I\u2019m about four hours into High On Life<\/em> and I have a migraine. It\u2019s unfair to say that the game has given me one\u2014I am, after all, notoriously prone to them\u2014but it certainly isn\u2019t helping. The brightly colored, gloopy, blobby alien worlds and incessant chatter from NPCs, enemies, and my weapons aren\u2019t exactly a soothing salve for an aching head, but I\u2019m determined to forge on.<\/p>\n So, I decide to heed the dev\u2019s advice<\/span> and play the rest of High On Life<\/em> while out-of-orbit high, and hit up my delivery service to secure the goods. High On Life <\/em>is exactly what you\u2019d expect in terms of plot, narrative, and humor from Squanch Games\u2019 creator Justin Roiland (who also makes Rick and Morty<\/em>): aliens have come to Earth to smoke human beings like meth and get high off of them, and you (a suburban teen whose visage you choose from a few faces shown in a mirror covered in coke lines) gotta become an alien bounty hunter to kill off the cartel members hell-bent on turning your species into their next designer drug. There are jokes about cum and buttholes, and jiggly, bouncing tits attached to little aliens in overalls. Everything is gloopy and globby and a little bit icky, from the guns you hold in your hand to the bosses you have to take down.<\/p>\n Speaking of: A washed-up former bounty hunter named Gene is your sort-of trainer on this journey to kill off the G3 cartel. Sure, he is glued to your couch for the entirety of the game watching B movies like Tammy and the T-Rex<\/em> and jacking off, but whenever you return to your childhood home that\u2019s been transported to an alien city, he\u2019s there, ready to say something asinine before pointing you in the direction you\u2019ll need to go next: nab a bounty at the alien portal that\u2019s sitting in your living room, head to a pawn shop to fetch a jetpack, the usual. <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/figure>\n Each one of your chatty weapons (you can adjust how much they talk in the menus, don\u2019t worry, though I doggedly refuse to in self-flagellation), has different abilities and use-cases. In a Metroidvania like High On Life<\/em>, that means you can use new weapons in old locations to reach areas you couldn\u2019t before. The reward? Some credits which you can use to upgrade your guns or a gross little collectible that goes in your inventory, but mostly completionist satisfaction. That and the platforming itself, which is surprisingly enjoyable and hefty.<\/p>\n Past mid-game when I\u2019ve got a jetpack and magnetic boots, the platforming really sings. I can use my grappling hook to soar across neon acid lakes, shoot a disc from my J.B. Smoove gun and jetpack up to it to reach extreme heights, and run along a magnetic wall while firing my knock-off Natasha Lyonne gun.<\/p>\n The guns are also a pleasant surprise, even if the combat itself can all too often be same-y, with just a few enemy types to rotate through during each encounter. I find that I swap between almost every gun in every firefight, whether it\u2019s the Morty-eque pistol, the SMG that reminds me of a Halo<\/em> needler, or the gun that shoots little alien kids who can latch on and gnaw enemy faces. Switching between them adds some much-needed variety to the combat, and helps keep it from feeling too<\/em> stale.<\/p>\n During High On Life<\/em>\u2019s leaner combat moments that don\u2019t feel like the game is just opening up the same two two doors to send out the same three enemy types, there\u2019s an almost Doom: Eternal <\/em>quality at play. But this doesn\u2019t happen enough, and that\u2019s a bummer. <\/p>\n I return to High On<\/em> Life<\/em> to try it out in a different state of mind. I\u2019m at the hub planet where the protagonist\u2019s home has been transported, wandering around it for the first time, looking at all the level art that I\u2019ve been blowing by for the last four hours in an attempt to make some headway (Kotaku<\/em> received a review code rather late on Friday evening, as we were previously warned of by a rep for Squanch Games).<\/p>\n A voice emanates from the monitors scattered about the hub. Rather than tuning it out\u2014which I started doing about an hour into the game\u2014I am transfixed by it. A globby, pink alien (which could describe nearly every character in High On Life<\/em>, save for the weird growth sticking out of this one\u2019s back) is asking for someone to please fuck it. \u201cMy entire species died out twenty years ago, and I haven\u2019t been fucked since,\u201d he says. That growth is, apparently, his genitals. This is, according to him, The Lil Sick Lil Fuck Show<\/em>. I cackle. Okay, fine, you got me. <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/figure>\n Unfortunately, I reach a mental stalemate\u2014-no matter how high I get, the sheer amount of dialogue piles up in my mind until I can\u2019t find anything funny, I just want every character to leave me be, including a floating, screaming, wailing alien who follows me around the majority of an entire level. When I reach a point where I need to do detective work in an attempt to find my next bounty, or engage in yet another mediator session between my in-game character\u2019s sister and the couch-surfing Gene, the incessantly long dialogue sections make my leg start anxiously jiggling, which is something I haven\u2019t really done since high school math class.<\/p>\n This 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\u2014see, now it\u2019s hilarious. But whereas this formula works (mostly) well in a 22-minute-long Rick and Morty<\/em> episode, by the time I\u2019m several hours into High On Life,<\/em> every line of dialogue makes it clear that somehow, I am not high enough.<\/p>\n As I\u2019m sitting with my head in my hands while yet another NPC drones on, I remember something art director Mikey Spano said during my hands-on: \u201cI think we\u2019re in the contenders for most dialogue ever.\u201d That, along with the curses, grumbles, and stammerings of Roiland and Roiland-adjacent voice actors, rings in my head like the voice of Sauron for the rest of my High On Life<\/em> experience. And yet, still, I doggedly refuse to adjust the dialogue settings. This is how the game was originally designed and marketed, and I will accept it as such.<\/p>\n![\"High](\"https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_80,pg_1,q_80,w_80\/02f75ed6c3a1a4a95f5a5d589f29d49c.jpg)
\n![\"High](\"https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_80,pg_1,q_80,w_80\/e5e53c540e0caa42d51673f5553ea9d5.jpg)