the clichés of the genre to twist them as the adventure progresses, even if it abuses them a little too much, sometimes.

The whole thing is served by finely written dialogues, a near-perfect dubbing (only in English) and a soundtrack that is as jazzy as it is depressive. The oldest will undoubtedly see it as a tribute to the august Under the Killing Moon (1994) which adopted a similar tone. A five to six hour adventure tinged with a certain melancholy and who constantly pushes to continue to discover the truth behind the murders.

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A beautiful adventure, but often shaky

Setting the mood is one thing, making your universe consistent is another. Unfortunately, this is where Critical Hit Games fails a little. Indeed, as the investigation progresses, we often have this feeling of vagueness that never leaves us, as if the writers had difficulty in clearly presenting the stakes and the bases of the plot to us. Concrete example: it is not uncommon to understand a crucial notion of the scenario late, this one being poorly explained from the start (we think of the functioning of ichorite). We also get confused between all the characters, many being very poorly characterized (the victims, in particular). This does not prevent progress, but we are often lost in a story that would have gained from being simplified.

What disappoints the most, It’s the gameplay that is sometimes too directive. Investigating a crime scene involves reconstructing an action via a hologram to understand what caused the drama. We would have liked the game to give us a bit of leeway, to let us fumble around so that we could make our own deductions in the manner of Return of the Obra Dinn, but no. The segments are mechanical and we never leave the rails: go see this body, activate this object to spot this clue, go back to this precise moment, etc. It’s a bit of a shame not to really investigate in an investigation game. Let the police do their job, damn it!

So Nobody Wants to Die should be taken for what it is: a purely narrative game with an atmosphere that is as mastered as it is successful. Let yourself be carried away as if it were an interactive film, be enchanted by its panoramas and appreciate its chiseled dialogues. A title that will please thriller fans and those looking for a well-marked adventure to enjoy a well-crafted scenario.