There are so many survival games out there that it’s difficult to find anything that provides enough of a twist to make it stand out from the crowd. Die Young goes for a slightly different route, mixing Parkour with a game focused mainly on escaping rather than fighting.
It’s an interesting concept that shows itself in the Parkour style traversal as much as in the fact that actually trying to fight off anything is fairly basic most of the time, though thankfully not impossible. The first person survival adventure starts in a similar way to Far Cry 3, scarily similar in fact. However, while Far Cry 3 certainly has some scary animals Die Young is far more of a horror game.
While some survival horrors have a huge inventory to manage and kill you as soon as they can, this is a much more streamlined game with very little to manage bar your health. That leaves you more time to explore the great island and I can’t understate how good the traversal feels with its Assassin’s Creed style parkour and freedom to wander around. There are some crafting tasks to make weapons and tools but, again, they’ve been designed to be easy to manage.
Combat, as I’ve said, is basic but does work when it needs to (and you will have to kill animals and people eventually in order to progress). This includes the fairly hit and miss stealth elements which I found that I couldn’t always rely on to sneak around enemies. It does redeem itself later on in the game with some more interesting weapons, though once you’ve worked out what the fire can do on its own, you’ll probably have just as much fun setting light to enemies or areas and sitting back to watch the effects.
The island is well worth investigating as it’s been beautifully crafted here and there are some really wonderful views. Thankfully you do get plenty of breathing room to enjoy them, the game never spams you with enemies. This is just as well because once you’ve died the time to takes to load the game back into the area for you to start playing again is painful. It’s improved slightly if you stick it on the PS5 internal hard drive but still needs improvement.
Aside from loading and a few bugs that I encountered while playing, including a few times where I couldn’t pick items up, Die Young is a pretty robust game and sets itself apart from other survival horrors with an interesting story, partly told through messages left around the island and as you progress and a great environment to explore. It’s not perfect but it’s well worth the trip.
Die Young
Pros
- A beautiful island to explore
- Great parkour features
- No cluttered survival management aspects
Cons
- Combat is hit or miss
- Loading times are too long
