What would it be like if humans were invaded by aliens, but they weren't killed or captured for the usual reasons. What if we were awesome drugs? That's what High On Life is all about. It's written like a Rick & Morty episode which would be expected. Justin Roiland heads the writing and voice acting for the game just like in the shows. If you don't like Rick & Morty then you won't like this game either. I thought it was insanely funny and had a lot of witty humor not just in general, but also poking fun at gaming tropes. Walk away from a character mid-sentence and they will comment on it, sprint for too long, stand in one place for too long, and many other things.
The opening sequence sees your planet being invaded by aliens while you and your sister are in your house with your parents away. A series of events follow and you acquire your first talking weapon, Kenny, and then you are introduced to the game mechanics. There are five talking guns in total, and I found this very original and more interesting than just making a standard shooter. Each weapon is organic and shoots organic ammo. Kenny is a standard pistol, but using his Trickhole sees him shooting a green bouncing blob. This can be used to solve a few puzzles in the game as well. The second weapon is Gus. He's your standard shotgun, but his Trick is a bouncing saw blade that can be volleyed with your knife. He can also suck enemies toward you. The third gun is Sweezy who is clearly a mock of Halo's Needler gun. She can be used as a sniper pistol and uses a bubble that slows down time. Shoot the bubble to have it expand and explode to do damage. The fourth standard gun is Creature. He is kind of like a grenade launcher, but he shoots babies that attack enemies. His trick is a mind control baby that can help you out. He wound up becoming my favorite weapon just because the babies are fast and can kill enemies quickly and keep them off of you.
The final gun is Lezduit, but he is only used in the final level as a very powerful ultimate weapon. These guns will talk to you through the whole game and the humor is injected even into their animations. They stare at you and make faces, comment on everything you do, and just have this gross wet, and squishy biological thing about them. The game's humor is full of vulgar humor from the sexual, potty, and overall just stuff that everyone usually laughs about. These weapons kind of remind me of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. Weapons that are living and interact with you. The entire game is very organic and everything just looks and feels wet and goopy. It's pretty hilarious.
Sadly, the story isn't anything to write home about. It's pretty much just like a TV show episode. You run around from level to level shooting the same bad guys in waves, jump around a bit, and kill a boss at the end of each level. These are bounties that you can turn in for Pesos to purchase suit and weapon upgrades at the pawn shop. Upgrades can give you bigger clip sizes, faster reloads, and enhance your Trick. Each boss fight is mostly different. A couple of them are pretty funny, but not everyone requires you to face the actual boss itself. I don't want to spoil anything, but these are well done. You do eventually acquire a grappling hook to swing across larger gaps, a jetpack, and mag boots to walk on certain surfaces, but overall the combat beat is pretty repetitive. Sadly, despite how cool the weapons are, none of them feel very powerful and I always felt like I couldn't kill as efficiently as I could in other shooters. Enemies are sponges and take a lot of damage and this can get frustrating with a lot of them coming after you. No matter what weapon I switched to I just felt like the balancing was off. Up close, Gus doesn't do enough damage, and far away Sweezy's charge shot can't do enough damage. I just didn't understand it.
Most of the cut-scenes are just characters talking in front of you and there are very few scripted events. You are mostly just going planet to planet, killing wave after wave, and killing a boss at the end. It's very repetitive and I wanted to lose interest in the game pretty early on. The characters and writing are really fun, but it's those long stretches of endless shooting that can really bore you. The shooting is bad, just unbalanced and there's no variety. My favorite parts of the game were just the dialog and seeing new planets and character interactions. The shooting kind of came second. I really wanted to like the shooting more, but something just always feels off.
In the 8 hours it takes to finish the game it sadly has a really bad ending. It just quickly ends, and this goes to show there really aren't any characters you can get attached to. They are all written like the small characters on the TV show rather than larger characters who should be memorable and defined. Kenny was probably the most interesting character of them all. This is one of those games that would be a good rental, and then you would quickly forget about it. There's so much potential here for this to be a better game, but just not enough to put into it for it to be as refined as the games it makes fun of. Even the visuals, as bright and colorful as they are, kind of all blend together and the game is a technical mess. A poorly optimized Unreal 5 engine causes the game to run pretty badly even on really powerful PCs.
Overall, High On Life is a riot of a game with witty and fun dialog, funny characters, and some interesting weapon ideas, but the game's moment-to-moment beat is repetitive and dull. You never feel like your weapons are powerful enough to do what they should thanks to bullet sponge enemies, but at least the boss fights are clever and funny. There are very few scripted events so there's nothing to break up the mundane gameplay outside of standing still and listening to characters talk. The game is also poorly optimized despite how pretty the visuals are. Playing this once and forgetting is sadly what most people will do.