Just Die Already is a game that should give any adult gamer a gigantic giggle as their geriatric champion finds new ways to the grave. With a lack of future generations in numbers, old people have been left to fend for themselves. Needless to say that you are on your own and survival is in your very own ragdoll hands. Now just avoid fire, cars, shrubs, axes, knives, sharks, grenades, flame throwers, and steam rollers.
Developed by a fun studio called DoubleMoose Games and published by Curve Digital who has had a hand in some other funny games such as Table Manners and When Ski Lifts Go Wrong, the game is truly about hilarious mayhem. And if the developer’s own team description of “several three-dimensional organic meat automatons” doesn’t sell you on how bonkers this game is, then keep on reading.
Boomers With Attitude
You get to pick from four different old retired persons at the start. All of them have a major beef with the universe and honestly, the universe doesn’t think too much about them either. While it was a lot of fun being a total jerk in the retirement home, it is understandable that they got tired of you’re a-hole ways and threw you in the dumpster.
Now you are free. The world is now your proverbial oyster and you are more than willing to urinate on all of it. That is after you kick it, stab it, set it on fire, blow it up, and smear plenty of your own viscera all over the place.
In a way I don’t blame the elderly in this game. The world hates them. There are even posters sponsored by the UN that suggests people should kill Boomers to lower carbon emissions. Also the retirement company with free elderly care is called Just Die Already.
What is My Purpose?
Being free gives you so much time. Now you can fill it with your bucket list or rather some other old guy’s bucket list. Completing activities on the list will reward you with various unlocks that can be picked up at vending machines located throughout the city. Some vending machines will have weapons, others will have fun things that may or may not be useful in completing other bucket list items.
Tasks vary from the mundane and easy to the outrageously obscene. For example you will need to taunt regular citizens who may want to give you a friendly beating for your troubles. Other list items is to only cut off your head or put on your birthday suit. Also as you explore the game world more bucket list items are added giving you more life goals that provide more opportunities at some mischievous mayhem. Overall the bucket list items are a mix of simple fun and punishing chores.
The ultimate goal of the bucket list is to collect 50 tokens which will grant that super awesome easy retirement life. What it is, we don’t really know, but if I can to guess it is a birthday cake with dynamite candles. After all, the younger generation wants you to just die already.
Let Me Count The Ways To Die
There are a lot of ways to die. From the reckless erratic drivers murdering everyone to the shark infested canals in town there are just so many ways to die. I’ve been chopped up, set on fire, splattered, kicked, punched, and even launched to my death by a steam blast. Shrubs have death spikes and explosives on gas tanks will turn anyone alive into a Jackson Pollock street mural.
You can also loose a limb or your head. As long as there is still some blood in the torso, the body can keep on going even if you are headless or legless. In fact there certain challenges that require certain limbs, cough head, to be missing in order to complete.
When the end ultimately does come, don’t worry. You will respawn in the trash right where society says you should be.
So Much Blood
This game is not for the squeamish. Even though it is cartoonish, I must have spent half my gameplay staring at a mutilated body squirting blood all over the place, screen included. There were times where I was a pair of legs running down the sidewalk with bloody squirting out of me like a fancy water fountain.
At one point I gained access to a gun. I felt like I was cheating at this point as I must have spent 15 minutes running around shooting every NPC I could find. Why would I do this? Well you see, headshots, in over the top fashion, make their bodies explode into a bloody mess of body parts. Brains, intestines, and limbs galore. For those who have had enough of the blood, there is an option to disable it all.
Old People PvP
There is a PvP element to the game that was added in a recent update. It too is equally violent. Rip off someone’s limbs and then beat them to death with it. However, unless you setup your own game to host, joining random games will result in bans from the host. I must had seen 50 of those.
Players also like to camp your spawn point with rocket launchers. If somehow you do get the upper hand on the host, they will just kick you so that you can rejoin without a weapon and by that point they are back at your spawn with a rocket launcher.
With friends, the PvP aspect of the game seems like it would be gut busting fun. With random joined games it just isn’t fun and really takes away a potentially endless element of fun from the game.
Final Verdict
Old people cutting loose and causing mayhem has never been so funny. The over the top violence of using a steam roller to mow down pedestrians and cars or using bombs in new creative ways to blow everything it does eventually get old. This is where the PvP element with others would really shine. Unfortunately it has some issues and that is more so with player behavior than the developer’s fault. The world itself is large enough to spend hours exploring and unlocking the various areas which allow for new means of mayhem, death and destruction.
Going forward I hope the developer continues to add more areas and new places for old people to wreak havoc. In addition while PvP has been recently added, changes to improve the overall gameplay experience in joining.
In the end the game is really all about old people causing mayhem. In the several hours of my gameplay I was able to do that with hilarity. At the regular $14.99 USD Steam price, Just Die Already is a deal worth dying for.
Score: 8/10
Just Die Already offers an unbelievable amount of carnage with the bloody limbs of boomers who need to just die already.
The game review scoring system used by Nano Gaming News can be found here. Thank you to Curve Digital and DoubleMoose Games for providing a copy of Just Die Already for the purpose of this game review.
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