I honestly can’t tell you whether High on Life is funny. Humour is subjective, sure, but also, after eight hours of this game’s rapid-fire jokes, I’m not sure I even know any more. You spend enough time spacefaring in Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland’s orbit and eventually, you get sucked into the void. It’s no longer a series of clearly delineated jokes, more a transcendental oneness with an eternal bit. Body fluids. Self-reflexive observations. Observations about the self-reflexive observations. Casual misanthropy. More body fluids. You switch from a grin to a grimace every 15 seconds and at some point, your face just goes numb.
I can tell you that this game is consistently creative, even when new studio Squanch’s design chops fail them. You play a nameless teen bounty hunter paired up with a talking gun, travelling the universe attempting to free humanity from an alien crime syndicate that wants to use us as drugs. Along the way, you’ll use your chattering gun’s abilities to solve traversal puzzles in a Metroid Prime sort of way, and do a lot of shooting. There are some genuinely nifty and thoughtful combat options, like a ricocheting sawblade that you can bonk back at baddies, or a shotgun that hoovers protective slime from your foes.
I’d happily watch this as a cartoon miniseries, because the amount of craft and effort put into every aspect of this setting, from the environments to the creature design, is seriously impressive. Every rock and plant and pipe and grate feels stylised. The guns, despite occupying such relatively slim screen space, emote vividly and convincingly. Neon sci-fi vistas stretch out, vast and varied, and everything organic wriggles and squelches with gross-out glee.
But despite all the creativity and colour, all the guns and traversal options, High on Life is not a good shooter. It feels as if there’s a layer of gunk between you and the game, as if inputs have to pass through Vaseline before registering. Melee animations feel weightless, as does the vaulting and swinging that features so frequently in traversal. Enemies make up for stupidity with sheer numbers, with limp stun states and death animations that rob combat of any catharsis. Performance is rattly, gun-feel is inconsistent, audio frequently cuts, and combat sometimes feels like the whole thing is submerged underwater.
It doesn’t take a mad scientist’s grasp of quantum relativity to understand that the line between entertaining and excruciating here is down to how you feel about listening to a game-length version of Rick and Morty’s Interdimensional Cable ad-libs. Personally, I find it less grating than, say, God of War Ragnarök’s tendency to punctuate earnestness with Marvel-esque quips, just as I find good, honest misanthropy more tolerable than hollow sentimentality. But I don’t think it’s enough to just tolerate Roiland’s shtick here – you’re going to need to properly like it to enjoy the game, because the plinky gunfeel and awkward mobility aren’t enough to carry it on their shonky shoulders.
I’m a huge fan of the Oddworld-ian creature design and the factory-farming satire of its plot. But Oddworld made that stuff work because it had a big, weird heart. High on Life just has dilated pupils and a shit-eating grin.
High on Life is out now; £46.49, or included with a Game Pass subscription
