High on Life Review – IGN

That’s due in large part to High on Life’s mostly solid writing, which piles on dumb gags, curse-laden rants, and lots of TV screens airing idiotic shows that look like they could have been pulled straight from one of Rick & Morty’s Interdimensional Cable episodes. One level features an intentionally irritating alien who follows you around and rambles on, seemingly without end, until you finally unlock the ability to murder him dead. Another makes you go to Space Applebee’s and have a full meal for no apparent reason. You can also find a movie theater playing the real-world movie from 1990, Demon Wind, complete with Mystery Science Theater 3000-like commentary via some nearby aliens, which you’d better believe I watched in its entirety. The campaign is only about eight hours long if you have the willpower and focus to ignore all of these delightful distractions and power through, so naturally my first playthrough took me over 16 hours, specifically because I was goofing off for so much of it. The entire thing is just packed with so much silliness and it’s always exciting to spend time planet-hopping through it; I never knew when I might run into something insane, like when I teleported a stretch of freeway onto a jungle planet and watched the occupants of the cars who’d been taken with it slowly devolve from a group of aliens with road rage into an insane cult that sacrificed their own to appease the asphalt gods.

A lot of the jokes in High on Life are either lowbrow or sophomoric, or pearl-clutchingly irreverent, and like pretty much all comedy it won’t work for everyone. But as a fan of classic comedy games like Borderlands 2 and South Park: The Stick of Truth, it definitely worked for me. There were moments where all the cursing and shock humor felt lazy or a bit much – and that’s coming from someone with an extremely high tolerance for it – but more often than not the silly bits and crass dialogue land. It’s just hard not to chuckle when the grunt enemies stop in the middle of combat to disrespectfully twerk in your direction, y’know? It’s impressive, though, that in a shooter so ridiculous and purposefully flippant with its setting, High on Life’s story ends up having a lot of heart. I genuinely enjoyed bonding with the washed-up bounty hunter turned mooch couch-crasher, Gene, and I felt real motivation to destroy the alien drug cartel – though mostly to get payback for my Gatlian buddies, not to save the human race.

In perfect harmony with High on Life’s completely chaotic vibe, slinging your companion guns in firefights is over-the-top and occasionally a bit messy. Weapons are somewhat inaccurate and enemies flop around the battlefield shooting gloop at you, and in the opening hours I worried there would be little more to combat than using pea shooter Kenny to mop up brainless ants. It doesn’t help that, even on the hardest difficulty, High on Life is almost always incredibly easy to get through – you’re given ample opportunity to restore your health and shield, and incoming bullets are almost always slow enough to be easily avoided. Luckily, once you gain some new tools like the jetpack or other interesting combat options (like Creature’s power to mind-control enemies on the battlefield or Gus’ ability to suck up smaller bad guys right in front of him and then blast them to bits) things get a lot more interesting.

There’s still plenty to shake a fist at though, like how weak the enemy variety is, or how hostile aliens occasionally get stuck inside the environment, or the incredibly perplexing decision to make the down button on the d-pad the default button for crouch button (you can rebind this in the Ease of Access section of your Xbox settings menu). These things certainly don’t make for the smoothest combat experience, and the fun comes from finding creative ways to clear each area of baddies. Like how you can use Kenny’s glob shot ability to toss enemies in the air then juggle them with bullets until they explode, or how you can kill enemies that are behind cover (or stuck in the environment) by using Sweezy’s object-piercing shots. It’s definitely more chaotic and less finely tuned than your ideal shooter, but it’s a pretty good sandbox for pulling off stupid and amusing kills, and that sorta jives well with High on Life’s energy.

When your guns aren’t shooting at things, they make trusty allies for getting through each level using their alternate-fire modes – horrifyingly named their “trick hole” – which gives them functionality beyond killing things. Kenny can knock obstacles out of the way with his Glob Shot, Gus can create platforms by shooting his spinning blades into walls, Sweezy can shoot bubbles that slow time in a given area, and more. I was pleasantly surprised at how fun it was to just run around searching for collectibles and hidden loot boxes. In Metroidvania fashion, as you unlock weapons and abilities you’ll gain access to new areas and secrets in locations you’ve already visited, which makes backtracking a worthwhile use of time. Collecting alien Pesos by exploring is fairly rewarding too, as you can use said space currency to buy upgrades for your weapons and bounty hunting suit, which give useful perks like an upgraded version of Gus’ enemy-sucking ability that lets him tear off their armor and give it to you.