High On Life 2 is this week’s biggest new release but there’s been a problem with the review process that means we can’t deliver a final verdict yet.
The review embargo for High On Life 2 is at 11am today, February 12. We won’t have a review ready, though, as we’ve encountered a game breaking bug on the PlayStation 5 version, which publisher and developer Squanch Games has not listed as one of the known problems with the game.
High On Life 2 is out tomorrow, February 13, so even assuming the bug gets fixed we won’t now be able to do a full review until sometime next week.
The problem is around four or five hours into the game and involves the Kreg Button boss fight at the end of the cruise ship section, which has crashed our PlayStation 5 seven times now, sending the game all the way back to the home screen.
Clearly that’s a serious problem but Squanch Games hasn’t commented on it, despite us reporting the issue, so we have no idea when it’ll be fixed.
Since we have had a fair few hours with the game our impressions so far are that, in terms of gameplay, it’s a reasonable improvement on High On Life 1, with notably tighter gunplay. It’s still not great, compared to other shooters, but at least you don’t start with the annoyingly weedy one shot pistol of the first game.
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In terms of comedy there’s less jokes in general, and what there is doesn’t land as well, but that was probably inevitable given that Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland is not involved in the sequel – although we’re unclear as to how much of the original team are still on board.
There’s still some decent satire though and if you’re a fan of the original you’ll probably appreciate this, assuming the bug situation is sorted out. It’s still unlikely to be winning any game of the year awards but that was probably a given anyway.
We haven’t played enough to give any kind of preliminary score, but we would exercise caution about getting it day one, especially as there’s a list of other bugs that Squanch Games themselves have highlighted and will apparently be fixed in an ‘upcoming patch’.
Although games often have bugs before launch, that are fixed with a day one patch, it’s a long while since we’ve experienced one that actually prevented us from completing the game.
The original game was a major hit but that was in December 2022, so a sequel in barely three years is a lot quicker than you’d expect from a big – or mid – budget game like this.
We can’t say any more until we’ve actually completed the game but that’s the situation right now. We don’t know if the PC and Xbox Series X/S versions suffer from the same problem (a Switch 2 version is due on April 20).
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