a radical shooter for a radicalized generation

Squanch Games turns that anxiety into sci-fi satire fit for Adult Swim in its latest game, High on Life 2. The first-person shooter sequel builds on 2022’s High on Life — minus Squanch founder and Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, who exited the studio in 2023 amid sexual harassment allegations. It has the same fondness for loudmouthed humor (for better and worse) while getting much more ambitious with its action. But beneath all the bullets and f-bombs is a timely cartoon comedy built for a radicalized generation, even if it doesn’t have many ideas of what to do with its pent-up aggression beyond putting it into a of elaborately designed gags.

High on Life 2 sets the stage quickly in a brilliant tutorial disguised as a narrative montage. Following the events of High on Life, that game’s unnamed player character has become a celebrity bounty hunter since foiling an alien invasion from the G3 Cartel. Their sister Lizzie, on the other hand, has become a revolutionary dedicated to taking down the galaxy’s most evil corporations. (Also, their mom is dating a gun now.) After becoming a fugitive by saving Lizzie from getting herself killed by rival bounty hunters, your hero is looped into a conspiracy surrounding Rhea Pharmaceuticals, a company that has big plans to enslave humans and turn them into medicinal livestock. Your goal is to kill five aliens connected to the company, working your way up to the CEO with the help of your arsenal of wisecracking sentient guns.

That premise starts High on Life 2 on a much better foot than its predecessor. Going to war with big pharma rather than alien drug traffickers (a scare-quote concept that perhaps isn’t the best fit given the cultural moment) gives the story some clearer targets. The anticapitalist satire is sharper as the creatures you’re tasked with killing are crooked politicians and finance wizards rather than foreign drug dealers.

More than improved movement or tuned-up shooting, specificity like this is High on Life 2’s real back-of-the-box feature. The first game was a pleasant surprise, riffing on Metroid Prime with an enjoyable first-person adventure romp that balanced action and platforming. It was a fun idea, let down by bland alien biomes that didn’t always reflect the story’s wackiness. The world was more of a stand-up club for voice actors like JB Smoove.

That’s no longer the case in the sequel. With Roiland and his in-your-face brand of humor out of the spotlight, Squanch Games gets much more room to prove what it can do on the design side. High on Life 2 explodes with creativity, whether it’s teleporting players into a neon-tinged gladiatorial arena at MurderCon or dropping them into an authentically recreated Spirit Halloween. One wildly inventive boss fight puts me in a war with my UI, eventually swerving into a reference to a bizarre piece of video game history that you could not possibly see coming. Another bounty tosses me onto a cruise ship and has me solving a murder mystery, Knives Out style. Every mission is a total surprise, and the scenarios do as much of the comedic lifting as the written jokes.

That’s great news, because the joke hit rate is still… let’s call it uneven. Sometimes, an actor drops a one-liner that will unexpectedly knock you to the floor. (“The Town,” Tim Robinson’s Creature says upon reading a title card introducing a new area, “That’s a beautiful name for a girl.”) Other times, High on Life 2 mistakes good voices for good jokes. Sweezy, a parody of Halo’s Needler voiced by Betsy Sodaro, has become the de facto lead gun with Roiland’s Kenny gone. It’s a sensible decision, but also an unfortunate one, considering how little there is to the character aside from the fact that she swears loudly. Some newcomers join the cast as the arsenal of weapons expands to seven, including Knifey, but they too can be one-note gags. Ralph Ineson lends his unmistakable voice to a hard-nosed rifle, but there’s little more to the character beyond the fact that it’s funny to hear Ineson doing his usual thing in such a silly game.

It’s the only area where Roiland’s absence is felt, even if he’s not missed. Whether you love his style of humor or hate it, his bumbling Morty-like performance gave Squanch a foundation to build around. The comedy is more disparate this time, hinging on individual bit parts to carry scenes — you will come to both love and despise a cute little fairy named Apples. There are still remnants of Roiland awkwardly kicking around, too. The talking OS in your spacesuit basically speaks in a Roiland impression, trying to fill the stammering gap in a way that’s a little too desperate. (The OS does get one of the game’s best bits though, when it tries to make it abundantly clear that it is AI but not that kind of AI.)

High on Life 2 is at its best when it’s moving away from Rick and Morty and moving towards Ratchet and Clank. The first-person shooting gets a boost here, thanks to a mix of old and new weapons that each play very differently. You’ve still got the shotgun-like Gus with his projectile boomerang shield that can be deflected back at enemies for extra damage, and Creature, who can shoot his literal children at foes. They’re joined by new guns like a soon-to-be divorcee who can levitate enemies with his trick shot, and a rifle that can shoot electrified bolts to shock enemies and solve generator puzzles. It very much feels like an arsenal on loan from Ratchet, and each gun is a total delight to learn and tool around with.

Squanch doesn’t just fine-tune its gunplay, but also its first-person exploration too. You now have access to a skateboard that can be toggled on at any time like a sprint. That makes moving around alien cities and beachside towns a lot more exciting moment-to-moment, as you can pop between wall rides and rail grinds like you’re playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. (There’s even a recurring letter-collecting skatepark minigame to make that obvious point of reference even clearer.)

Image: Squanch Games

If it’s not clear already, High on Life 2 is a lot. The action is louder, the movement is faster, the setpieces are more spectacular. The open hub areas are filled with collectibles, optional minigames, a whole-ass B-movie program that you can watch in a theater, and more. Squanch goes for broke at every juncture to establish its series as something more than a TV-adjacent gimmick. Even if you don’t vibe with the humor (you can still toggle gun quips down, thank God), there’s a solid chance you’ll be charmed by something it’s doing, just by the nature of how much it’s doing. It’s like going to a stand-up routine where you can forgive some flat bits because the ones that land hit you like a truck.

It’s a lot of joyful noise, but the adventure’s heart gets lost somewhere in all of it. The big pharma satire takes a backseat to maximalist silliness eventually, as the story circles to a flat “aren’t human beings just great?” thesis that doesn’t feel all that genuine in a game that goes out of its way to make a Jeffrey Epstein joke. (No, humans don’t sound all that wonderful when you put it like that!) For all its talk of revolution, High on Life 2 only seems interested in taking some crowd-pleaser jabs at those in power before getting back to its colorful alien distractions.

Maybe that’s radical enough for something as light and silly as this. Finding ways to have fun is an act of rebellion in a world that thrives on keeping you down; you can still skate to a protest. High on Life 2 gives players plenty of space to goof off in a dystopian world filled with playgrounds for those with eyes to see. Why not take a breather between real fights to fuck up some aliens?

High on Life 2 will be released Feb. 13 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Windows PC using a prerelease download code provided by Squanch Games. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.