The Good Life

 Xbox One
User Score
6.9

Mixed or average reviews- based on 7 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 7
  3. Negative: 1 out of 7

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  1. Xbox_Alive
    Oct 16, 2021
    6
    The Good Life is a “daily-life debt repayment RPG” that you play as an American woman in an English village, enjoying daily activities such as photography, errands, shopping, speaking with villagers, paying debts, weather remarking, going to the “pub”, and urinating on lampposts when you turn into the dog to solve mysteries. There are two aspects of The Good Life that show potential. TheThe Good Life is a “daily-life debt repayment RPG” that you play as an American woman in an English village, enjoying daily activities such as photography, errands, shopping, speaking with villagers, paying debts, weather remarking, going to the “pub”, and urinating on lampposts when you turn into the dog to solve mysteries. There are two aspects of The Good Life that show potential. The first is its retro style that I adore. It’s simply old-fashioned and animations are janky and deployed unquestioningly in cutscenes, the cinematic context highlighting the inadequacies we overlook more readily when we’re in player mode. Naomi or her feline or canine counterparts will charge obliviously into walls and keep running as was a retro normality. With all the style and the deliberate polygon art and the well crafted but repetitive music, it feels like a lost and found 2000’s era game. It’s also retro in its take on open-world gameplay. The second aspect that has potential follows from that point: there are new opportunities in how dissimilar this is to a Rockstar series. Set in a rural English village rather than a city. There’s a coupe local residents versus a metropolis of people, and no vehicles or weapons to be had. That’s where it gets interesting. Having fewer characters populating the game world means more of them can be real characters. The Good Life has its strengths. Its functional open-world model and somewhat dated play system allow its quirky charm to take the spotlight. That charm is filled with abstract characters with a plot that runs so wild, with the whole feline and canine transformations. The charm and atmosphere have to be compelling if you can endure the retro infused mechanics, repetitive tasks and frequent slowdown and pop-in from the game engine. If old-school gaming whimsy isn't for you, then neither is The Good Life. But if you're a fan and that sounds like your wheelhouse then I would head yourself over to the Xbox digital games store, where you mind find the price of admission a bit intimidating.… Expand
  2. SethGrey
    Nov 10, 2022
    6
    It's not often I don't finish a game I start. The game looks charming enough. There's a central mystery that is quite interesting, plus a murder mystery that really had me intrigued, but the excessive fetch quests were so overbearing that I just couldn't take it anymore and I had to delete it.

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
53

Mixed or average reviews - based on 5 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 5
  3. Negative: 1 out of 5
  1. Gameblog.fr
    Nov 10, 2021
    50
    The Good Life is the latest game from “Swery”. You'll find an open world similar to Deadly Premonition, with its many quests and its tedious movements, and level of playability. It does not do much better than it. No, what will save the game and get you interested is its world. Cute at first glance, but darker than it looks since murders will be the center of the story ... Nevertheless, the overall atmosphere is more relaxed and fun there than in Deadly Premonition. Finally, note that on the Xbox One S version that we tested via the game pass, the technical aspect was simply completely swept up. To enjoy The Good Life, you will need to be a big fan of Swery, and be able to inflict all the faults of the game on yourself to glimpse any semblance of truth.
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  2. Xbox Tavern
    Nov 8, 2021
    31
    Fans of Swery will no doubt lap this up, quirks and all, but I just could not get on with the game at all. Every time I thought I had finally turned a corner with it some other nonsense turned up that put me right back at square one. Overloaded with poorly implemented decent ideas, this is a one for truly dedicated players only.
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  3. TheXboxHub
    Nov 7, 2021
    60
    If you’re in the mood for making sense of a mess of a game, with little moments that might - might - make it worth it, then this is The Good Life.
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