High on Life new game from Justin Roiland Squanch Games
(Picture: Squanch Games)If you liked Rick and Morty, chances are that you’ll love High on Life, the latest product of its creator Justin Roiland’s deranged mind.
High on Life is foul-mouthed, scattergun, and wacky as all heck. Unlike Rick and Morty, High on Life is a video game: it has been produced by his company, Squanch Games. In every other respect, it’s very similar.
The game opens with a classic Roiland misdirection: you start as Buck Thunder, a Terminator-lite hero who is back to save the world for the second time. Guided by his divorce lawyer, you set off to kill “your ex-wife’s new alien boyfriends” – but, two seconds later, it turns out this is all a simulation (very meta).
Instead of being Buck Thunder, you instead play as an unnamed teen who witnesses an alien spaceship land in their quiet suburb. Naturally, the aliens are up to no good – in fact, they’re here to take over the world and abduct humans to sell as drugs to their fellow aliens (hence the game’s title) – so also, naturally, you need to get kitted up and travel the universe to take them all down.
Is there a plot? Not much of one. The game’s main selling point is how fun it is to gun down bad guys, and to do that it kits you out with a slowly expanding arsenal of sentient weaponry, named Gatlians. To start with, there’s Kenny, the easily flustered pistol, voiced by Roiland himself: he only fires one bullet at time, requiring the player to really flex that trigger finger in order to take down bad guys.
Fortunately, he’s soon joined by an automatic pistol, a shotgun, a needle-filled gun ripped straight out of Halo, and one called Creature that uses its children to devour bad guys whole (yes, you read that right). The problem is that a lot of these weapons feel rather underpowered, which makes any situations you get into feel rather hairy – and their constant chatter, while entertaining at first, some becomes rather wearing.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the combat were more engaging, but unfortunately it isn’t, really. The monsters are formulaic and their moves repetitive; instead of coming up with exciting new enemies or moves, the game throws the same ones at you in waves, making the whole thing feel rather flat and dull – and that’s without the uninspiring death sequences.
That said, there are fun elements, too. The graphics are an undeniable high point of the game: the scenery is surprisingly gorgeous (later in the game, you get a jet pack with which to hop around, letting you appreciate it in full) and the game leans in hard to its grotesque aesthetic. These monsters squelch, explode, and wriggle with a sort of weird beauty, and every frame is jam-packed with detail and colour.
This being a Roiland show, there’s also bonkers energy to spare. There are numerous minigames scattered throughout High on Life, many of which require the talking guns’ input to solve (some, like one where you fill out paperwork, are pointless and soul-sapping). Everybody is either a motormouth or a weirdo – or indeed, both – and the way some of the guns work is fabulously inventive.
You also get the sense that much of the dialogue – especially that of your sentient gun friends – has been improvised, which lends the whole game an off-the-wall energy that will either enrage or tickle you, depending on your sense of humour. However, given that there’s around eight hours of gameplay to slog through (more if you take the time to properly explore the world), which is peppered with non-stop swearing, rage is probably where most gamers will end their journey. And the frequent dollops of toilet humour are an absolute turn-off.
So is High on Life good? That depends. If you’re looking for the next God of War, this is very much not it. It’s light on plot, light on gameplay, and heavy on humour. However, if you’re looking for something mindless to while away the hours, this fits the bill nicely. Just don’t expect fireworks.
