High on Life is a game you play if you want less frenzied gameplay than Doom, less zany nonsense than Saints Row 3 and are a fan of the Rick and Morty animated series. For anyone else though this game is a glob of sheer meh all over your console or PC.
I am generally not an FPS player on the basis that I usually suck at them. Spectacularly. Halo is the one exception and that was due to its story. So High on Life is not something I would normally play but I had seen a few screenshots and it was being pushed on my recommendations as being new on Xbox game pass so I decided to give it a go.
Let me be clear at this point. I am not a fan of Rick & Morty as I simply do not find it funny; though I do appreciate the writing which is in places quite clever. Had I known that this game was effectively Rick & Morty the FPS but in a different suit then I would have given it a miss. I didn’t so this review is my feelings as they happened.
The plot is pretty basic. You play a gamer who has been left home alone with his drug-using sister when aliens invade Earth with the intention of turning humans into drugs. With the aid of a talking gun (which is actually an alien) you escape and become a bounty hunter bringing down the cartel of aliens who have invaded earth. I wasn’t expecting much from the plot but the writing was clever and I have no doubt that fans of Rick & Morty will find the humour great. I found some of it slightly amusing but after a while it just started to become noise in the background and indeed I played much of this game without paying any attention to the dialogue. This is far from the norm for me as I am a solo player story driven gamer. I like the game plot but here it was just noise.
The game itself does look excellent. The colour palette is varied and vibrant and it really does pop on the screen. I have a first generation Xbox one and it ran well with decent looking textures and I did not come across any loading or crash bugs bar the usual one you sometimes get with Xbox game pass games not loading correctly. If I were to be hyper critical the loading screens felt overly long but once I was in game it ran extremely well.
In terms of gameplay this was a bit of a mixed bag. It is basically a run and gun shooter and the movement felt fine but the targeting reticule and field of view felt a little off. I still cannot put my finger on it but it simultaneously felt too wide and yet too narrow. It may just be me but I found that I could not sit and play this for long periods as it started to make me feel a bit queasy in a way that I have never had before. The actual gun play is initially fun and there are some interesting mechanics such as glob shot, mind controlling enemies and stopping time but generally it is a case of keep moving and shoot. Your primary ammo never runs out and enemies drop shields so in terms of normal enemies it is very hard to die (at least on the story mode I was on). The bosses do have some tactical elements and environmental tricks but aside from them it became very repetitive very quickly.
The problem I had with this game was that it did nothing brilliantly. I could see where the game devs were trying to be humorous and I accept I am probably not the demographic but there are other games which do alien weapon silliness better such as Saints Row 3 and there are games that do aggressive gun play better such as the reboot of Doom. Halo offers more tactical gameplay and there is not the multiplayer elements or sheer mass of Destiny. As a result High on Life just sort of is. It is a passable FPS but nothing more.
I feel that this game is trading heavily on the Rick & Morty link and the fans linking into the humour which will be instantly recognisable. The problem is that if you are not really into that type of humour then there is not much else on offer. It may make you smile once but unless you are a major fan of Rick & Morty then this game, for me, is nothing more than a glob of generic meh all over my Xbox one’s hard drive.
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