High On Life 2
Developer: Squanch Games
Publisher: Squanch Games
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, PC (Reviewed)
Release Date: 13 Feb 2026
Price: – $59,99 USD – Available Here $99,95 AUD – Available Here
Overview
Games are supposed to be fun; I think we can all universally agree on that. Fun can come from many different directions: either by being brutally challenging, featuring unique gameplay mechanics, offering ridiculously rich side content, or having an engaging replay value. But when you really come to think of it, I’m genuinely not sure if I’ve played many titles that I could accurately label as just… flat-out funny. Sure, there are a few rare exceptions out there, such as South Park: The Stick of Truth, BattleBlock Theater, or the legendary Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Earning a well-deserved spot on that exclusive list is also the first High On Life. It’s a game that already starts with the absolutely hilarious, unhinged premise of an alien cartel enslaving humanity strictly to use them to……uhm, smoke them as weed. You just gotta see it to believe it.
So imagine my surprise when the trailer for this game suddenly dropped out of nowhere, promising a significantly bigger and vastly better universe to explore. Honestly, I would have been equally hooked even with a simple promise of “more of the same,” especially since the first game managed to hit that perfect sweet spot of being constantly funny without ever overstaying its welcome….And for those out of the loop, Squanch Games is a studio founded by Justin Roiland, one of the Rick & Morty co-creators, so you can already imagine what blend of humor we’re all in.
Story
After saving humanity from the interstellar cartel of weed human-smoking enjoyer aliens in the first game, you are now officially recognized as the greatest bounty hunter in the universe (which, honestly, is still a phenomenally weird sentence to type out, but let’s just roll with it). Life at the top is exactly as glorious as you’d expect. You’re raking in the intergalactic talk show appearances, locking down lucrative sponsorship deals for questionable space-energy drinks, and swimming in fame, fortune, and an absurd amount of alien cash. You’re practically the universe’s deadliest influencer. All that is good until your sister Lizzie is kidnapped by an evil pharmaceutical conglomerate, and now you find yourself on the wrong side of the law. The hunter becomes the hunted, the bounteer (?) becomes the bounty, and to quote the great philosopher Billie Eilish: “you are now the bad guy” (disclaimer: might not be the actual quote).
Gameplay
While it’s not quite a full-blown, hundreds-of-hours sandbox just yet, High On Life 2 offers significantly more freedom when it comes to deciding your mission approach and getting lost exploring the side content. Instead of being forced down linear alien hallways like in the first game, you’re actually given the breathing room to tackle objectives your way and stumble upon some secrets and easter eggs. The developers clearly didn’t want to rely too heavily on the already established, safe formula. To keep things fresh, you can expect an entirely new arsenal of non-stop talking weapons, each bringing its own specific brand of neurotic, hilarious, and mildly unhinged commentary to your choices. Alongside your chatty firearms, the galaxy is populated with a fresh cast of delightfully annoying side characters who exist purely to test your patience and annoy you to no end.
But hands down, one of the best and most unexpected new additions in the game is the brand-new skateboard traversal system. Early on in the campaign, you face off against (and naturally, defeat) a rival, human-weed-smoking bounty hunter. Your ultimate reward? You get to loot his slick space skateboard. From that moment on, you can casually lipslide, grind, manual, and kickflip your way from one end of the map to the other. Now, full disclosure: you pretty much gain absolutely nothing from doing this. No sick combo multipliers are flashing on the screen, no hidden collectible letters to hunt down, and zero RPG progression levels tied to landing your sick flips. But is it still insanely fun? You bet it is!
Visuals
This is something that took me completely by surprise, and trust me, I don’t mean that in a good way. In fact, I could easily write an entire, completely separate essay just venting about the technical performance in this game. If you think it is merely “bad”………my brothers in Christ, you have absolutely no idea what bad even looks like anymore. Calling the optimization in High On Life 2 merely “bad” is the understatement of the century. It’s truly abysmal, it’s mindboggling, and it fundamentally defies every known law of logic in this universe.
I recently built a pretty powerful, high-end gaming PC and, thankfully, I was lucky enough to put it all together right before RAM prices decided to skyrocket to oblivion. Yet, this is the very first title where I had to do some agonizing, sweat-inducing tinkering in the settings menu just to get a somewhat stable framerate. I was desperately juggling between DLSS and AMD FSR options, aggressively upscaling, tragically downscaling, constantly tweaking the native resolution, flipping frame generation on and off, switching textures from low to high, and then sadly back to low again. I tried basically anything and everything I could think of just to get this game into a barely playable state. I actually purposely stalled on publishing this review for a while, desperately hoping some miraculous day-one hotfix or a massive optimization patch would swoop in to save it and up the performance to an acceptable level. Spoiler alert: that mythical update never happened.
Out of sheer curiosity, I even went out of my way to redownload the first High On Life (which I last played back in 2023) just to see if I had played that original title with thick, rose-tinted glasses. It is genuinely bizarre and a little heartbreaking how much better the overall performance, the framerate stability, and even the visuals in the first game are compared to this completely unoptimized sequel. The original runs like absolute butter, whereas the sequel feels like it’s constantly chugging through a swamp of broken code. I honestly don’t know what kind of messy engine tweaks the developers tried to pull off here, but whatever it is, please don’t do it anymore. Seriously, just stop.
Audio
While the game’s overall audio segment is not in such an abysmal, hair-pulling state as the visual performance, it still leaves a whole lot to be desired. Since I already had to redownload the first High On Life for the sake of a side-by-side performance comparison (and honestly, out of pure, unadulterated desperation just to see something run smoothly), the audio & sound effects downgrade became glaringly obvious. To be fair, the actual voice acting and the trademark humor of the talking guns are still entirely on par with the previous game. They still hurl insults and act unhinged with the perfect comedic timing. However, the actual weapon sound effects are drastically lacking that satisfying, heavy “oomph” you expect when blasting aliens. Instead of firing off impactful sci-fi artillery that rattles your headphones, it genuinely felt more like I was playing a weird, M-rated version of Splatoon. You are essentially just using plastic paintball guns to coat enemies in colorful goop until they eventually get annoyed and just decide to die out of sheer boredom. Honorable mention goes to the enemy AI that will either stand there or run around in circles while you just shoot in their direction.
Overall
While the game undeniably feels like a massive upgrade in terms of a wilder story and significantly more bizarre content, the glaring performance drawbacks are such a serious, game-breaking issue that I honestly cannot recommend it in this abysmal state. It is incredibly frustrating to see so much potential buried under a technical mess. Do yourself a favor and wait for a few major patches, crossing your fingers and hoping the developers might actually turn this ship around. But right now, if anything, the true value of High On Life 2 lies in reminding everyone just how fantastic its predecessor was.
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