With regards to the most important online game disappointments to this point this era, Excessive on Life is actually up there.
I’m not the world’s greatest Rick and Morty fan – I’m a type of uppity folks who loved it within the early days till its poisonous fandom ruined it – however the thought of a comedy first-person shooter the place your weapons spoke to you all through was one thing I used to be utterly bought on, proper till the second I performed it.
It appears I wasn’t alone – the sport presently sits at an underwhelming Metacritic rating of 67, with the overall consensus being that it laid on the comedy far too thickly and used it to deflect from what was a reasonably boring shooter.
When Xbox requested me to check out Excessive on Life 2 at Gamescom this yr, then, I saved my expectations a lot decrease this time round. An hour later, I left my appointment completely excited to play extra of it.
On paper, there isn’t a lot right here that’s completely different. You’re nonetheless armed with a group of speaking weapons, together with the returning Knifey, an endearingly enthusiastic knife with an Australian accent.
The sport’s nonetheless rammed with jokes, and most of them are nonetheless within the Rick and Morty type – plenty of swearing, and plenty of unfastened, stammering improv-like supply. The disgraced Justin Roiland might now not have something to do with it, having stepped down from Squanch Video games practically three years in the past, but it surely’s nonetheless clearly minimize from the identical comedic material.
The primary distinction this time, nevertheless, is that whereas within the first recreation the humour took centre stage and received within the participant’s means at occasions – there have been too many situations of prolonged ‘witty’ conversations you couldn’t get away from – this time it feels extra just like the gameplay takes centre stage and the humour accompanies it.
The core gunplay feels so much higher too. Capturing enemies wasn’t significantly satisfying within the first recreation however the sequel has improved issues considerably, to the purpose that when my demo threw me right into a comedy deathmatch towards a bunch of different bots, I took nice pleasure in capturing all of them down.
This part additionally featured one in all my favorite chuckles, a boss combat towards a chap with a suspiciously Silent Hill-like helmet. “Appears to be like like that helmet is stopping you from capturing you within the head,” the sport advised me. “I suppose it’s for greater than copyright infringement.”
The boss combat itself isn’t significantly novel, as soon as you determine methods to beat him (“you’re going to have to seek out some option to shoot off that triangularly-shaped helmet – it’s not a pyramid, do NOT name it a pyramid”), however the reality it was nonetheless enjoyable sufficient meant the humour enhanced the expertise. When the underlying recreation is best, the comedy lands higher too as a result of it now not seems like a diversion tactic to distract from underwhelming gameplay.
“When the underlying recreation is best, the comedy lands higher too as a result of it now not seems like a diversion tactic to distract from underwhelming gameplay.”
The deathmatch enviornment is a part of MurderCon, an annual conference celebrating all issues killy. MurderCon is without doubt one of the zones in ConCon, an excellent larger conference celebrating conventions themselves. The demo I performed had me making my means via ConCon looking for the evil Senator Muppy Doo, who I needed to assassinate.
This concerned beginning off at ParkingCon (the place I needed to discover a parking area by killing anybody claiming dibs on empty spots), then shifting via the aforementioned MurderCon earlier than reaching HumanCon, the place the Senator could be discovered giving a speech.
Motion is aided by the addition of a skateboard – this allows you to journey round faster, grind on sure partitions and even kick your board at enemies if you method them. It makes shifting round way more satisfying, and provides some much-needed tempo to the sequel.
It’s the demo’s last sequence, nevertheless, that really gained me over. Throughout the boss combat with the Senator, at one level he shrinks himself down and enters your swimsuit, basically taking up the pc that’s operating your mind.
I had no thought what to do and the place to seek out him till a developer standing subsequent to me identified the answer, which was so apparent it was genius – pause the sport. This brings up the in-game menu, which is designed to seem like a part of your swimsuit’s pc. Certain sufficient, there was the Senator, operating across the recreation’s menu screens.
This led to a enjoyable recreation of cover and search the place I needed to chase him via my stock menu and the Settings display, whereas he tousled the choices for recreation language, the gun chatter frequency, and the sliders controlling the swimsuit’s vitals.
Finally, to kill him as soon as and for all, the sport decides that you need to flip off your whole swimsuit and reboot it. Once you do, as a substitute of booting up the swimsuit’s working system, you as a substitute end up booting up the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis model of Bible Adventures, the non secular platformer which has turn out to be one thing of a meme lately.
Because the Senator then runs throughout the display whereas Bible Adventures is taking part in, the choice is made to attempt to stab your individual face within the hope you may hit him, resulting in the frankly ridiculous sight of you attempting to jam a knife into your individual eyes whereas a tiny man runs throughout a real Mega Drive recreation from the early ’90s. This actually wasn’t what I used to be anticipating earlier than I began the demo.
As quickly because the demo was completed I requested the close by developer how they managed to get Bible Adventures in there. “We’ve truly received a bunch of video games in there,” he identified, noting that it was just like the way in which the primary recreation had a group of full motion pictures hidden in it, equivalent to Tammy and the T-Rex and Vampire Hookers.
To show it, he jumped again into the demo and skipped ahead to the doorway of MurderCon. To the proper of the registration sales space is a small arcade, and when you go in there you could find an arcade cupboard operating the Mega Drive / Genesis model of Radical Rex, an Australia-developed platformer starring a skateboard-riding dinosaur.
Excessive on Life 2 is out in February 2026, and primarily based on that hour-long session with it I’m considerably extra enthusiastic about it than I used to be a number of weeks in the past.
The truth that the sport itself – whereas actually not revolutionary in any means – feels much more stable to play makes all of the distinction, and whereas there’s actually no signal that it’s dialling again the humour it doesn’t really feel fairly as intrusive. The one-liners are snappier, the NPCs are funnier and I typically discovered myself laughing extra throughout this hour than I did via everything of the primary recreation.
After all, it nonetheless stays to be seen whether or not the sport will proceed to maintain up this momentum till the credit, or whether or not it opens nicely with this early sequence earlier than operating out of steam and outstaying its welcome. Up to now, although, I’m actually excessive on Excessive on Life 2’s potential.
