Pistol, please shut up. High on Life Review

High on Life has a recognizable and, to some extent, unique style. It’s all about Justin Roiland, creator of Rick and Morty. His hand is felt in every aspect of this shooter. But that’s just something turned out well, and everything else is disgusting.

It’s funny to watch how High on Life tries to be like DOOM or the same Wolfenstein, but crumbles halfway through. The game tries to entertain not with shooting and gameplay, but with team Roiland’s flat jokes on the topic of intercourse, feces and tanks of alien seminal fluid.

The intro tells the story of a simple American teenager whose measured life of acne, parties and the first acquaintance with the opposite sex is interrupted by an alien invasion. Aliens from the G3 cartel suddenly discovered that people can be smoked, and therefore they are very expensive on the black market.

In all the confusion, our glorious protagonist manages to acquire a talking gun named Kenny, and after some time he becomes one of the most dangerous bounty hunters, one by one eliminating the leaders of the cartel in an attempt to save the Earth and humanity.

The plot of High on Life does not even try to high matters and follows Roiland’s already proven model: throwing nonsense in the hope that it will take root and cause the viewer to laugh. Here is the love story of the protagonist’s sister that came out of nowhere with some alien guy, as well as the eternal whining of the cripple Jen, from whom the hero borrowed a spacesuit for his adventures – there are a lot of these. These separate stories do not move the plot in any way and do not add depth to it, instead eating up the timing.

Often the resolution of disputes that have arisen between minor characters falls on the main character and cannot be missed. And the dialogues are endless. Roiland’s team seems to be trying to tell a joke, but when they realize that the punchline will not make the listener laugh, they continue to sketch, making it more stupid and ridiculous.

Between missions, players can roam the alien metropolis and collect chests of credits to purchase upgrades. So that such walks do not tire, Roiland’s team decided to diversify them a bit with the opportunity to communicate with the townspeople, but it turned out as always.

The protagonist will be asked to guard the bike, and will then be given a nine-story mat when it is successfully stolen; offer to buy a tank of seminal fluid of aliens; resolve a dispute between two talking barriers trying to figure out which one is prettier. These little stories, like the arguments of minor characters, take up time.

For some reason, the developer thinks that games can be made on the same principle as the animated series. In Rick and Morty, the madness and nonsensical dialogue, with words made up on the spot, is able to bring a smile and does not tire in any way – each episode lasts a little over 20 minutes. Here is a shooter for 10 hours, half of which the protagonist stands and listens to jokes, as if written by children who have discovered a wealth of profanity.

What can not be taken away from the game is a good style. Each location in High on Life has a distinct style: dense jungle, a futuristic metropolis, or a hot desert infested with rats. The problem is that often within the same task you will have to visit the same location two or three times – and sometimes on the other side, just with a jetpack or another tool. Yes, wandering in circles is sometimes rewarded by the chance to stumble upon a secret, but often you just want to move on.

The protagonist’s arsenal consists of four talking guns, representatives of the so-called Gatlins. Kenny is a pistol, voiced by Roiland himself, which turns into an analogue of a grenade launcher in an alternative mode. As the storyline progresses, the shotgun Gus will appear, capable of pulling enemies towards him and firing circular saws. A replica of Halo’s needle gun, Sweezy can shoot time-stopping bubbles. The creature, the last gatlin, produces vile creatures that can activate generators and bite into enemies. There is also a bloodthirsty Knaifi knife – his favorite pastime is to gouge out the eyes of opponents. With its help, they will also allow you to open chests, as well as grab onto all sorts of platforms and ledges – the knife can turn into a flexible tentacle.

Each Gatlin’s alternate fire modes not only help in combat, but can also be used to get to previously inaccessible locations. From the same disks of Gus in certain places, you can build a ladder, and Kenny’s grenades activate analogues of catapults that can launch the hero to the other end of the map.

Toward the middle of the game, each skirmish with opponents turns into a real bacchanalia when you try to use each Gatlin in turn. It’s a pity that the varieties of enemies in High on Life are much smaller than the ways to eliminate them.

Gatlins and enemies chatter non-stop. At a certain point, it begins not only to tire, but even to annoy. As if realizing that no one wants to listen to chatter 90% of the time, the game has an option that reduces the amount of chatter per minute of screen time, but it either does not work, or in the second third of the game no one shuts up for a second. Tip: try playing with headphones and take them out of your ears as soon as you see that, say, Kenny is getting oxygen into his mouth to start talking about something again.

Halfway through, High on Life runs out of ideas and falls into reruns. It’s ironic, because in one of the missions the game seems to make fun of the monotony and makes you do boring sorting of documents, made in the form of a mini-game.

Diagnosis

Almost the entire budget of High on Life went to Roiland’s jokes about sexual relations and the alien seed, after which Squanch Games was left with money only for a few bright locations, a jetpack and a needle gun capable of shooting time-stopping bubbles.