High on Life 2 review: Silly sci-fi sequel is perfect for Xbox Game Pass

Launching today, High on Life 2 might just be the perfect Xbox Game Pass game. Sure, it’s not the greatest game of all time, but it’s ideal if you’re already a member of the service and want to have some dumb fun over the Valentine’s Day weekend.

If you played 2022’s High on Life, you'll know roughly what to expect - talking guns, linear missions, and the exact brand of silly humour that Rick and Morty fans revel in (although the sci-fi show's creator, Justin Roiland, is not involved in this one).

The story picks up some time after the first game left off. The unseen, voiceless player character has become a legendary figure in the bounty hunting world after bringing down the G3 cartel, but a fun montage at the start of the game reveals that this life of super-stardom wasn’t exactly all it was cracked up to be.

In classic video game sequel fashion, you’re stripped of a lot of your previous weapons at the start of this second adventure (the way they write Lezduit out of the main story is particularly funny). This is a little frustrating, but it does pave the way for some fun new guns to be added instead.

Casting is one of the great strengths of this game, with Ralph Ineson delivering some note-perfect grumpiness as Sheath (basically a Halo battle rifle with shades of Yondu from Guardians of the Galaxy) and Ken Marino bringing his downtrodden best to Travis (a divorcee that is introduced in such a funny way).

Building on the strengths of the first game, these new guns combine with the returning old ones for some really fun combos and special effects, both in the battle scenarios and the puzzling segments (an underrated element of the franchise in this writer’s opinion).

Another fun new addition is the skateboarding. A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one, as it adds a very flow-state vibe to the traversal and also plays into combat and those underrated puzzles to boot.

The overarching story and the structure isn’t the greatest strength of this game, with one of the most memorable missions actually having nothing to do with the main plot. There are even points in the game where there is basically nothing to do but go to sleep and wait for the next mission to arrive, which does take the pace out of proceedings a bit and slightly kills the vibe.

There’s just enough intrigue here from the game to hang its hat on, with a couple of twists and surprises along the way, but it feels like more effort has been put into the moment-to-moment dialogue than the bigger beats of the story. It feels like, as long as we have a vague reason to hunt someone down, that’s basically enough.

That moment-to-moment dialogue will be music to the ears of hardcore Rick and Morty/High on Life fans, but I did find myself tempted to turn down the chatter settings at some points. At times, it felt like puzzles were being explained to me immediately after discovering them, and context was constantly being reiterated by constant dialogue. There were even characters talking over each other about totally different things at points.

There were also a couple of glitches and niggles along the way. I had one hard crash, and a couple of moments where I had to reload the previous checkpoint to get out of a broken-seeming situation. Nothing major that put me off in that respect, though, I always wanted to keep playing, even past my bedtime (which is saying something for someone as lazy as me).

One other thing that did slightly get on my nerves was the larger open world segments. Clearly an effort had been made to make some big areas and show off some nice graphics (again there was a Halo nod in one of these bits), but I found the environments themselves to be a little underpopulated with meaningful things to do.

Sure, there’s stuff to collect and see, with a number of collectable retro games in the mix, as well as the returning novelty of full-length movies showing in theatres, but I found myself a couple of times just whizzing about on my skateboard and struggling to find anything to actually do in these areas.

All of that said, there is so much fun to be had in this game, particularly in the main levels. Each one is basically a self-contained bounty hunting mission, and you can tell these have been crafted to engineer the silliest situations possible and really surprise the player holding the controller.

I don’t want to describe any specific beats too much, for fear of spoilers, but I’d say these stupendous moments — the payoff and the punchlines that punctuate each main quest — are worth the price of admission on their own, especially if you already have Game Pass!

High on Life 2 launches today on Xbox Series X/S, PC, PS5 and Xbox Game Pass. We reviewed on Xbox Series X. You can order your copy now.

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