I’ve spent a few hours with Just Die Already on PS4, and it’s exactly what you’d expect from the developers behind Goat Simulator. You play as a pensioner evicted from their retirement home, tasked with racking up points through increasingly absurd and dangerous stunts. It’s a middle finger to ageism wrapped in physics-based chaos, and for a while at least, it’s genuinely entertaining.
What Works
If you loved Goat Simulator’s approach to sandbox mayhem, this hits similar notes but with more structure. The city environment feels denser and more detailed than Goat Simulator’s settings, giving you plenty to explore and destroy. There’s something darkly amusing about watching your elderly character tumble through the world, limbs flailing about like overcooked spaghetti, all whilst society literally wants you gone.
The co-op and PVP modes add replay value if you’ve got friends willing to join the madness. Shared chaos amplifies the humour, turning technical disasters into memorable moments rather than frustrations.
Where It Struggles
Here’s where honesty matters: the controls are rough. Really rough. Aiming feels imprecise, melee combat becomes an exercise in patience as weapons swing in unpredictable arcs, and hit detection doesn’t always register when it should. I’ve died repeatedly at certain checkpoints not because I made poor choices, but because the game simply didn’t respond properly.
The physics system, whilst intentionally chaotic, crosses into glitchy territory regularly. Elongated limbs and exaggerated ragdoll effects are part of the appeal, but they also cause genuine technical problems that break immersion.
When Just Die Already appeared free on Epic Games in April 2022, player reactions split predictably. Those expecting polished mechanics found themselves frustrated by clunky gameplay, whilst fans of intentionally messy sandbox games embraced the absurdist premise despite its limitations.
Should You Play It?
This comes down to expectations. If you want silly, physics-based destruction with mates and can tolerate technical jank, you’ll likely squeeze several hours of entertainment from it. The game doesn’t pretend to be anything more than chaotic fun, and within those boundaries, it delivers.
However, if you value responsive controls and consistent mechanics, the frustrations will outweigh the humour quickly. It’s worth knowing what you’re getting into before committing time to it.
For me, it scratched a particular itch for a few hours, then I moved on. That’s perfectly fine for what it is, a brief, anarchic romp that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Just don’t expect it to hold your attention for extended sessions.
