- Publisher: Squanch Games
- Release Date: Dec 13, 2022
- Also On: PC, Xbox One
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
- Unscored
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Jan 30, 2023High on Life is an enjoyable yet silly first person shooter that works on most levels. While the humour sometimes misses he target, for the most part it is quite a witty and humouress story with interesting protagonists and antagonists to be found along the way as you explore this immersive alien shooter. Definitely a game for those looking for something unique yet different in the first person shooter genre.
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Edge MagazineJan 26, 2023It can be hard to separate what is ironically bad and what is just, well, bad. [Issue#381, p.100]
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Jan 19, 2023Humor is sometimes tough to get right. You have to pace it right and you shouldn’t overdo it. Justin Roiland and co. unfortunately throw it at you in mindless spades and hope something sticks. And underneath it all? Just a very average shooter.
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Jan 17, 2023High on Life is a fantastic addition to the Xbox catalog. Even if it wasn’t in Xbox Gamepass I would be recommending you play this game for its story, Metroidvania exploration and Trick Holes. Since it’s included with Xbox Gamepass it’s a no-brainer to check out. If you are a fan of the Roiland style humor then you are in for a real treat. There were so many times I had to pause the game and set the controller down because I was so shocked by something that was said or done. It was a pleasant surprise to be caught off guard like that in a game and I really look forward to what Squanch Games does next. Hopefully it's a sequel to this must play game.
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Jan 3, 2023Quotation forthcoming.
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Jan 3, 2023High on life isn't here to change your game of the year or to make history. It knows is place as a great send off to a great year and does this job phenomenally. While it's fun combat lacks the diversity the rest of the game has, the humor, fantastic level design and surprisingly good plot will make you leave with a big smile.
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Jan 3, 2023High on Life can be extremely annoying to some and extremely fun to others, as there is sarcasm in almost every minute of the game about religion, superstition, politics, daily routines, and even colors. If you are a Justin Roiland fan, there is no doubt that High on Life will be one the best adventures of your life.
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Jan 3, 2023High On Life unapologetically caters to advent fans of absurdist comedy, which overflows with expletive language and wacky scenarios. Lack of enemy variety and performance issues may be a deterrent for some, however.
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Jan 3, 2023High On Life combines simple FPS gameplay with an attractive design, a wide variety of weapons, and exaggerated writing that makes every moment unforgettable. Although it has some shortcomings, such as the simple enemy AI and little variety during firefights, it stays fun and engaging, and although it doesn't revolutionize the genre, it's an excellent choice for those who like over-the-top humour and original ideas and want to spend about 12 hours of fun.
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Jan 3, 2023A game written and directed by one of the creators of Rick and Morty could have been a masterpiece, instead turned out to be an interesting and hilarious product only in parts. The gameplay holds up for a few hours but in the long run becomes quite repetitive, fortunately the dark humor that characterizes the entire production manages to lift it up in no small part.
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Jan 3, 2023High on Life has a particular vibe, one that rewards patient exploration and persistence. The dialogue is a lot to handle, yes. And not every weapon is a winner. The wrong Gatlian can leave you both overwhelmed and unimpressed. But the look, the sound of this game is truly remarkable. This is an alien world that’s crammed full of curious details. The visuals are delicious, the soundtrack is mostly bangers, and the boss fights are well-crafted. Whatever problems I had with the pacing were (mostly) wiped away by that final challenge. It turns out a little spectacle goes a long way. If you can handle Justin Roiland’s unique sense of humor, you’ll want to check out High on Life.
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Jan 3, 2023High on Life perfectly blends tried-and-true Metroidvania and classic first-person shooter elements with Justin Roiland and Squanch Games’ distinctive brand of dark, fourth wall-breaking comedy, resulting in an action-adventure that no gamer should dare miss out on, especially when it is being offered for free to anyone with an Xbox Game Pass subscription.
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Dec 29, 2022Even though I had zero expectations and was ready to be disappointed, I can easily say that High On Life turned out to be a very satisfying game, If you want to play an FPS which is dipped in some meta humor sauce and gameplay inspired by Metroid Prime and similar games High On Life is exactly what you are looking for. Of course if it's humor suits you, otherwise you may lower the score by a point or two.
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Dec 29, 2022High on Life comes to our consoles and is consolidated as one of the great surprises of the year. A fun delivery, full of action and uncensored humor that will make your games incredibly funny.
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Dec 29, 2022High on Life is a strong enough game with some fun gameplay segments and okay-ish plot, all of which can outweigh some of the obvious shortcomings. Basically this new release from Squanch Games is a competently made FPS with some szechuan sauce on the side.
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Dec 24, 2022If you are looking for a game that will make you laugh, High On Life is the one. It's a bare bones FPS with acid humor, brilliant characters, and it's filled with absurd situations; it will make you feel inside an Adult Swim series. However, its limited exploration and rhythm, the game is better committed to making you laugh rather than shoot.
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Dec 24, 2022Graphically, High on Life is perhaps the least impressive that came out this year and in terms of gameplay, it's about as original and innovative as Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, released in 2005. But this game holds its own because everything is soaked in Roiland's absurd humour, from the tutorial to the weapons and details. It's amazing how many interchangeable, goo-covered enemies you can shoot as long as an annoying space creature circles around your head and whines about its mother in a squeaky voice.
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Dec 24, 2022An unsatisfying shooter brought even lower by an exhausting and all-encompassing script, High on Life can’t commit to its satire or ideas long enough to do anything of value.
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Dec 21, 2022Though it has plenty of great ideas, High on Life is too overbearing and never quite commits to its best moments.
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Dec 21, 2022High on Life transports us to a bizarre, strange and hilarious universe in which humanity's only hope is a rookie bounty hunter, a gun that won't shut up and old glory. The art style, constant jokes, and loads of references make High on Life a good way to spend the 10-11 hour or so of the main adventure. Although there are aspects that could have been improved or options that should be present, the set leaves a great title, in which the variety of enemies, the character improvements and the story of High on Life itself, are close to achieving the outstanding.
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Dec 21, 2022High on Life is a game that keeps its promises. Underneath a skin made up of over the top humor there is a biting irony towards a genre (old school FPS’s) which has far too many tropes to make fun of (and here not even one is left behind). The sometimes chaotic level design, combined with not exactly exciting boss fights, risks overshadowing the merits of the Squanch Games game, but a good sum of game mechanics manages to keep everything afloat, waiting for the next joke and the resulting laugh.
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Dec 21, 2022High on Life is one of those games that punches hard with style and character. Once you’ve started playing, you won’t be able to stop. Perhaps some people may find the humor a little much at times, but I had a blast.
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Dec 20, 2022Colorful, wild alien first-person shooter with talking guns - the gritty humor hits the mark, the gameplay is just so-so.
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Dec 20, 2022Despite having a number of fun and interesting ideas, High on Life falls short of its full potential. The new game from the co-creator of Rick and Morty will give you a good time, but only that.
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Dec 20, 2022High on Life is an FPS that focuses on making us laugh while enjoying the combat. The game manages to make us laugh in many of the conversations, with that Rick & Morty humor that Justin Roiland is known for. Could have had a little more depth to the gameplay, which makes it lame in this area.
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Dec 19, 2022The most fun I had with High on Life was watching the entirety of Tammy and the T-Rex on an in-game television, and that’s not a compliment. It’s indicative of a game that doesn’t know how to exploit the interactivity of videogames and settles instead on yelling ideas as unsubtly as possible. With its relentless avalanche of jokes and screeches, it’ll talk your ears off but has exactly zero bite to go with its cacophonous barking. Its best ideas are borrowed from elsewhere. Its worst ideas are borrowed from elsewhere. The aggressively layered comedy is a smokescreen for the fact it's got nothing else going for it. It’s a clamorous joke delivery vehicle in which your role as a player is to passively observe and occasionally shoot stuff. You might as well sit down and watch TV.
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Dec 19, 2022Despite being often repetitive, High On Life manages to impress with off-the-wall humor from the creator of Rick and Morty.
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Dec 19, 2022High On Life is the most video game-like video game to come from the minds of Squanch and Justin Roiland to date, and it shows the studio is capable of more than just lightly-interactive experiences packed with fart and cum jokes. Though it has plenty of those, too.
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Dec 19, 2022High on Life is a conflicted game. On the one hand it's a solid shooter that often feels like more than the sum of its parts, and comes with an engaging art style and ideas, but the sense of humour is just so subjective that it's hard to recommend to anyone that isn't a die hard Rick and Morty fan.
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Dec 19, 2022I had a good time with High on Life, but I can’t promise that everyone else will. Although the basic first-person shooter gameplay is hardly a revolution in game design, its certainly more than competent and accomplishes what it needs to, even with its significant lack of variety in the game’s second half. Where High on Life is likely to be polarising is its dialogue and humour, which are prevalent enough that they are hard to ignore. If you’re looking for a decent FPS that doesn’t overstay its welcome and can accept that not every joke is likely to land, then High on Life is certainly worth checking out.
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Dec 19, 2022High on Life is crass, vulgar, excessive, padded and features a comedy style that is incredibly subjective. However, it also has a ton of heart, strong gunplay, surprisingly good level design, a unique tone and, above all else, it's just plain fun.
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Dec 16, 2022A fun game that, even if it doesn’t do anything particularly well gameplay-wise, makes the most of its particular sense of humor to keep the player entertained.
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Dec 16, 2022High On Life is an ambitious shooter, supported by a brilliant script that manages to make you laugh from start to finish. Unfortunately, the shooting phases struggle to excel and the game clearly suffers from all the limitations typical of independent development.
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Dec 16, 2022It’s a solid shooter that often manages to nail its jokes, has a unique visual style, and feels pretty great to control the further into the campaign you get. It isn’t going to be the best shooter of all time, but it’s certainly fun while it lasts, and worth checking out.
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Dec 16, 2022High on Life continues Squanch Games’ propensity for skewering video game tropes, this time in the form of a first-person shooter. Unfortunately, a lot of the game plays like a first draft, and armor of detached irony doesn’t do enough to protect it from its many, many kinks. Roiland’s personal brand of gross-out parody and “oh, geez” improvisational humor is already starting to feel routine in video game form, but there are a few standout bits. Thankfully, there’s a pretty fun shooter underneath all the alien semen, though stiff animations and some buggy moments can make it look slightly underbaked. If you’re a fan of Rick and Morty (or, more appropriately, “Doc and Mharti”), then High on Life might just be the pickup you need—but it never fully develops any of its really good ideas into a satisfying final draft.
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Dec 16, 2022I’m a huge fan of the Oddworld-ian creature design and the factory-farming satire of its plot. But Oddworld made that stuff work because it had a big, weird heart. High on Life just has dilated pupils and a shit-eating grin.
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Dec 15, 2022A fun FPS that gets better with every new talking gun you get. The wild situations, constant banter and sense of humor can either be great or a bummer, depending on your tastes. But if you like Rick & Morty, you're going to love it.
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Dec 15, 2022High on Life is an irreverent, absurd shooter that manages to shine with its outrageous humor, silly setting and story, and some really goofy, foul-mouthed guns that pull the whole thing together for the vast majority of the time. Combat is a bit sloppy, especially during the first act, and the whole sci-fi adventure sometimes has an unpolished feel to it, but once you get some new tools of destruction and movement options, it rises to the occasion. Not all of its jokes find their punchline, but with memorable boss fights, unique alt-fire abilities and exploration, and way more terrible movies to watch than I expected, this wacky journey is definitely worth your time.
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Dec 15, 2022A colourful, silly and deliberately over-the-top first person shooter, with severely undercooked gunplay and a sense of humour that will test the patience of even Rick and Morty fans.
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Dec 15, 2022Despite multiple shortcomings and my general aversion to the game’s writing, High on Life has occasional glimmers of potential. I’d like to see a sequel polish and improve upon this foundation. I’m always itching for more creative takes on shooters, but High on Life is a reminder that “different” doesn’t always mean “good.”
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Dec 14, 2022High On Life is easily Squanch Games’ most ambitious project, but aside from the environments and the world-building which match that ambition, the first-person shooter itself is incredibly generic, and not funny enough to make up for it.
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Dec 14, 2022High On Life is a Comedy FPS that hits its target with its writing but not so much with its shooting. Too bad there's no localised version because it's really funny.
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Dec 14, 2022High on Life is a fantastic experience hindered by some technical shortcomings. The world and characters are simply fantastic and it is genuinely hilarious, which is one of the hardest things in gaming to achieve. This game shot up my list of the best of 2022 from the outset and it didn’t disappoint by the end. I really enjoyed my time with it and look forward to what the team works on next. The fact that it is available on Game Pass is just icing on the cake. I can’t recommend this game enough, it is a wonderful way to end the year and more than worth playing through.
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Dec 14, 2022Technically proficient and lovely to look at, High on Life commits the cardinal sin of making the shooting part of the game feel underwhelming. A forgettable experience flecked with mediocre jokes.
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Dec 13, 2022High On Life combines sloppy shooter action with Justin Roiland and all of his pals being incredibly annoying. You're either going to love it or hate it, really, so it's lucky this one's hitting Game Pass so you can check it out and decide for yourselves. Personally, this reviewer hated the humour, there's something very off and deeply troubling at the heart of where this game is coming from, it feels as though it's looking down, sneering and hateful. But that's the comedy style it's going for so we guess we need to relax, bro. Some people are going to eat this stuff up, regardless of what we think, so it's a shame that it ties this sneering attitude to bland gameplay, tired puzzles, dumb AI and a world that just isn't fun to explore or inhabit in any way. Dude. That is harsh.
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Dec 12, 2022Anyone who isn’t thrilled at the idea of having Roiland constantly chattering in their ear for a dozen hours straight will likely find the game’s incessant need to force itself on the player annoying. With the addition of uncompelling combat, frustrating exploration, and a lack of anything else to offer players, High on Life is one of the most annoying, derivative, and slogging experiences in years.
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Dec 12, 2022I appreciate what Squanch Games is doing in the industry as a whole, but Trover Saves the Universe was a much better distillation of Roiland and company's humor in a sounder package.
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Dec 12, 2022High On Life is absolutely fantastic, and you should play it.
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| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
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Dec 12, 2022A miserable cocktail of ideas from other action-platformers and the worst parts of Rick and Morty. [Eurogamer AVOID]
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Dec 13, 2022This is quintessential Roiland humor: Drag out something for so long it starts to make the viewer uncomfortable, then drag it out a little longer until they start to uncomfortably laugh, then drive that laughter home with a dash more discomfort—see, now it’s hilarious. But whereas this formula works (mostly) well in a 22-minute-long Rick and Morty episode, by the time I’m several hours into High On Life, every line of dialogue makes it clear that somehow, I am not high enough.
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Dec 13, 2022My only major complaint lies in the abrupt ending, with no particular surprises after defeating the final boss or activities to finish. For a game that was filled with voices of the nattering guns, they are strangely silent once we laid waste to the big bad. It was odd and jarring. But, regardless, the destination was enjoyable and is very much worth your time if you enjoy a beautiful-looking, solid shooter that does not take itself at all seriously, with incredible performances from... well, talking guns, horny teddy bears, limbless bounty hunters, and fascist ant people.
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Jan 3, 2023A bit confusing at first, High On Life is an experience that can finally be enjoyed once you put some hours into it. Regarding its purely FPS component, even though it works very well, it was a bit too wishy-washy. Among the notable flaws, we have the lack of impact in gunfights, a small and repetitive bestiary and bosses that are too easy to take down. On the other hand, the idea of the Gatlians is interesting to explore and this irreverent, vulgar, trashy and absurd humour finally won us over and made us forget some of the game design’s shortcomings. Beware, however, that the lack of ergonomics, particularly with regard to subtitles, could put off many non-English-speaking players from getting involved in the adventure. Although imperfect, Squanch Games’ title remains a solid base for a new licence and manages to take us into its totally ludicrous universe despite quite a negative first impression. Well done!
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 517 out of 664
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Mixed: 53 out of 664
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Negative: 94 out of 664
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Dec 15, 2022
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Dec 14, 2022
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Dec 14, 2022