I’ll be in about four hours high in life and i have migraines. It’s unfair to say the game gave me one – after all, I’m notoriously prone to them – but it certainly doesn’t help. The brightly colored, dingy, lumpy alien worlds and the incessant chatter from NPCs, enemies, and my weapons isn’t exactly a soothing salve for a sore head, but I’m determined to keep going.
So, I decide to heed the developer’s advice and play the rest high in life up off orbit and call my delivery service to secure the goods. high in life is exactly what you’d expect in terms of storyline, narrative, and humor from Justin Roiland, creator of Squanch Games (who also makes Rick and Morty): Aliens came to earth to smoke humans like meth and get high off them, and you (a suburban teenager whose face you choose from a few faces seen in a mirror covered with coke strips) need to become an alien bounty hunter Kill the cartel members who are keen to turn your species into their next designer drug. There are jokes about cum and assholes and jiggling, bouncing tits attached to little aliens in overalls. Everything is dingy and dingy and a little gross, from the guns you hold in your hands to the bosses you have to defeat.
Speaking of which, a shabby ex-bounty hunter named Gene is your sort of trainer on this journey to take down the G3 cartel. Sure, he’ll be glued to your couch throughout the game and will happily watch B-movies Tammy and the T Rex and jerking off, but whenever you return to your childhood home transported to an alien city, he’s there and ready to say something silly before pointing you in the direction you need to go next: grab yourself Bounty on the alien portal, which is sitting in your living room, head to a pawn shop for a jetpack, the usual.
Each of your talkative weapons (you can adjust how much they talk in the menus, don’t worry, although I adamantly object to that in Self Flagellation) have different abilities and use cases. In a Metroidvania like high in life, which means you can use new weapons in old places to reach areas you couldn’t reach before. The reward? Some credits to upgrade your weapons with, or a gross little collectible to add to your inventory, but most of all, satisfaction from completion. That and the platform itself, which is surprisingly comfortable and beefy.
After mid-game, when I have a jetpack and magnetic boots, the platform really sings. I can use my grappling hook to hover over neon acid lakes, shoot a disc at it from my JB Smoove pistol and jetpack to reach extreme heights, and dash along a magnetic wall while firing my fake Natasha Lyonne pistol.
The weapons are also a pleasant surprise, although the combat itself can be the same all too often, with only a few enemy types to rotate during each encounter. I find myself switching between almost every weapon in every firefight, be it the Morty-eque pistol, the SMG, which reminds me of one gloriole Needle, or the weapon that shoots small alien children who can latch on to enemy faces and bite them. Switching between them adds some much-needed variety to the fight and helps it feel non-existent to stale.
While high in lifeThe leaner combat moments that don’t feel like the game just opens the same two doors to send out the same three enemy types are almost there Destiny: Forever quality in the game. But that doesn’t happen enough, and that’s a shame.
I return to high up life try it in a different state of mind. I’m on the main planet where the protagonist’s house was transported to, wandering around them for the first time and looking at all the level art I’ve blown past the last four hours to get some progress (my city received a review code quite late on Friday evening, having previously been warned by a Squanch Games representative).
A voice comes from the monitors scattered around the hub. Instead of turning it off – which I started about an hour into the game – I’m hooked on it. A plump pink alien (who could describe almost any character in high in life, except for the strange growth sticking out of his back) asks someone to fuck him. “My entire species went extinct twenty years ago and I haven’t been fucked since,” he says. This growth is apparently his genitals. That is according to him The Lil Sick Lil Fuck Show. I cackle. ok good you got me
Unfortunately, I reach a mental stalemate – no matter how high I get, the sheer volume of dialogue builds up in my head until I can’t find anything funny anymore, I just want each character to leave me alone, including a floating, screaming, howling alien that follows me for most of a whole level. When I reach a point where I have to do some detective work to find my next bounty, or engage in another mediator session between my in-game character’s sister and couch-surfing Gene, I get fed up with the incessantly long chunks of dialogue start to shake my leg anxiously, which I haven’t really done since high school math class.
That’s the essence of Roiland humor: stretch something out long enough to make the viewer uncomfortable, then stretch it out a little longer until they start laughing awkwardly, and then drive that laugh home with a pinch more uneasiness – see, now it’s hilarious. But while this formula works well in a 22-minute length (most of the time). Rick and Morty Follow until I’m in for several hours high in life every line of dialogue makes it clear that somehow I’m not high enough.
Sitting with my head in my hands as another NPC keeps droning on, I remember something art director Mikey Spano said during my hands-on: “I think we’re among the contenders for the most dialogue of all time .” That, along with the swearing, grumbling, and stammering from Roiland and Roiland-neighboring voice actors, sounds in my head like the voice of Sauron for the rest of my life high in life Experience. And yet I stubbornly refuse to adjust the dialog settings. This is how the game was originally designed and marketed, and I will accept it as such.
When the game shuts up, there are some really funny moments. The Morty gun stammering about how to pronounce “Marlboro” is a fair bit, and I’m (obviously) a fan of all the Italian references and Italian-coded characters wedged into this game. A random place on the Main hub planet named Little Shitaly made me giggle, and every time Roiland pulls off a stereotypical New York accent, I can’t help but smile. There are some celebrity cameos that will make you want to do that Leonardo DiCaprio shows memes also on your screen. If you’re unsure about this game, remember that it’s on Xbox Game Pass and is worth at least trying to play through. The humor may not resonate with you, but it’s not meant to placate everyone.
But still high in life specifically points out clichéd game design choices, such as quest-giving NPCs, clue-hunting missions, and recycled level layouts (we heard that my city scream) and features some unique gameplay elements that feel really inspired, the majority of this game doesn’t reinvent the wheel. There are aspects that I wish would have been pushed a little further, chances that could have been taken to really sell the whole atmosphere of the meta – the warp disks that let you dive into random worlds like Cutie Town and an Alien Jam, they’re a great way to spice up what’s often a pretty typical level layout. But they can’t be used in that many places, and there aren’t that many yet (although I should note that Spano has hinted that more are to come after launch).
There are also some bugs, although a day-one patch on PC and a patch coming soon on Xbox could fix that. However, a few times I was forced to reload a previous checkpoint because a bug had thrown my character high over the level or an enemy had slid through the ground and I couldn’t advance without killing him.
high in lifehow Rick and MortyShe climbs the abyss of revelation, opens her fly and pisses into the abyss. It’s pretty darn fun to make something almost different in form and function only to get away with it at the last second, isn’t it? You thought we really didn’t give a fuck, right? Damn idiot. Here’s a fart.
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