High on Life Review

Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland’s game development studio Squanch Games has mainly focused on virtual reality games since its inception in 2016. From its debut VR game Accounting to 2019’s Trover Saves the Universe, Squanch’s efforts have been well-received by the VR community. With its latest game, Squanch is looking to release a more traditional gaming experience. High on Life is a first-person shooter that successfully serves as a send-up of the FPS genre while also standing as a great new representation of it, foul-mouthed talking guns and all.

High on Life‘s talking guns are its defining feature, and they help inject a lot of personality into the experience. All the traditional FPS gun types are represented here, with the standard pistol, shotgun, machine gun, etc., except they all have their own personas, voice actors, and amusing ways of reacting to the ridiculous situations the players find themselves in. Besides their standard fire, the guns all have secondary functions that are integrated seamlessly into the game’s combat, puzzles, and platforming.

Take High on Life pistol Kenny, for instance. While players are able to use Kenny like a pistol from any other FPS game, he also has a secondary fire that lets him shoot out a large glob of green goo. In combat, Kenny’s glob is great for crowd control, as players can shoot it into a swarm of enemies to send them all flying into the air at once. For platforming and puzzle solving, the glob is used to knock barriers around, sometimes creating new platforms for players to land on.

The more guns players collect in High on Life, the more creative they can get with the game’s combat. For example, players could send a group of enemies flying into the air with Kenny’s glob, then they could quickly swap to the shotgun (a frog-like creature named Gus) and take them all out with a single shot. Each weapon adds to the player’s combat toolbox, and their secondary abilities also give players many more options when it comes to navigating the game world.

High on Life has Metroidvania elements in that regard. When players first visit a planet, they will find areas that they lack the means to reach. Upon returning to these areas later on with more weapons and abilities at their disposal, High on Life players will find that they have far more freedom and will be able to get to spots and collectibles that were inaccessible before.

The knife in High on Life is as integral to exploration as the guns. Very early on in the game, High on Life players collect a bloodthirsty, psychopathic knife that is obsessed with stabbing people. As one might imagine, the knife serves that function well, and it can even be used to trigger some brutal melee kill animations. But the knife is much more than a tool to stab enemies with; it’s also a grappling hook that lets players reach far ledges and swing on conveniently-placed flying bugs.

High on Life players will take their knife and talking guns on a grand, unpredictable sci-fi adventure that takes place across a handful of visually distinct and interesting planets. In High on Life, players take on the role of a bounty hunter who is tasked with killing members of an intergalactic drug syndicate, with each encounter culminating in an exciting and unique boss fight. To go into too much detail about these bosses and the planets they live on would be to spoil the experience, so it’s best for players to see it all themselves.

The levels in High on Life are large, filled with hidden chests, secret paths, and plenty of loot that players can use to purchase upgrades from a pawn shop near their home base and other merchants they come across on their adventures. Some of the chests house bizarre Garbage Pail Kids-style trading cards and other collectibles with funny descriptions, so it’s worth going out of one way’s to track everything all down for the entertainment value alone. There are over 200 chests in the game so completionists hoping to unlock all the extra content and acquire all of High on Life‘s achievements should be kept plenty busy after the credits roll.

Of course, mileage may vary when it comes to High on Life‘s humor. Like the other games from developer Squanch Games, High on Life leans heavily into Justin Roiland’s signature brand of Rick and Morty-style comedy, so those that enjoy that will likely have a blast with the game whereas others may find it all too crass and obnoxious. Those that fall in the latter category can at least tone down how often the guns talk, though someone that doesn’t like Roiland’s sense of humor will likely not enjoy High on Life quite as much regardless.

Those that like Rick and Morty‘s surreal humor and meta commentary will likely come away from High on Life thinking it to be one of the funniest games they’ve played. Not every joke lands and hearing Morty’s screeching voice from Kenny’s mouth for hours can be grating at times, even for diehard Rick and Morty fans, but High on Life is otherwise an amusing, well-written, surprising, and genuinely hilarious experience.

High on Life is a blast for the most part, but the game starts to lose some steam at around the halfway mark. Instead of players visiting fantastical new locations to hunt down their next bounty, they are sent back to planets they’ve already explored. Granted, they are able to go down new paths in these areas thanks to the upgrades they’ve collected since their last visit, but it still means some backtracking. The second half of the game still has plenty of exciting shootouts to keep the adrenaline high, but it also has a lot of slower moments that hurt the pacing. It’s a little too story and dialogue heavy compared to the rest of the game.

While High on Life can’t keep the momentum of its first half for the entire game, the second half still has plenty of hilarious moments, unexpected plot twists, and funny observations about game design. The last stretch of the game is still plenty entertaining, even if it doesn’t reach the same highs established by the first half.

High on Life is an easy recommendation, especially considering it’s a day one Xbox Game Pass game and can be played without paying full price. However, potential players should be aware of a couple of potentially game-breaking bugs that threaten to ruin their time with High on Life. One of the bugs we encountered during our playtime nearly forced a full restart of the entire game, while another saw the main character glitch into an area they weren’t supposed to reach quite yet, though luckily both issues eventually resolved themselves. The lack of a manual save option and the game only having one auto-save makes these problems a little more concerning, but hopefully these issues are addressed shortly after launch.

Those admittedly serious technical concerns aside, High on Life is otherwise a consistently entertaining game from start to finish. It proves Squanch Games is capable of delivering an excellent traditional gaming experience alongside its high-quality VR titles, and it will be exciting to see what the studio does next. Whether they play it through Xbox Game Pass or not, gamers should make it a point to play High on Life ASAP. It’s a wild ride that deserves to be experienced unspoiled.

High on Life launches December 13 for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Game Rant was provided a PC code for this review.