High on Life was a specific game in absolutely every way when it came out, but especially with that bold, direct, sometimes crude humour it pushed. It felt like the game came from an era when the world wasn’t so sensitive about every single thing said or shown, in this case. And that’s exactly why it stood out from the rest, of course, besides being a fantastic game overall. But at the same time, that’s why some people just talked shit about it, calling it tasteless and stupid. Still, High on Life was above all a brave game, on every front. A couple of years later, High on Life 2 arrives, a title where Squanch Games keeps up their antics, without holding back, just now in an even bigger world, even more explicit, with some fresh bits that reflect the current state of the world and current dramas, but best of all, with even better gameplay and a more believable world. So the question is, is High on Life 2 generally a game worth your attention? Well, ours was, and we had a blast the last couple of days playing it, so let’s see if you’ll like it too.
In High on Life 2, you start the game with the same character from the first one, but of course, now enjoying insane fame ’cause he managed to stop the destruction of the human race by the alien cartel. The ones who thought humans were food and it was cool to eat them ’cause it gave them that “high” moment, hence the game’s name, if no one’s figured it out by now, though I believe most have. All in all, you’re guesting on TV shows, aliens are just dying to get a photo with you, get an autograph from Knifey, an autograph on the body, dude, from a knife, which means death. Life is good, until they tell you your sister’s been kidnapped, the one who was totally clueless in the first game has become a rebel, ’cause she uncovered a horrific alien plan for the human race. And not from the regular ones, but high-ranking politicians.
It’s only when you meet her that you realise nothing is as it seems in this alien world. Human exploitation is still going on, but it’s all swept under the rug, away from the public’s eyes, behind a pharmaceutical company that turns people into pills. ‘Cause, see, someone let slip the bug that they don’t get how humans can be sentient beings with such small brains and limited cognitive abilities, they should really be treated like poultry in space. I mean, which is partially true when you look at the state our world is in. I mean we’re dumb, not that we should be poultry, just to be clear.
Your sister is basically the biggest issue at the start of the game, ’cause once you help her, you mark yourself as an enemy of the universe. And then you become a Bounty Hunter with a price on your head, the moment things get complicated, ’cause wherever you go, other bounty hunters will try to kill you to cash in a ton of money from the government, which is still trying to cover it all up. So yeah, you get it, human exploitation is still active, all bounty hunters are chasing you for the reward, while you have to stop everyone involved in the process of packaging humanity into pills so mankind can survive. And all that with your loyal alien buddies. Of course Gene from the first game is there, blabbing in your base, though we also get some genius new characters popping up in the game.
High on Life 2 has way more characters than the first one, so that’s the first difference that makes the whole world feel alive, but not the only one, I’ll get to that when we reach that part. That whole vibe, at least for me, reminded me of Guardians of the Galaxy. A group of notorious characters trying to right wrongs in the universe. Just here everything is over, over, over the top, in the best sense of the word. You have your base, somewhere in the middle of the Ring World, where the game takes place, a ring-shaped world, Halo anyone? In the base, you’ll rest, chat with the genius group of aliens, learn about them, and of course, plan what to do next. That part with the main missions is similar to the first one. Just here you won’t have a Bounty Terminal, it’s old-school style, a board with targets you gotta catch, take down and scratch off, leading to the mastermind behind the whole operation of turning people into pills.
Though the biggest difference from the first game is the world it takes place in. In High on Life, Nova Sanctum was a tiny hub for the whole game that just wasn’t believable as one of the most popular alien planets. It served exactly that, as a hub to go to some mission and chat with folks on the way. The whole “city” was basically one block. In High on Life 2, you have a real, living city right in front of you, with so much going on all at once. Everything’s dynamic, aliens everywhere, genius dialogues waiting for you to start with some, and small missions you can complete. As soon as you step onto this ring-shaped world, it gives you the illusion that it’s really a huge, living, real world where you can do whatever you want. It’s so big and detailed that everywhere you can find secrets and passages to discover, hiding some secrets and bonuses. All that packed behind light puzzles you solve using your Gatlians and their abilities.
Though there’s a problem there, too. Since there’s a price on your head, you’ll constantly run into other bounty hunters trying to kill you. Little by little, someone’ll stick up a poster with your face so they know who they’re hunting, and at those spots fights are mandatory, which is cool, ’cause it adds even more dynamism to exploring this world.
Since the world is so big, you can’t “finish” everything on foot, so in High on Life 2 you get a skateboard as your main means of transport on this planet. And I gotta admit it’s brilliantly done. I’ve already heard the devs took inspiration from Tony Hawk games, and I gotta say it’s not that complicated or detailed, but it’s still super fun to ride. You can grind over everything and anything, do various tricks, and complete challenges in this city to get something useful. As I said, the whole city is packed with everything and anything, and you’ll never get bored.
Besides the main city part, there’s a seaside area that’s maybe not as big as the main one, but still huge and again with a million things to collect and missions to complete. Interestingly, those small activities reminded me of Yakuza games. Okay, maybe not as many as in those games, but equally genius and crazy in their own way. I think everyone’s gotten that in this game: you can do absolutely whatever you want, chill, shoot up, ride the skateboard, press buttons to get tons of money while some random dies in the universe, and so on. But how’s the gameplay?
Shooting is really excellent, insanely so at times. The game is much faster than High on Life 1, much more chaotic, and it looks like Squanch Games used every possible trick to realise their ideas for the gameplay itself. The skateboard you ride for exploration is one of the main tools in shooting too, ’cause it lets you reposition quickly when chaos erupts around you with tons of enemies attacking at once. At every moment of shooting, the Gatlians won’t stop talking and commenting on what’s happening, though if it bothers you, you can turn down the Chatter option in settings. But honestly, for me that’s the charm of this game, so I left everything as is after starting.
The whole mechanic is much tighter and more responsive than in the first game. To the point where at times it feels like you’re playing some twitch shooter, with the amount of action on screen. The best part is it’s never boring, not just because of the constant action when it happens, but because of the weapons you’ll have at your disposal. In the game, you’ll have Gatlians from the first one again, like Sweezy, Gus, Creature, but there’ll be a few new ones I won’t spoil, better to see how you get them and, of course, what they can do. Though all those weapons returning from the first game now have new tricks and gimmicks that’ll help in shooting, so there’s another layer of complexity and possibilities during fights. I gotta admit at the start it was all a bit too much to grasp, the skateboard, grinding on rails mid-shootout, using multiple types of attacks for each weapon, but over time you get the hang of it all, and it clicks on your fingers, just right.
Overall, every fight you have in High on Life 2 with enemies is above all fun, which is the most important thing, and those comedic moments are there to put a grin on your face that won’t come off until that sequence ends. And that’s, at least for me, the strongest part of this game, ’cause you just lose yourself when playing High on Life 2. Though there are moments when the dust settles and the story needs to develop, and those are times when everything gets almost too static.
To clarify, not static like nothing’s happening, but the game’s pace totally shifts, like say watching a Rick and Morty episode. I mean that’s cool, but that transition can sometimes be really sharp and drag on too long. Also, some missions are totally bizarre and unexpected. Like solving a Murder Mystery scene in one mission. The whole mission boils down to talking to a few characters and deciding who the killer is based on all the facts you gather. Dialogues are genius, and the ideas thrown into the game are literally mind-blowing, as I said, genius and totally insane. And look, I totally justify the game having everything and anything in it, but maybe this part is stretched out a bit too much, even though I love Murder Mystery series and antics.
On the other hand, there are missions that are completely unbelievable in every possible way, and I often wondered how no one thought of this earlier. Those are moments when the game breaks the fourth wall between you and the events, when the game steps out of its comfort zone and starts saying it’s actually a game and is fully aware of all the consequences and happenings at that moment. The thing with this game is it has so many missions and events that it’s ungrateful to the readers to mention, describe, or spoil them, ’cause the game is packed with awesome stuff you just have to experience yourself. Best of all, that madness builds and lasts from the first moment, okay, maybe after the Murder Mystery mission, all the way to the end; it doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow down, just keeps slapping everything in front of it with great and uncomfortable humour and in-game events right to the very end. Though the most genius mission for me was ConCon, short for Convention Convention, where you have to go through other conventions to reach your goal, and you do that by passing through those other cons, and that path is just fantastic! Maybe one of the best missions or mission parts I’ve played this year.
One more thing worth every praise is the voice acting, and besides the voices and actors from the first game reprising their roles in the sequel, now we have Ralph Ineson, better known to gamers as Lorath from Diablo 4, plus Ken Marino, and Richard Kind show up too. Overall, awesome actors with even better roles in High on Life 2!
I played the game on Xbox Series X, and I gotta say everything looks fantastic. I noticed there’s Resolution Scaling in the options, which is weird for consoles, but I set it to 200%, and it ran without any issues or performance drops. What bothered me was noticing the internal resolution is a bit lower than I’d like. The truth is that I was sitting a meter and a half from the TV, but I definitely saw artefacts I didn’t want to see, mostly with textures and objects in the distance. Which can be a small issue here, considering a good part of the game takes place in large areas. But the level of detail in the game is really insane, ’cause everything looks incomparably better than the first game, which is, of course, the goal of every sequel.
We would like to thank Squanch Games for providing us with a copy of the game for review purposes.
High on Life 2 (Xbox Series X)
High on Life 2 is, as I said in the intro, like a game that came from an era when the world wasn't so sensitive, when dev teams were brave and loved to experiment with everything and anything. But above all, High on Life 2 feels like the product of a dev team that had a blast during development, that just wanted to pass their happiness, joy, satisfaction, and general feelings onto the players. Having said that, I expect the game will be received like the first one, some people appreciating this level of creative freedom, and others condemning it as all tasteless and whatever. But this is a game, and a game should be fun, and High on Life 2 is incredibly crazy, fun, and often genius.
