High on Life 2 2026 Game Review

High on Life 2 2026 Story

Have you ever wondered what happens when a pharmaceutical company decides that humanity is the ultimate untapped resource for its next miracle drug, leaving you to clean up the mess with an arsenal of sarcastic, talking weapons? That is exactly the bizarre reality you are thrown into with High on Life 2, a game that somehow manages to take the already unhinged premise of its predecessor and turn the dial up to an entirely new level of weirdness that you simply have to see to believe.

Picking up a few years after the defeat of the G3 cartel, our protagonist has been living the high life as a superstar bounty hunter, only to have their world shattered when the sinister Rhea Pharmaceuticals kidnaps their sister, Lizzie, with the dark intention of legalizing humans for medicinal use.

While the narrative setup is incredibly compelling and promises a wild ride, the actual storytelling execution can feel a bit sloppy at times, often relying on lengthy monologues to explain complex motives and sci-fi technologies rather than letting the player experience the reveals naturally.

However, what the game lacks in narrative polish, it more than makes up for with its trademark absurdist humor and relentless meta-commentary that keeps you laughing even when the plot stumbles. The sequel brings back familiar voices like J.B.

Smoove and Betsy Sodaro while introducing fantastic newcomers, including a genuinely legendary boss encounter featuring Richard Kind, where his character literally invades your in-game menus to mess with your settings in one of the most creatively hilarious moments in modern gaming.

Throw in the ability to play fully emulated retro titles like Bible Adventures hidden within the world, and you have an experience that is constantly subverting your expectations, making you wonder what kind of insane joke or fourth-wall break is waiting for you around the next neon-drenched corner.

Gameplay

When it comes to the moment-to-moment action, High on Life 2 introduces a massive game-changer that fundamentally rewrites how you interact with its vibrant, alien worlds: a fully functional skateboard that injects a massive dose of kinetic energy into both exploration and combat.

Moving away from the purely foot-based traversal of the original, this sequel practically begs you to channel your inner Tony Hawk as you seamlessly grind on rails, launch off ramps, wall-ride across massive gaps, and zip around the expanded hub areas with an effortless, breezy momentum that feels incredibly satisfying.

This radical new mobility is heavily woven into the environmental design, making the simple act of exploring the varied planets or hunting down hidden collectibles an absolute joy that easily stands out as the game’s greatest improvement.

Unfortunately, when you are forced to jump off the board and actually pull the trigger, the gunplay itself hasn’t received the same level of refinement and often devolves into an overly chaotic and sloppy affair.

With an overwhelming number of enemies crowding the screen, bizarre room geometries that combatants easily get stuck behind, and wildly inconsistent weapon accuracy, firefights can frequently feel like an absolute sensory overload where you are just spraying and praying rather than engaging in tactical combat.

While new weapons like the burst-firing Sheath offer some mechanical variety, the sheer visual noise and unpolished combat mechanics mean that the shooting takes a noticeable back seat to the platforming and the comedy, leaving you to heavily rely on your skateboard to simply survive the messy encounters by never stopping your momentum.

Review

Despite the undeniable charm of its talking guns and the sheer thrill of grinding through an alien metropolis on a skateboard, High on Life 2 is unfortunately dragged back down to earth by a frustrating array of technical issues that desperately need some extra time in the oven.

Exploring this incredibly creative universe is frequently interrupted by severe performance drops, egregious visual pop-ins involving shadows and lighting, and a grainy visual fidelity that makes the expansive open spaces look far worse than they should on modern hardware like the PS5 and Xbox Series X.

Beyond the visual hiccups, players are likely to encounter a variety of game-breaking bugs, including characters getting permanently stuck in the floor, dialogue lines cutting off mid-joke, and infuriating infinite death loops during critical boss fights that force complete game restarts just to progress the campaign.

The title is truly at its best when it leans into its weirdness and tries highly creative concepts, but these persistent technical flaws and the incredibly sloppy gunplay keep it from reaching the heights of its own comedic ambitions.

Ultimately, High on Life 2 is a beautifully flawed, laugh-out-loud sequel that expands upon the best ideas of the original while taking a noticeable step backward in polish and narrative cohesion, making it a must-play for hardcore fans of Squanch Games’ unique brand of satire, provided they have the patience to overlook the chaotic combat and the undeniable jank lurking beneath the surface.