High On Life 2 is right on time. At a moment in time that seems increasingly bleak, Squanch Games’ latest project has dropped in to let you escape for a bit, laughing like an idiot while you do so. The typical Squanch brand of humor – the kind you might see on Adult Swim shows like Rick and Morty and Smiling Friends – runs rampant through dialogue, visual gags, and unexpected story twists. Combat and movement feel terrific thanks to the new skateboard system, the world has enough hidden in its corners to keep you wanting more, and it all fits into a 10 to 12-hour first-person shooter package that, while sometimes long in the tooth, doesn’t overstay its welcome.
High On Life 2 picks up with the same Bounty Hunter from the first game, but this time, they’ve gone through a personality shift. They’re now The Outlaw, after an early fumbled mission forces them to turn their guns against fellow bounty hunters, breaking the code in the process. The pharmaceutical company that caused the botch, Rhea Pharmaceuticals, once again wants to use humans as drugs for aliens, only this time they want to distribute the goods as prescription medication. Yep, it’s time to take on Big Pharma.
To do so, you will select and hunt down specific targets involved with Rhea Pharma, including an elite billionaire bankrolling the company, a politician trying to swing legislation beneficial to the company, and more. The social commentary is about as subtle as a hammer to the skull, but the story is well written, which makes that commentary worth experiencing.
The Outlaw is once again equipped with Gatlians, talking guns that provide as much commentary as they do combat prowess. Each Gatlian that joins you fulfills a certain firearm archetype: Sweezy is the automatic pistol, Gus is the shotgun, and Sheath is the assault rifle, among others. They all also have special abilities that help you get around in the world, and it helps make them all feel like equal parts of a big team. The banter back and forth between the talking guns and other characters is still as wacky as the first game, too.
There’s also a new character named Jeppy, a human/Gatlian hybrid who, once his meter is charged, can enter a battle and perform three powerful electrical attacks before disappearing. He can also only say his own name, though he says it with such delight that smiles are inevitable.
Unfortunately, Jeppy was also the source of a weird technical error in the Xbox version in which this was reviewed. Any activation of Jeppy would cause the game to crash. No warning, no justification, nothing but the Xbox dashboard’s main menu. This began in the first battle after meeting Jeppy, and then continued in subsequent battles. Thankfully, no battles required the use of Jeppy, and one accidental Jeppy summon did bring him into action, but that took place in the final waves of enemies before the final boss, and by then, it was too little, too late. In all, the game crashed about five times during this review, but three of them were Jeppy-related, while the other two were random one-off instances.
While the world of High On Life 2 isn’t overwhelmingly large, Squanch has made getting around in the city a breeze with a new skateboarding mechanic, frequently turning this first-person shooter into a first-person skater. Moving around the world on this skateboard is quick and easy, with plenty of places to grind a rail or jump onto a higher platform. The platforming is not quite as precise as I hoped, but thankfully, the checkpoint system is forgiving, allowing for quick restarts after falling into a pit.
This new movement, in tandem with the varied arsenal, creates a combat system that’s incredibly satisfying. Blasting through hordes of colorful and silly enemies is a delight, especially in later missions when you have more combat options to consider. Zooming around a battlefield, dodging enemy attacks, and returning fire makes for the best kind of chaos, all while the Gatlians cheer on the Outlaw as they’re blasting away.
That extends to the boss fights as well, which are mostly standard “large arena against massive enemy” style battles, but still offer plenty of good action. In fact, there’s one phase of a particular boss fight that’s so off-the-wall, I genuinely do not think I have ever seen anything like it before. That is a cliche, yes, but in this case, it is difficult to come up with anything that remotely compares to it from any game in recent memory.
In and out of battle, the Gatlians are still very good at making you laugh, though most of the jokes fall into that Adult Swim irreverent style of humor. That style isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but swearing and fart jokes do work hand-in-hand with some genuinely funny and clever moments. The shopping area in the hub world has some laugh-out-loud attributes, and you’ll also once again be visiting a chain restaurant to have dinner – though this time, it’s not Space Applebee’s.
More than all of that, the biggest high you’ll get from High On Life 2 is the sheer creativity on display. It’s abundantly clear that Squanch Games asked “what if we did this?” a lot during development, and most of those silly ideas made it into the final game. Wild thoughts like “What if we made a dual-wield weapon that’s a married Gatlian couple on the edge of divorce, and explore that dynamic” or, “Hm, we need a voice actor for one NPC, what’s John Waters up to?” are executed incredibly well throughout the entire game, and you never really know what’s going to come next.
High On Life 2 sets out to make you laugh, and it does a good job of it. It also sets out to bring you stylish, fast-paced combat with cool movement, and it does a good job of that, too. This is the kind of game that you can put on, laugh at for a while, and forget what’s troubling you, even though reminders might slip in through the pointed social commentary. High On Life 2, despite being a battle against Big Pharma, is just what the doctor ordered.
