High on Life 2 Review: A Hilarious, Safe Sequel That Struggles to Escape Its Own Shadow

When the original High on Life dropped at the end of 2022, it was a breath of fresh, albeit highly hallucinogenic, air. Squanch Games delivered perhaps the weirdest, most ingenious shooter of that year. The blend of Rick and Morty-esque humor, talking alien weaponry, and biting satire of modern society made it an instant cult classic.

Fast forward three years to February 2026. With surprisingly little marketing fanfare, High on Life 2 has arrived as a fully fledged sequel. The premise is simple: more talking guns, more chaotic first-person shooting, and more laugh-out-loud absurdity. But does it capture the lightning in a bottle of the original, or does it suffer from sequelitis? After 15 hours of bounty hunting and skateboard-riding across the galaxy, the verdict is a mix of genuine hilarity and slight disappointment. Here is our deep dive into High on Life 2.

The Story: A Different Flavor of the Same Joke

If you played the first game, you know the drill. The original plot centered around the G3 Cartel, an alien syndicate that discovered humans make excellent recreational drugs. Our mute, nameless bounty hunter stepped up to save humanity with the help of the "Gatlians"—a race of sentient, talking guns.

For the sequel, the writers decided to recycle the joke rather than reinvent it. In High on Life 2, humans are no longer being smoked. Instead, a morally bankrupt pharmaceutical giant named Rhea Pharma is attempting to legalize human farming to harvest our brains for advanced pills.

While the corporate satire allows for some sharp jabs at Big Pharma, the overarching premise is essentially identical to the first game: save humanity from becoming an alien consumable. This lack of narrative ambition makes the storytelling feel a bit less creative. You are still a bounty hunter taking down high-value targets to dismantle a galactic operation.

The Voices in Your Head (and Hands)

Where the game still excels is in its moment-to-moment writing. The dialogue, insults, and bizarre interactions with ordinary alien NPCs remain top-notch. However, there is an elephant in the room regarding the voice cast.

Kenny, the iconic first gun from the original game, does not return. Following his replacement by the character Harper in the High on Knife DLC, fans hoped Kenny might make a comeback here. Unfortunately, he is absent. While the new Gatlians are well-written and expertly voiced, Kenny had a specific, nervous energy that anchored the original game’s comedy. His absence is noticeable, and none of the new companions quite manage to fill that specific void.

Gameplay: Skateboards and Sentient Weaponry

Mechanically, High on Life 2 adheres strictly to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy. It remains a fast-paced, high-octane first-person shooter that prioritizes constant movement and ability-juggling over precise tactical cover shooting.

The Gatlian Roster

At the start of the game, you retain three fan-favorite weapons: Sweezy, Gus, and Knify. The game humorously explains away the absence of the others (they are sentient beings with their own agendas, after all).

As you progress, you will unlock a brand-new roster of Gatlians. Squanch Games handled this brilliantly. Instead of just handing you a new weapon in a chest, every new gun is tied to a dedicated acquisition mission. This gives each weapon a rich backstory and allows you to form a comedic bond with them before you start using them to blast aliens into goo. In a nice touch, the devs have also given the Gatlians robotic exosuits, allowing them to walk around and interact with the environment when you aren't holding them.

The Skateboard Mechanic

The most heavily advertised new gameplay feature is the Skateboard, acquired after defeating the first major boss. While it sounds like a game-changer that might turn the game into a Tony Hawk/Doom hybrid, the reality is much more restrained.

The skateboard essentially replaces the sprint mechanic from the first game. It allows for faster traversal across the hub worlds, opens up new verticality in combat, and adds a fresh layer to the environmental puzzle-solving necessary to find hidden chests. You definitely look cooler doing kickflips while shooting aliens, but it doesn't radically alter the core combat loop.

Level Design and Boss Fights: Where the Sequel Shines

The core gameplay loop remains identical: accept a bounty, travel to a bespoke planet via your ship/RV hub, explore the level, solve puzzles, and kill the target. However, the sequel flips the script by making you the hunted. You are constantly dealing with Rhea Pharma assassins, forcing you to adapt your strategies on the fly.

Creative Enemy Design

Kudos to Squanch Games for not lazily recycling the G3 Cartel enemies. The Rhea Pharma mercenaries and genetically modified monstrosities are entirely new. They require different elemental combos and Gatlian abilities to defeat, keeping the moment-to-moment combat fresh.

Mind-Bending Boss Encounters

If there is one area where High on Life 2 completely surpasses the original, it is the boss fights. Squanch Games went full experimental here, and the results are spectacular.

• The Detective Fight: One boss encounter strips away your guns entirely and forces you to play a miniature murder mystery, gathering evidence and interrogating suspects mid-battle.
• The Meta-Menu Fight: Another incredibly inventive boss forces you to fight your way through the actual pause menu of the game, altering settings to survive their attacks.

These moments of sheer, unadulterated creativity are when High on Life 2 is at its absolute best, proving that the development team still has plenty of wild ideas left in the tank.

Visuals, Performance, and Audio: A Disappointing Step Back

If the boss fights are the highlight, the technical performance is undoubtedly the low point. Considering the three-year gap between releases, one would expect a significant graphical leap on current-gen hardware. Shockingly, High on Life 2 often looks worse than its 2022 predecessor.

Graphical Issues on PS5

Playing on the standard PlayStation 5, the visual presentation is highly inconsistent. Texture pop-in is a constant issue, the draw distance is surprisingly poor, and the overall color palette feels washed out compared to the vibrant, neon-soaked worlds of the first game.

Despite a robust options menu—allowing you to tweak the render scale, FOV, and chromatic aberration—nothing seems to fix the underlying muddy textures. Furthermore, the game suffers from significant frame rate drops during intense firefights. I even experienced a few hard crashes during late-game boss battles, forcing me to restart the encounters entirely. While post-launch patches will likely smooth out the crashes, the core visual engine feels dated.

Recycled Audio

The sound design is equally perplexing. Rather than composing a new score, Squanch Games has recycled almost the entire soundtrack from the first game. You will hear the exact same menu music, the same combat themes, and the same ambient sound effects.

While the original music is great, reusing it so heavily makes High on Life 2 feel less like a true sequel and more like a massive, standalone expansion pack. It robs the game of its own unique auditory identity.

The Final Verdict

High on Life 2 is a game that knows exactly what its audience wants, but perhaps delivers it a little too predictably. It is, at its core, "More High on Life."

When the game leans into its experimental design—particularly during the wildly inventive, meta-breaking boss fights—it reminds you exactly why this franchise is so beloved. The new Gatlians are hilarious, the skateboard adds a fun sense of momentum, and the dialogue remains some of the sharpest and funniest in the gaming industry.

However, the sequel's refusal to evolve its core narrative premise, combined with recycled audio and surprisingly poor technical performance on the PS5, holds it back from greatness. It plays things a bit too safe, struggling to step out from the long shadow cast by the original game.

If you loved the first game and simply want another 15 hours of crude jokes, colorful alien worlds, and frantic shooting, High on Life 2 is an easy recommendation—especially since it is included on Xbox Game Pass. But if you were hoping for a bold, next-generation evolution of the franchise, you might find this sequel a little lacking in ambition.