High On Life 2: The Kotaku Review

During an extremely tense narrative moment late in High on Life 2, I tried to do something silly: I pointed one of my talking alien gun companions at the villain of the story and pulled the trigger. The gun stopped me. I did it again. Once again, the alien gun said no. When I tried once more, my weapon friend stopped me yet again…but warned that, next time, it wouldn’t. If I really wanted to interrupt this scripted moment and shoot the bad guy in the face, it would let me do that. And so I pulled that trigger again, and the game reacted, and I laughed. Later, while fighting that same villain in the game’s big final boss fight, I died and got stuck in an infinite death loop when respawning. My only option is to restart from the beginning of the game or hope an upcoming patch fixes my predicament. 

This is a perfect encapsulation of my experience with High on Life 2, out now on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. It is a shooter willing to react to the player at all times in creative and funny ways, but also one that is filled with messy bugs, poorly implemented mechanics, and other issues that sometimes derail the hijinks. 

She gets high, she gets high, on life 2 

High on Life 2 is a follow-up to 2022’s surprise hit sci-fi comedy shooter High on Life. Like that last game, the sequel is a wacky FPS featuring a ton of goofy dialogue, gross-out humor, and oddball references to places like Party City and Spirit Halloween. This time around, however, controversial Rick & Morty co-creator Jusitan Roiland isn’t involved, having left the company in 2023. For those worried that his absence would change the game’s vibes or humor, I can report that, for better or for worse, that isn’t the case. 

After defeating the evil G3 alien cartel in the last game and stopping them from turning humans into a drug, the nameless bounty hunter you played as during that adventure is now a celebrity. Over the next five years–as seen in a wild montage opening–you party, go on talk shows, and take down tons of other criminals and monsters, all while your sister goes off to join a resistance group that believes humans are still in danger. 

That eventually gets her into trouble with a large alien pharma company, and in the process of saving her, you end up a criminal outlaw, join her group, and with the help of some new and old allies, you fight back and try to once again save humanity from aliens hell-bent on turning us into a controlled substance. 

Some of those helpful allies are talking alien guns with faces. If you haven’t realized it yet, High on Life 2 is weird. Yes, the big gimmick in the first game returns in High on Life 2. All of the weapons you use are talking characters with their own personalities, desires, and dreams. 

This time around, you have some new guns to hang out with, including a married couple dealing with a lot of drama who function as twin handguns that spit out colorful goop together. My favorite new alien gun buddy is a former assassin who, after realizing the error of his ways, lets you cut his head off and shove it into a burst fire assault rifle that can fire spikes. I used him a lot. There are also some returning favorites, like the shotgun lizard alien Gus and the SMG-like Sweezy. The pistol voiced by Roiland, Kenny, doesn’t return, though he is referenced. 

Feed your head, then shoot their heads

Combat in a first-person shooter is indeed different than usual when your rifle or handgun cracks jokes or reacts to things happening in the world. Sometimes I’d switch to a gun not because I thought it would help me in the ongoing firefight, but simply because I was curious how they might react to a situation. 

For example, in one level, I walked under some dripping water and my gun gagged and spat it out. So I spent the next 10 minutes switching between each gun to see how they would react. 

Noticeably, the guns seem less chatty than in the first game, but also have more voice lines. So I rarely heard them repeat lines, which was nice and made them less grating to carry around for a dozen hours. 

Unfortunately, combat involving these talking guns isn’t much to write home about. I wouldn’t classify the gunplay as bad, but enemies, while varied across the different levels you visit, don’t react much to shots and seem pretty dang stupid. I played on normal difficulty and never died once during combat outside of two deaths during boss fights. 

You can buy upgrades for your guns, as before, but they don’t improve the combat. They do help you kill more enemies faster, though, which is nice, as it helps you get through some longer encounters in less time. 

The other big addition to combat is a skateboard, which you acquire early on. In most areas of the game, as well as most fights, you can skateboard around, grind rails, and hop about like it’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. The game even directly references Tony Hawk’s games with floating letters you can collect, and it reveals who made all those letters in the first place. 

Riding the skateboard is a blast as it moves fast and provides more ways to get around arenas during fights. But it can also cause some headaches as the controls are sometimes unresponsive. I frequently bounced off surfaces by accident or was unable to grind something for no apparent reason. Still, it is nice to be able to skate around areas quickly, and shooting guns from a skateboard is indeed cool, so I’m happy it’s here even if it doesn’t always work. 

Go ask Alice for a funny joke

The humor in High on Life 2 is a mix of meta references, absurdist nonsense, slapstick, and satire. I found the game’s ratio for good jokes to be solid. About three out of five jokes landed and made me at least smile or laugh. That’s pretty dang good for a video game. 

Even better, if you just don’t want to talk to some weirdo for three minutes about an elevator or hear people giggling while delivering their lines, you can ignore most of the jokes in High on Life 2, which are often hidden out in the worlds you visit. Ignoring all of these gags would likely lead to a less funny experience. Still, if you hate this kind of low-energy, improv-heavy humor, well, skipping a lot of it is an option. 

But like High on Life 2’s new skateboard, the comedy is only good when the game works correctly. 

Far too many jokes and gags were ruined in High on Life 2 for different reasons, including dialogue cutting off other dialogue, characters getting stuck in reaction loops, audio disappearing randomly, or some other bug happening and derailing the punchline.

I also ran into bugs and glitches outside of jokes. I got stuck playing Bible Adventures (yes, the actual NES game from back in the day) because I couldn’t back out. Another time I got stuck in the floor while trying to play hide-and-seek. Enemies spawned underground, forcing me to abandon a side encounter. One time, I couldn’t even switch my guns, making it impossible to solve one of High on Life 2’s many simple puzzles until I reset. 

It’s a shame that this game is in such a rough state at launch, including numerous performance hiccups on Xbox Series X. There are some really cool and funny ideas in High on Life 2. 

Shatter your illusions of love

One memorable mission involves a full-on murder mystery that you must solve, complete with an in-game notepad that lets you mark off clues and suspects. Another time, I visited a retro game planet with low-poly enemies and environments. A standout boss fight involved the baddie digitally inserting themselves into my high-tech bounty suit and clawing their way into my pause menu, forcing me to fight them in the different settings menus. 

A favorite mission of mine takes place on a planet dedicated to conventions. Exploring the different cons, including a Murder Con and Human Con, was a treat, especially because I took the time to poke around and interact with everything and everyone I saw. 

High on Life 2 is a game that is chockablock with creativity and passion. One that rewards you for taking your time and poking at every corner and bit of it. The people who made this game jammed it full of ideas and details, many of which I probably missed. 

But wacky ideas, good jokes, and weird set pieces aren’t all it takes to make a great FPS. You need satisfying gunplay, consistent movement, and enemies that are engaging to kill. High on Life 2 doesn’t pull that off. And when it does succeed at something, the odds are high that a bug or performance issue will get in the way or even outright break it. 

Maybe the ending of High on Life 2 will completely change my mind. I’ll have to hope that the game is patched and I can escape my infinite death loop and beat the final boss. If that happens, I’ll return to this review and let you know. For now, I’d suggest people wait to see what’s fixed in the first update before hopping into this wonky but creative sci-fi adventure.