Video Gamers Podcast - High on Life Review - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Gaming hosts Michael, Josh and Paul are diving into the hilarious gaming world of High on Life and giving you our full breakdown on this mashup of comedy and FPS gaming. We break down the humor, gameplay, story and more and tell you whether this game is worth your time and money. Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Toro, Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, squad mates, and welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are three dads who love gaming, and today we will be deep diving the action-adventure comedy game called High on Life. But before we start that, please take a brief moment to rate our podcast five stars and leave us a written review and Apple podcasts. If you like what we do here and want additional content,

you can also help support the show on Patreon starting at $5 a month and supporters get access to the squad cast, which are 45 minute episodes that release twice a month. You can check that out at multiplayer squad.com. Okay, time for some introductions. I am your host, Paul, and we are recording live from Space Applebee's. Joining us, he is the number one G3 recruit, if he wanted to join them. It's Josh. Of course I want to be in the G3. You want to be in the G3, Cartel? Yeah, man. I mean, those guys know how to have a good time. They're the bad guys.

You get the day pass to the spa? Sure. Since when am I not the bad guy, Paul? You should know this by now. Oh, I should know it. All right. And then joining me and Josh, he's not going to do any more paperwork for Bureaucracy Simulator. Certainly not a fourth stack. It's Michael.

Certainly not a fourth stack. Oh, my goodness. I don't even know what to say about that. I was dying. We'll spoil that later. Move on with the show. Oh, man. All right. Before we jump into our deep dive here, just a little bit of housekeeping. Josh, I think you've got a review. Someone left our show that we're going to read. We do have a review that came in from Easily85, our good dear friend from Great Britain. Ooh. Hello. And Easily... Hello.

They wrote this during tea time, didn't they? He was our friend anyway. Hello, friend. Goodbye, friend. It's titled Awesome podcast guys and it says love listening to your gaming adventures i listen well at work secretly keep up the good work much love easy lee 85 xbox oh what a nice review very high up up. Thank you. And you're welcome from across the pond. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, for those who have not played High on Life yet, I did want to say here near the beginning that we are going to keep things spoiler free at first. Although later in the episode, we will give a major spoiler warning and we'll let you know what point to

skip forward to. And also, I wanted to note that we're going to keep this episode as family friendly as we normally do, but we will probably have to dance and hint around a couple of things that we discussed at different points of this game. I think you guys agree with that, right? This one's going to probably be a little bit harder to keep family friendly. It will be family friendly, but there will be some nuance and maybe a little bit of innuendo in there. I was about to ask what words are okay to say by saying those words and realized that I should not do that

because that'd be counterproductive. We'd have a lot of bleeps. Are they George Carlin's words? Because those are all no-goes. Richard Pryor? Nope. This is bad. For the most part, no.

Eddie Murphy? Nope. Post-2010 or no no all right well guys earth's been invaded just be careful because we're entering a mother's for and against violence zone let's grab our gatlians and save the planet okay here's the description of the game on steam from From the mind of Justin Roiland comes High on Life. Humanity is being threatened by an alien cartel who wants to use them as drugs. It's up to you to rescue and partner with charismatic talking guns,

take down Garmantuous and his gang, and save the world. All right, so guys, let's start off here by talking just a little bit about justin roiland for our listeners out there if that name does not sound familiar you might know him as the co-creator writer director and voice actor of shows like rick and morty and solar opposites he actually does the voices of both rick and morty along with other characters on on all of his shows were you guys familiar with justin roiland before high his shows. Were you guys familiar with Justin Roiland before High on Life? And are you guys fans? Nope. I've heard of Justin Roiland. Unfortunately, I've never watched Rick and Morty before.

Oh, really? I should clarify. I am now a fan. But my nope was that I was not familiar with him, not whether I was a fan or not. I had heard of Rick and Morty. I feel like I've seen one or two clips off of the internet, and that is it. So I know that people love the show. I hear it's really funny. I know that he created it and voiced it and all that. But that was about the extent of my knowledge. Yeah, the closest that I get is there's a couple of shared writers for Star Trek Lower Decks,

but not the creator of the show. So some similar humor, and that's the closest i get uh gotcha yeah i remember getting sucked into rick and morty especially the first two seasons in particular i really loved and as soon as i got to know justin roiland's voice i started hearing it everywhere because he does so many different shows so like one of my all-time favorite voice acting that he does is on adventure time because my kids started watching adventure time wait who is he on adventure time lemon grab oh that's right he he has and you bet i'm gonna play the sound clip here but he's got my all-time favorite voice line reading this castle is in unacceptable condition unacceptable so there's obviously not a whole lot of a story here in high on life but michael do you want to tell the people a

little bit about how you might sum it up yeah i mean essentially you start the game your teenage kid at your computer your sister and you your the game, you're a teenage kid, your computer, your sister, and you, your parents go away. You're going to throw a big party for the weekend because they're gone. And then all of a sudden, chaos ensues out front of your house. A warp orb or a warp bubble appears. Aliens show up. They're basically there to stomp over, take over Earth, use human beings as illicit substances essentially as you could say that's not a spoiler is it not too much whatever we'll move on from there and elicit's an okay word

to say as well right yep good okay we're still we're still a-okay um and then essentially you know you one of the one of the aliens gets shot by another alien in the street and you pick up this gun that is speaking gibberish to you. And that's when you first get your first gun in the entire game named Kenny. I won't go into that yet. Cause we're going to cover him in a minute, but basically Kenny's like,

Hey, we're going to need some help getting earth back. I know this bounty hunter guy that can help us out. And his name was shoot. I just played the gene 20 gene. So basically we, we warp art. We go back to our house house we plug a warp engine into

a microwave we're on a distant planet we go find this gene guy and he's like hey listen i'm not a bounty hunter anymore but you can do the bounty hunting for me and that basically tees us off for what we're doing the entire game is essentially we're a teenage bounty hunter and our name is bounty hunter uh that's the only name we get. So Bounty Hunter is my name. Bounty Hunter is my job. And that's what I do. Yeah. And anyone out there who's already familiar with Justin Roiland, I think this game kind of offers exactly his style of humor. Comedy is obviously central to this game. Josh, how would you describe the use of comedy in High on Life? It is the main premise of High on Life. High on Life, people that have seen videos, yes, you get these guns that are alive,

and you go around and they shoot and they do stuff like that. So I guess it's categorized as a first-person shooter, but High on Life is set apart by its comedy. And I don't know of any other comedy first-person shooter that nails this mix like High on Life does. You're playing this game for the laughs. You are not playing this game for Call of Duty-type shooter mechanics or anything like that. It was interesting for me because not having watched Rick and Morty and not being

super familiar with Justin Roiland and all that, I had seen a few clips and they kind of made me chuckle. We've talked about some of this in the previews of this game and stuff like that. But I didn't really know if this humor was going to land with me or not. And a lot of people say, if you don't like the humor, the game is probably not going to be for you. Um, because it is a very specific style of humor. It just so happens that I'm a, like I'm a kid inside and like,

I love it. Your seventh grader is showing. Yeah. Like, honestly, like, you know, it's,

it's kind of immature. It's kind of crass. It's very, uh, biological, very biological, a lot of immature. It's kind of crass. It's very biological. Very biological. So many fart jokes. A lot of ways.

But I just, I'm like, my brain is dumb, man. I loved it. I found myself literally laughing out loud many, many times throughout this game. So for me, the comedy landed really well. I found a rare time would go by that I wasn't at least chuckling um and then uh there was a couple times where I had to pause the game because I was all laughing but yeah I don't know if I've ever seen a game that that really has like I've seen games that are funny like you know you laugh at Disco Elysium but it's more of a dry different kind of humor you're laughing at

the uh the uh awful things that are happening because and around of Harry bois, but nothing that's as purposeful like this, where it's like, this is a comedic game to make you laugh. And there's a shooter inside of it too. Yeah. In a way, it kind of reminds me of some of the older comedy games from when we were all kids.

Like, I don't know why that genre kind of died off when we were kids. There were series like leisure suit, Larry, even the monkey island games honestly are less about gameplay and it's more about funny storytelling and so it's kind of interesting to see this game pop up i mean there are i'm sure indie games that are mostly comedy centric but with high on life comedy is the end all be all this is not a first person

shooter with comedy this is an an interactive Justin Roiland cartoon that just so happens to involve you running around shooting people. The FPS elements are kind of like the bare-bones structure to call it a game, as opposed to an interactive movie. But yeah, the comedy is absolutely in the front. And I would really say that this game, you almost have to slow down and go out of your way to talk to everyone and explore. Don't expect this game to be super action-centric, because if you just skip all the dialogue and you're not paying attention to the stuff around you, you're going to miss the entire point of the game. So I think that's kind of important to say here. That way, everyone just kind of knows how to set your expectations.

I will say that if you are only playing this as a first-person shooter, you are missing out on the purpose of this game, number one. But also, you have to just stop and listen to characters. You have to... If you see a crowd of people over there, you have to just go stand there and listen to what they say. Don't walk away the second somebody finishes a line. Because the game calls you out on that, number one. Oh, yeah. I love the first time somebody was rambling on, and I was like, well, what's that over there? And I started walking away, and he's just like, oh, oh, well, that's rude.

Okay, just go ahead and walk away then. And I was like, what? So the game knows what you're doing, even if you're doing nothing in that regard. But some of the funniest moments in the game come from'm going to listen to some of these conversations. Maybe I'm going to buy a drum for that kid. That kind of stuff. Because that's the heart of this game. The bones are, yes, it's a first-person shooter, but you're missing out a lot if that's the only way you approach it. Yeah. Kenny will also roast you if you're just sprinting everywhere. He'll say like, oh, wow, you're just sprinting everywhere. He'll say like, oh, wow, you're just sprinting everywhere. You're not even going to stop and look around at all this beautiful stuff around you, huh?

So even the game itself will kind of light roast you and kind of tell you, okay, slow down. There's jokes all around you. Pay attention. Look at all the different logos and the art designs. And different characters will have multiple dialogue options. And the more you go through all that, the more comedy you're going to experience, which is the entire point of this game. All right. So let's talk a little bit more about Kenny. All right. So Kenny is the name of that first weapon that Michael had mentioned that you get. He is an actual living and breathing

alien called a Gatling. And over the course of the game, you are going to find and discover multiple weapons. We won't talk about that until we get into our spoiler warning. But Josh, you actually named Kenny your favorite weapon of 2022 in our end of the year review. That's right. I did. There is not another game. And I think this was the selling point. When we very first saw the previews for High on Life, you have a talking gun that's literally staring at you the entire game. And he's interacting with you. And I don't know that that's ever been done before. And so it really jumped out at me as far as like, oh, this is a really neat take. And Kenny just lives up to all of the expectations that i had hoped for for that he he's funny he's

actually aware of what's going on he makes perfect quips uh i tried to shoot everybody literally the town citizens and he like he mocks you for that and he's like hey hey stop with the killing you know and stuff like that so kenny is like the main uh he's your sidekick now you get other guns i'm not gonna spoil what they are right now you do get other guns through the game but i always found myself going back to kenny because just of the personality and like i know this sounds goofy but like we formed a friendship guys me and kenny kenny your buddies man man. So I stick by it, man. Having played the entire game, tried some of the other guns, I always went back to Kenny. I feel like he's the anchor for the comedy in the game. He's also kind of like serving as a bit of your Jiminy Cricket type.

He's there to kind of guide you through the world a little bit. He is somewhat confident, but also somewhat unsure of himself in a lot of ways um so a lot of what a lot of what you do as a character or as as the player kind of comes out as him just being like oh okay we're gonna do this i guess you're doing that that's the choice you made you made that choice not me but then sometimes he'll tell you like like hey i think we should do this you know like oh you know make sure you you, you know, use my glob more. Use my glob more. Also, I'm trying to keep this as PG as possible because he talks about shooting things out of him as a gun as though just bodily fluids are spewing all over from someone's face, ears, wherever.

It's disgusting the way he talks, but it's absolutely hilarious. But he does seem like kind of like the 1B to your 1A as a main character. As that too, as you go through different guns, all the different guns you have are talking to you throughout the game. He just seems to have a lot more of the narrative driven pieces. Yeah, he's definitely the central character between all the weapons. And if you are a fan of Rick and Morty, Kenny is exactly the same and morty kenny is exactly the same as morty it is exactly the same forced stuttering for comedic you know value it is the unsure nature the the crude humor all of it together it's basically running around with morty as a weapon

hey rick what what what what do you know look down there listen my name's kenny i'm a gatlian uh we we gotta kind of we gotta move uh which of course is is great if you're a fan of rick and Rick, what do you know? Look down there. Listen, my name's Kenny. I'm a Gatling. We got to move. Which, of course, is great. If you're a fan of Rick and Morty, you're absolutely going to love Kenny's character. I wanted to talk a little bit about the jokes of High on Life without going into major spoiler territory. So we've kind of talked about some stuff in general. But can you guys share any examples in the game? Maybe that happened early on or they're generic enough in the open world it's not going to spoil anything story-wise that kind of stuck out to you talk about like easter eggs too stuff like that or

no yeah yeah absolutely yeah any anything like that um i i definitely um was dying and and i i definitely sat down and did this for too long just like i'm sure you guys are both about tell me you did too probably about a third of the way through the game you sit down next to gina on the couch and you realize you're watching a movie on the tv yeah and it's a real t-rex real movie it's a real movie it stars denise richard denise richards and paul walker and you're watching this movie and i was watching it at first i'm like wait that's denise richards and i was like is this a real movie and i i found myself IMDb-ing it too because I thought maybe, you know, Denise Richards, she's in her, what, mid-40s at this point?

And this was a young Denise Richards. For some reason, I cannot say her name without saying Denise Richards. I'm trying to say Denise Richards, and I'm like, Denise Richards. It's not working out very well. But anyways, I'm like, is this a deepfake, you know, where they de-age someone? Because she looks like she's probably like 17 in this movie. Turns out it's a real movie. And there's like four other movies that you can watch by different going to different places in this and i don't know if that's

considered so much humor as it's just like a chuckle moment but if you want to you can sit down in a movie theater and watch an entire movie in this game or on your couch i just think that's stupid hilarious oh there's other shows too It's not even just the movies. Like they record little PSAs and advertisements for different shows and products that you can watch. This also really reminded me of Rick and Morty because on the TV show,

they have interdimensional cable where they can watch TV that happen in other dimensions, like in the multiverse. And so when you have infinite dimensions with infinite number of possibilities, it's always really crazy over the top stuff. And that's kind of exactly what the TV brings to you in High on Life. It's very similar. Tammy and the T-Rex, famous, really bad movie. It's been covered on a lot of other podcasts. But yeah, you can actually sit and watch the entire thing from beginning to end. Yeah. For me, some of the things that stood out,

we actually talked about this one. I'll bring it up again because maybe you didn't catch that episode. But very, very early on, you are going into one of the first areas in this game once you're off Earth. And you're going into these slums and there's a kid that kind of walks up to you and he's like hey you know and he's like the most annoying kid in the world and as you try to walk past him he kind of pushes you and he blocks your way and he's like you know i bet you won't you won't do anything you won't shoot me you you know and he like he antagonizes you yeah and then so of course your response is you shoot the kid and then he just dies instantly yeah and you're like oh my goodness and kenny's response to that is well there goes our e for everyone rating you did it i can't

believe you killed him like yeah he probably deserved it but then not 90 seconds later you meet the kid's mom right and then she responds to that and that whole sequence is to is really funny go ahead do it shoot me fresh me shoot me you shot me i'm dead all right there are you happy now well i didn't think we'd be allowed to kill him you're normally killing children in games isn't isn't allowed but he's dead we killed this kid are you happy now we killed a kid a kid is dead now there goes our e for everybody rating but then there's another one where hold on this is very early stay on this one for just a but then there's another one where hold on stay on this one for just a second because it's funny i didn't shoot the kid and then i come across the

mom and she's like you monster no didn't shoot the kid because at that point i'd already tried to shoot so many civilians i figured i couldn't shoot him because kenny's like no no that's one of the good ones don't shoot that one no not this guy stop trying to shoot everyone i didn't shoot him i come across the mom and the mom says to me, if you want to go back and shoot him, you can. He's a jerk. My kid's a jerk. I had a jerk of a husband. He's not here anymore. He got shot. Go ahead and shoot my kid. So yeah, I love that the game is self-aware. That's one of the really neat aspects that I think a lot of people glaze over as they're playing it. But the game remembers some of your actions and what you do. And I really enjoy that aspect of it. Like Paul mentioned

earlier, if you sprint around everywhere, like Kenny says, like, hey, man, you really like to stay in shape and stuff like that. But another example of the humor where it's slightly different, and this is still early on, so I don't think it's much of a spoiler, is as you're exploring this alien city for the very first time, you come across a guy that you can interact with, and there's this little alien kid sitting next to him making farting sounds. And it's like, hey, this little kid I met him, he really wants a drum. You know anybody that can buy this kid a drum? That's all he talks about is wanting a drum. Well, lo and behold, at the pawn shop that you go to, there's a drum. So I'm like, okay, I'll buy this kid a drum. This is a quest. I've been around the block

a few times. I know what to do. Well, like this kid is, he looks like a giant, like anus on his face and he just makes fart sounds and it's like the stupidest thing ever, but it makes me laugh every time. And so there's this whole storyline with this kid. I won't spoil that, but it makes me laugh every time and so there's this whole storyline with this kid i won't spoil that but it's like here's just this fart face kid hey sorry yeah no he can't talk he just sort of makes that noise huh that's uh that's unfortunate for him look it took me a while to understand what globo is saying but he's just saying over and over i want a drum give me a drum somebody give me a while to understand what Globo's saying, but he's just saying over and over, I want a drum. Give me a drum. Somebody give me a drum. He just said he likes you and he hopes you'll get him a drum. And I just, I know it's stupid, but I laugh every single time. So every time you get back to the

city, I would just beeline it to the kid to be like, oh, what's going on with little fart face over here? One of the things I think this game also does really well is it puts you in hilariously awkward situations with just straight dialogue that I still do not know if it made a difference or not. I'll give you an example real fast. Very early in the game, you're looking to go through this gate to a place called the slums, and there's this blue blob sitting on a pedestal and this red blob sitting on a pedestal. And one of them says, hey, hey, ask him, ask him, ask him this. And you're like, what's going on? And there's like, which one of us is prettier? And you're like, they're identical, just one's blue and one's red. And you have to pick. And it does this to you many times. I won't tell you which one I did or what the outcome was, but it's just kind of funny because like, you're like, why am I in this situation where I have to pick which one of these blue bowling balls or red bowling ball looking things is prettier than the other.

And what are the consequences of my actions? And this game does this all the time. It cracks me up. And one will not be happy with you for the rest of the game. Correct. And we'll remind you every time you enter the slums. Yep. I mean,

it happens with your sister. It happens with Jean. Like all kinds of these conversations just happen. And you're like the slums. Yep. I mean, it happens with your sister. It happens with Gene. Like, all kinds of these conversations just happen. And you're like, what do I do? The one example I have to bring up is pretty early on in the game, you start running around, and you run across a little yellow guy who tells you that he's just looking for a friend. Don't worry. I won't be a bother.

I'm just going gonna go with you and then immediately starts flying directly in front of your face and every time you're trying to look somewhere like he is taking up half of your screen flying right in front of your eyes and of course you can't shoot him but it's just like the game is constantly throwing little things like that at you that aren't necessarily part of a main story or anything. Similarly, when you walk into these pawn shops, the pawn shop owners are different and they'll give you different lines of dialogue. So like I walked into one and the guy just says, please, please, you got to buy something. I'm effing dying here. And so it's like they all have this little different personality,

and of course it's all littered with profanity. I'm not going to be able to include very many sound clips from this game. Any at all? Yeah, but that just kind of tells you exactly what this game was like. Overall, I think people did find the humor to be a little divisive. I think most people are either going to absolutely love it or absolutely hate it. Overall, how well would you guys say the humor landed for you? For me, it's a solid 7.5 out of 10, to be honest. I have a weird... I love absurdist humor,

and my brain just really likes stupidity. The show Jackass for me is one of the funniest things ever. I legitimately will be breathless and tears streaming down my face from that type of humor. I don't know why. I get it's absolutely stupid, right? So if a Jackass is a 10 for me, this is like a seven and a half it really lands well with me some of it i feel like was a little strained there's some joke not everything lands but that's just comedy in general too yeah you know but overall i found that i really appreciated the comedy in this game and i like that there's a variation of it it's all it's not all just fart jokes and poop jokes you know it's not all just 90 right you know a good bit of it is It's not all just fart jokes and poop jokes. It's not all just cracks.

Well, 90%. Right. A good bit of it is, but not all of it. The characters... Paul, you were just touching on this before this question, but there's such a diverse cast of characters and personalities and attitudes in a game where you come across hundreds of aliens. This is not a sparse game with NPCs. And I thought that was really neat too. And so the ability to have all of these different personalities, all these different types of humor,

even if it is in this narrow band, I really enjoyed it. So it landed really well for me. What about you, Michael? I heard almost all. I heard none of what Josh just said said because i'm still my mind's getting around whether we can say jackass or not that is an animal it's allowed because i'm like i'm like i'm like if he said if he said that can i say this nope can't say that okay that would

have been a beat i'm just i'm totally kidding um no and it's funny because i was listening to when talking about the fart jokes. There is actually a card that you – like, you open random boxes. I remember opening this card, and it basically is just like this fake character. Those are garbage pail kids. Yeah, there's garbage pail. And one of them literally is just a paragraph about the flatulence of this person and how hilarious he thinks it is to fart. And that's it. The humor overall, I thought it was better than a lot of comedies that happen nowadays.

You know, I'm in the same vein of Josh. He calls it stupid humor, but I think it's actually very clever because it's the way that it's timed. It's the way it's put in. It works very well in this environment. It doesn't seem forced. It doesn't seem too times, you know, like the game does give you like a meter on like how often you want your gun to talk in the settings, like just random talking. Mine was in the middle. But there was a couple of times that I'm like, OK, Kenny said the same thing a couple of times.

Like, OK, it is a little repetitive sometimes, but not to where, you know, I think if it was a 20-hour game, then yeah, probably would have gotten pretty old. But it's not a super long game, so it didn't overstay its welcome. I thought it was refreshing comedy. I liked it. Yeah, I think for me, the humor mostly lands. I think if I were to be a little critical or a little nitpicky, I would say you're going to get a lot more laughs per minute watching something like Rick and Morty, or one of Justin Roiland's TV shows, because they're just going to be constantly hitting you with the jokes. In High on Life, you're constantly running between objectives, or you have to stop and fight for a while. And so the comedy does have breaks where you might not hear any dialogue because you're in the middle of a four minute fight and there's not always a lot

of conversation in the middle of those every once in a while there is and there is some humor where maybe you you know stab a guy on the top of the head and you pop out his you know eye or whatever it makes a type sound when you pull it out you know there's some stuff like that but for the most part i think the game is very funny and if you are are a Justin Roiland fan and you've already watched all his shows, you will absolutely need to consider High on Life like a must play, if that makes sense. Yeah, but in Rick and Morty, are you going to laugh uncontrollably the first time you get a new gun? You shoot and a blue baby comes out of its butt? That was one of my, I won't, you'll see it when you play it, guys, but I was dying.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, well, we're going to take just a short break, but I was dying. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, we're going to take just a short break and we'll be right back with some more multiplayer gaming podcast. This is carry the fire. I'm your host. Lisa Laflamme,

carry the fire, a podcast by the princess Margaret cancer foundation, featuring inspiring personal stories about what happens when world-leading doctors nurses researchers and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs carry the fire launches monday january 27th wherever you get your podcasts okay guys let's talk about the first person shooter elements of the game all right i feel like we have to at least talk about this a little bit it is definitely a shooter uh you are gonna mow down a lot of enemies you probably kill a few hundred if not a thousand or more over the course

of the game but if we separate the story and the humor from the gameplay mechanics. How good of a video game is this? A four out of 10. Maybe a four. Yeah, I mean... It's not great. It's not... So here's the thing with the actual gameplay combat portion of it. It's not bad.

I just gave it a four out of 10, and I'm saying it's not bad. Maybe it's a 4 out of 10, and I'm saying it's not bad. Maybe it's a 5 out of 10. The mechanics aren't great. Where I think it makes up for it is in the chaos of combat, because this game likes to throw dozens of enemies at you at a time, and you are not taking cover. It's not methodical. It's not tactical. There's none of that. This is just running around in an arena or in an open town or something like that with 10 guys shooting at you and just dodging bullets and trying to just kill them as fast as you can. So there is something to be said for the speed and the pacing of the game.

It's just that they're not like tight shooting mechanics. None of the guns are snipers. They're not super accurate. You're not playing with recoil and you don't get that punchy sound and all that stuff that I think a lot of people are used to in first-person shooters. But I didn't mind. Like you said, when you strip it all away, I didn't mind it so much because you said, when you strip it all away, I didn't mind it so much because I found that it was very fast paced. A lot of times you're grapple hooking and swinging from things. You're watching out for poison on the ground. There's eight enemies shooting at you.

There's a melee enemy that's charging you, you know, and there was just a lot going on at any given time. And I found that that kind of made up for some of the lacking in the actual mechanics i love that you guys um josh you said it and paul you uh absolutely acknowledged it that that you're not going for cover that's because you're not terrible at shooters like i am i was undercover a lot uh and and my my mo in this game was just spray and pray you know just spray it pray. Just spray it,

spray the bullets around, and just pray it hits something. Because it's not super tight, but like Josh said, it's fast-paced. There's some tiny little element of puzzles here and there which I liked. They never overstayed their welcome again. It was always like, hey, you get this new

weapon, it has this new ability, you use this on this wall, and then you may not ever see that mechanic again. There was a couple times when I, you know, you come across a mechanic, you use it in that little world you're in, you never see it again. But it was refreshing. It was fun. But yeah, if you strip away the comedy of it, it's like, was this game fun? It's about as much fun as like a weekend mobile game that you play like Angry Birds or something. You're gonna have a good time with it and then you're gonna be like nothing too memorable but it truly is the comedy combined with the action that makes the game i think yeah gunplay by itself is kind of barely stitched together to to be frank the the game does not have

a heel button there's no skill trees i mean there there is some ways to like tinker with your build if you buy certain upgrades from the pawn shops stuff like that but yeah if you took all of the humor out of this game i would say this game would probably be considered almost unplayable because there would just be no point to it but in this case the point is not gunplay the point is humor and the humor is there the first person shooter elements are just enough to keep the game together is is kind of what i would say yeah you got something michael but granted i would say though that i did find a few of the boss fights fun and challenging yeah the boss fights are interesting uh they're i don't know that any of them are like completely revolutionary or anything but the boss fights are always they're always that any of them are completely revolutionary or anything, but the boss fights are always funny.

Some of them do have multiple ways to fight or to beat them. And there are a lot of pop culture references and stuff that I really appreciated along the way. I think especially toward the end of the game, you get some really clever boss fights as well. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well well i think we are ready for spoilers so those of you out there if you want to avoid all major spoilers go ahead and skip forward to the 51 minute 53 second mark all right so guys if we're going to getting into

spoiler territory here i think the first thing we should do is talk about the other gatlians you guys cool with that break down some of the weapons the coolest part that was the coolest part of like the progression in the game yeah and the weird thing is that the guns kind of start getting thrown at you quicker and quicker the more you play right in the beginning you play an awful long time with just kenny and knifey and then they start to feed you the other weapons a little bit quicker. Now, I said Knifey was my favorite new weapon of 2022. That's because I was still only a couple hours into High on Life. I'm going to go ahead and rescind that, because that was not my favorite weapon in this game. I'll hold off on it for a minute, but is there anything that you guys want to say about Knifey at this point? Oh, Knifey. I don't know why you weren't in this game more, to be honest.

Oh, I got to bring something up. I was looking at Michael's achievements for High on Life. I did not look at yours, Josh. When you got Knifey and you got back and Knifey tells you to stab Gene, did you stab him? I mean... Hey, Gene, lift up that shirt and expose your soft little belly for me i'm coming in hot yes forgot how psycho he was why don't you just uh hold on to him for now oh sure yeah we'll uh we'll keep him far away from you yeah thanks now uh go turn in your bounty at

the bounty 5000 i got it all set up for you no No, seriously. Let me stab him. Oh, I 100% stabbed him. Yes, me too. Yeah, he said to stab him. Of course I'm going to stab him. Wait, Michael doesn't shoot the kid. Michael doesn't stab Gene. I told everyone that listens knows I'm lawful good. I can't do it.

I can't. I accidentally shot one of the mac and cheese bros, and I felt terrible. And then once I'd done that, I realized I was the devil, and I killed them all. Oh, I killed all the mac and cheese guys. and i felt terrible and then once i'd done that i realized i was the devil and i killed them all oh i killed all the mac and cheese guys and i shot everyone in the saloon i killed everybody i could sometimes kenny will not let you kill people but if you keep trying he will let you so when you're doing the paperwork if you just flat out refuse and start trying to shoot people no eventually he does let you shoot up the mail room, and then you just move on. Really? You don't have to do the paperwork.

Oh, man. I did kill everybody in the saloon. That was pretty funny. But I did all that paperwork. Now I'm mad. I didn't realize I could have taken an easier route. I didn't even know you could kill people in the saloon, because I didn't even try.

Yeah, yeah. I did, and I killed all of them. So yeah, Knifey is very funny. Not enough voice lines. Totally agree with you, Josh. You unlock Gus, who is a shotgun, who's voiced by J.B. Smoove, who I absolutely love. He's like my favorite character in Curb Your Enthusiasm. He wrote for SNL for years.

I felt like Gus was probably the weakest gun and kind of the least interesting i used gus like less than any other gun i used gus almost exclusively really i found it to be so bad i am terrible at shooters so the fact that i could suck bad guys towards me and just shotgun them in the head for the weak ones and then i would swap off for some of the harder fights. But for most of the trash mobs, I was 100% Gus. Oh, that's so funny. The one cool thing about Gus, by any chance did you guys watch,

or maybe you did it in the game, where Gus will actually catch on that Dr. Juby is Douglas the boss? Remember when you're solving that puzzle where he's going through the pipes? If you have Gus out the entire time he picks up that dr juby keeps changing the names of his kids really gus is like shoot this guy this is douglas i know it shoot him now and you can shoot him while he's a little unarmed octopus but then when you enter the boss fight it says that you have to

fight douglas's suit because his suit has ai and it changes some of the dialogue but yeah that's one little easter egg with gus that's kind of funny yeah uh you also unlock sweezy the semi-automatic pistol i think again i used this gun for about 30 seconds and i didn't really go back to it a whole lot what about you guys i kind of like sweezy in the beginning i felt like Sweezy was more of like the utilitarian gun. Her ability to slow time, I thought was really neat. The fact that you can... It's almost like the needler from Halo. So that's what I liked about Sweezy. And maybe that's why I tried to use her for longer than a lot of the other guns was like the it just

there's that familiarity with the shooting all the crystals and then they explode once you know there's enough of them in the person you reload or whatever but her aim is terrible like terrible so i found that i wound up using kenny like honestly for 80 of this game like you have to use the guns in some puzzle-type elements for the different things that they do. But for just shooting, I found there was nobody that competed with Kenny. Now, Creature was really cool. We can talk about him in a minute, but I did... Oh, we're talking about him right now. Oh, okay, good. Because he was one of the cooler weapons in the game,

and unlike any other weapon out there. Creature was the best weapon of 2022 creature is incredible it's it to me it was by far the highlight of this game every single second that i could play with creature i did creature creature is like brain damaged but in a really positive way like he is he is uh he's been so experimented on that he talks about his brain being fried but he's just happy to be here man these are all my kids that i'm shooting out of my gun i'm just gonna make a fart sound and shoot these babies out of me and we're gonna shoot them out at enemies it is voiced so perfectly by tim robinson that if anyone's not familiar with him he also wrote for snl so we kind of like a lot of like uh like

famous comedians in this game but check out his show on netflix it's called i want you to leave with tim robinson and or it's called i think you should leave with tim robinson it's one of the funniest shows of all time and for him to play a character that is just pure chaos and not reading the room right is exactly what his netflix show is and exactly what creature's like i loved every second with him the way his gun works is you can just kind of aim it anywhere near an enemy and they lock in and his babies attach to an enemy and just keep attacking them until they die and he takes down bosses like no other i i loved using creature he was one of the one yeah i was gonna say he's one of he's the second strongest gun in the game um and it's really funny to watch these little babies run around and then grab onto people and they're just big mouse on their head.

So it's like they're kind of funny looking. He's so proud of them. You get a mind control baby. He's also like the peacekeeper. You kind of need that in this game where he's like, hey, everybody, let's just get along. And we love you. And that kind of stuff. I did say that his personality, it was funny in the sense that he didn't really get what was going on around him.

But I also felt like he had the weakest personality. A lot of the other ones are very much in your face, and it's a good contrast to that. But at the same time, that also makes him slightly more boring, I guess. Yeah, I found him to be the funniest and the most exciting but that's just me i think also you didn't get a lot of time with him because he did come towards the end of the game much later so you know maybe maybe you just didn't get as much time for him to kind of come through as much on the personality but i was crying there's a part when you're walking through and um clearly the g3 are doing lots of experiments on these humans and you're just walking through and your gun's just like, hey, Bill, what's going on?

Oh, you're in that room right there with tentacles? How's that room doing for you? Yeah, you doing okay? Oh, Richard, you had a baby. Yeah, I don't know what these are, but he's just like, he's always so happy. And again, like you said, not reading the room at all. Like these people are being kind of tortured. But he's just like, I saw you over there at the glass ball.

We're talking about it you know he was killing me but that was the part i was alluding to earlier when i was dying though because it most of their guns when you first get them they they're like hey use the gun right away well i'm trying to pull the trigger you know with creature and i'm like this gun's not doing anything because it won't let you do anything quite yet until it explains what it does and then when i when i finally pull the trigger, it's kind of like you saw the Dark Knight when the Joker is like clicking the detonator, click, click, click, click, click. And he looks at it like he doesn't do anything.

And then finally the building blows up. That was with me, but I was surprised. So I'm looking, I'm like, click, click, click. Is this working? And then all of a sudden the blue baby shoots out of it. Yeah. And I see it scurry off somewhere. And then I was dying.

I was laughing so hard to pause the game for a second. And then when they explain what you're supposed to do with it where these little blue babies you shoot them in like these little tubes and they go like little minions and go unlock doors for you i have never laughed so hard that truly like sorry rentier gauntlets you're out the best weapon of 2022 for sure is absolutely creature i loved it creature we're taking on the cartel you want it oh no no no they take good care of me holding me against my will cutting me open doing experiments on me okay you know what saying it out loud i think they might actually be bad i'm part of your team now look at my little guy in there rustling up the hive isn't that cute so proud of him

oh we're in agreement michael and the mind control one two was just to boot yeah the icing on the cake yeah yeah where you get to control you don't control but one enemy will fight on your side for a while yeah uh and then lastly you unlock let's do it which is a gun you only use for a minute. Let's do it! I thought the humor didn't land for me on let's do it. Let's do it! I didn't care for that one. I just felt bad for it. Is he... Wait for it?

Let's do it! Les? Is that... is that you? Let's do it! Oh, I might have fucked up his speech sentence too. Let's do it! Let's do it! Talk to me! Let's do it. Oh, I might have fucked up his speech sentence too. Let's do it. Let's do it. Talk to me. Let's do it.

So what? All he can say is his name? This is sad. It felt a little bit like poking fun at the disabled. Whereas Creature was so positive and happy, it was in a really funny way where I felt like let's do it was almost uh i don't know maybe a little uncomfortable dead like yeah that's true he's got like kind of frankenstein i'll tell you what i mean he had zero personality but what i loved is that every time it reloaded he'd just be like let's do it and you're like okay let's do it. And you're like, okay, let's do it. I need you right now. He's just like a cliche 80s action star.

Let's do it. Pretty much. As far as other spoilerish stuff to talk about, the one thing that I did want to bring up is that I really laughed hard at the Screndle Brothers boss. Yes. So you finally, you of like fight your way through the labs and all that and you kind of get to the end and for the final fight you've got three

screndals that are like combined and they fight together but then once you get it down to a certain point it separates into three mini bosses and i don't know if you guys picked up on it but their names were jonathan samantha and mona who are all characters from who's the boss i did pick up on that yes because i watched a lot of who's the boss and then once you kill all three you get an achievement that says who's the boss which i thought was very funny yeah uh do you guys also was the hardest fight for me that was a tough one that fight was hard because i wasn't i wasn't a dodge a lot in that fight yeah it's because also because i hadn't realized how op creature was at that point in the game oh pop creature 10 times and everything dies i was that's how i ended up killing it because i

was trying to sweezy it because we was actually pretty good on boss fights yeah you pump sweezy you know with little spikes and then you use like the blow up-y thingy. It's almost like the javelin in God of War, Ragnarok, where you stack enough on, does a whole bunch of damage when you detonate. But yeah, once I realized Creature, I was like, this is actually a pretty easy fight. But I probably rolled my face against that fight a good dozen times before I figured out Creature was OP.

For spoilers, the only other thing I want to talk about is you can acquire these warp shards, um, as you kind of play the game and you can then hand them into a vendor and a vendor gives you like these warp cassettes. And I got a few of those. And to me, that was one of the, like a couple of funny moments. And since we're talking spoilers, one of them is you go to, I can't remember the name, but basically it's this really small town. It's like Happy Town or Tinyville or something like that. And there's this funny little guy floating on balloons that comes and introduces you and he's super happy and he welcomes you to the town. And as you walk up to this town you're going to do on a teeny town that's got little skyscrapers and buildings and little churches and a little fountain in the middle is like, oh, well, I'm just going to step right on this. And you become Godzilla, basically. And the whole time you're smashing this town, this little guy floating on the balloon is like, no, you're killing everybody.

No, we were the perfect utopia. He's just following you around and you're just like and i literally obliterated every single building in that town and this poor guy is just lamenting at that point and then he's so sad he's like i don't want to live anymore just shoot me too and it's like well okay so there's these little things where it's like if you save up these shards you get to do that another one was the trolley dilemma so it just says like trolley shards so then you warp this in and it's a trolley that's slowly going down these tracks and there's five aliens on one side and one alien on the other side and

it's like they're arguing back and forth about like you know well these guys were going to get run over anyway so if you switch it to me you're committing murder and it goes through the whole trolley thing and then as you're making the decision it like there's a lot of commentary and stuff i'd like take the time to do those if you're gonna play the game um because they add a very neat little aspect of just like these little side things that you could tell like they wanted to do but maybe they just couldn't fit in the game but they they land really well or it's like not enough for a whole mission by itself but it's almost almost like minor DLC that they throw in. These are like the ideas that they wrote on the board

that didn't make it into the main story. And so they said, we got to get them in somehow, and this is how they got them in there. Yeah, one of those actually is the movie theater where you can go sit down and watch a movie. You take the little shards, you warp there. Yeah, clever add-ins. I liked it.

Should we also talk about the fact that Josh spent 15 real-life hours at an Alien Gentleman's Club? Oh, you know it. Hey, check my achievements, man. That was a great 15 hours. Great 15 hours. I will say I am glad that there is not an achievement

for purchasing a certain item in this game. Oh. I was really worried about that. Because I consciously purchased that item. I bought it too. And then I was like, I hope nobody knows. It's just in your inventory. And it says, I guess you're just carrying this around everywhere.

Yeah, like it had no purpose, right? In the end, I never had a purpose for it. Zero purpose. But I was convinced it was going to give me an achievement and then I was going to have to explain that to people. Was there ever a use for the volleyball? Did you guys buy a volleyball? I bought one.

I never found anything to do with it, so I wondered if I missed something. I might have missed it, too. I did, though, I did find, I don't know if this is a spoiler or not, but I did find a relatively unique Easter egg. I did not I realized about a third of the way through this game that i was

not looking like god of war on this one where i'm gonna look around every corner and look but in the first town i did look everywhere you could look and um i went on top of the pizza restaurant and lo and behold guess what you find on the roof on top of the pizza restaurant i found i went up there i don't remember though you find an uncut pizza a la Breaking Bad on the roof of the pizza restaurant. Oh, yes! Oh, nice. Yep, yes. So it's just one piece. I do remember that.

It's one giant pizza. Giant pizza that's not been cut. Yep, yes. There was the Breaking Bad reference. I did see that pizza, and it did make me chuckle. I was pretty thrilled with that. Pizza on the roof. All right.

Any other spoilers to talk about, or are we ready to move on to our regular segments? Not something we have to spend time on, but the... i almost called them nippletron again there it is and no it sounds like i'm not supposed to say that but that's actually what he's called he's nippilon um but anyways nippilon fight man that fight had me that was trippy like whoa that was trippy um just you get it when you play it. I also liked his random advertisement for Donut County, where he was talking about jumping the hole. Yeah, yeah, just like that game, Donut County. It's great.

It goes on sale pretty often. You should go check it out. It's like, what? I'm in the middle of a boss fight? He's telling me to go play another game. Oh, Applebee's. Applebee's. Space Applebee's. Yeah.

Did you guys order some nice spinach artichoke dip like I did? I did. I actually did, and I paid my bill. I did not pay. And you get an achievement for paying your bill also. No, I didn't know that. I dined and dashed. I ran out not even thinking about it.

And then when I turned around, the doors were closed, and I was like, oh, no. So you are not lawful good, Michael. I felt really guilty. I felt really guilty. Some say he's still waiting outside that door to this day, waiting to pay his bill. No, true story. In 2004, I left Glendale Community College. And I told the guy at the gas pump, I can't.

There it is. Words are hard. Words are hard. Words are hard. I gave the guy $10 and was like, hey, $10 on pump number two. And it let me pump $20. While I was in a hurry and I left, didn't think about it, three miles down the road, I turned around and went back and was like, listen, I only have eight more dollars. You let me pump $20. Here's the $8.

I felt so terrible. I felt just like that leaving this Applebee's you should felt so guilty let me move on now from my tales of lunacy oh man i just laughed so hard at space applebee's i was not expecting like straight up applebee's the applebee's logo the restaurant looks exactly like every applebee's the items on the menu were exactly the same. Oh, too funny. Okay, well, I think we are ready to move on to our regulator segments. So we'll keep everything spoiler free again moving forward. We've shared a little bit about what we think. Josh, what does the community think about High on Life?

Well, as we always do, we try to find a couple good reviews, a couple bad reviews, just to kind of give some polarizing viewpoints on this game to help you decide, hey, is this game for you or not? What do some people like about it? What are some of the pain points about it? So I always go to Steam and pull a few of those. So this first one is not recommended. This person has 12 hours on record, which is about what it takes to beat the game. And it says, this game is overhyped. The dialogue and interactions you have are better than any other game I have played. However, that is the only thing this game has for it. Run into many game-breaking bugs where the map didn't load correctly and had to load checkpoint to fix

many times. The battles are way too easy. It took me 10 hours to beat the game on hardest difficulty. It's a $15 game at best. I can see what he's saying. I get it. I get it. I did fine. And I'll be honest, a lot of games I do play on hard level. I played this one on just the regular level.

Oh, it's laughably easy. It was too easy at that point. I blew through, I think, all the boss fights on the first try. so i think you should probably play on hard if you want somewhat of a challenge um but uh yeah so i think that's a valid point but it's just funny that he says they're the best dialogue and interactions of any game he's played but then he's like no i don't recommend it right yeah all right and then this next one is recommended eight hours on record. And it says genuinely one of the most fun and enjoyable games I've ever played in my life.

Pretty much every single NPC has its own one to five minute dialogue of just pure nonsense. Yeah. And that's, that's what we touched on in the beginning. If you blitz this game, you are missing out on a ton of what this game actually is so it's just a good reminder there um this next one is recommended 28 hours on record and it says probably goes without saying if you like rick and morty and or dark humor this

game is your cup of tea it's actually unique in my opinion and something different from your stock standard call of duty shooters it's bright backdrop and silly characters are fun to listen to it's good banter and just a simple story and gameplay mechanics yeah that that completely reminded me of one thing that i wanted to bring up earlier that's real quick is i'm like man paul loves colors he must love this game it is a beautiful game i'll be honest the graphics in this game are i, they're not photorealistic, but it's a beautiful game. The different planets that you go to, the characters, the colors. I really enjoyed the graphics and art style in this game a lot. Yeah. It's very hard to try to mix real life looking people with Rick and Morty type cartoon characters.

And they almost split the difference in the middle where things don't look completely cartoony, but they don't look photorealistic. They actually did a really good job with the animation style. Yeah. Yeah, they did. All right.

And then this last one is not recommended eight hours on record. And it says most of the guns were too short ranged or inaccurate. I ended up using the starting pistol for the entire game as it seemed to be the best the gun and suit upgrades didn't seem to change anything meaningful and there were no side missions almost at all it's just very lacking and there's no replayability either so this is a perfect example of this guy played it like a shooter he said hey there's the guns aren't accurate uh you know there's no upgrade paths or any of that stuff on there. And he didn't like the game. And I think if you play it like that, you're going to feel just like this guy did.

I will say, I don't think there's much replayability. Unless you want to go around and find every warp shard and unlock those little side things that we were talking about earlier in the spoiler section. Then once you play this game, you're probably just done with it. Okay. Maybe you pick it up five years later because you forgot all the jokes. It's kind of like what, you know, you watch Spaceballs once every five years.

It's kind of the same thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. You have the ring, and I see your Schwartz is as big as mine. That's actually true. So, all right. Well, that's a little bit of what the community thinks

now is where we play guess that score to where we actually guess what we think this game is rated on steam from the steam scale of zero to 100 where do you guys think this game falls and paul i think you're the champ or wait was i the i had a really bad one because it was i didn't have a i that was our last pickup line yeah um all right so i'll go first then i guessed 86 okay what do you think michael i don't care i never win these anyways but what sticks out in my head is 90 i'm gonna say 90 uh i think you're both crazy i think this is gonna be way lower uh i i initially wrote down 82 and i'll stick with it all right so 82 86 and 90 one of us is dead on the money no really absolutely and it is you michael this game is a 90 steam

rating it's uh it's And I will say this too. Has it been like a year since I've won? It's been a long time, Michael. So you can think of a really good pickup line. Don't mess this up, Michael. Well, I just say this. Most of the negative reviews on this game were technical based because it did launch with a couple of game breaking bugs. You couldn't move through like a portal or something like that. And it doesn't have a field of view slider. And apparently, there's a ton of people out there that get motion sick when they play normal video games.

This is not a VR game, but they get super motion sick if the field of view is too zoomed in. I mean, if you go through the negative reviews, I feel like 8 out of 10 of the negative reviews are because people are saying, this game makes me motion sick and there's no field of view slider for me to correct that

I do adjust the field of view slider on 100% of the games that I play but in this one I played this game entirely on the Steam Deck 100% all the way through and so I never even thought about that huh interesting alright Michael well you get to bring us in to the next segment alright let's see how this goes I never even thought about that. Huh, interesting. Yeah. All right, Michael, will you get to bring us in to the next segment? All right, let's see how this goes.

All right, insert random name here. I got a Winnebago that travels through warp tunnels and the stars, and I'm going to take you to Applebee's. Let's do it. You're going to take Lizzie on a date to Applebee's? I was going to say, how did you not go with Lizzie right there? Because you don't know if you're playing a lizzie on a date tap i was gonna say how did you not go with lizzie right there because i didn't because you don't you don't know if you're playing a male or female

character and so i didn't want to take my sister on a date i'd also like i'm like no what if like i'm like fair because i was also gonna go with her boyfriend's name what was his name um oh cleeg or something like that yeah wasn't it like cleeg i don't remember that's a wood okay um anyways i was just going to insert random so that anybody could just anybody can love that pickup line holy cow i won i've never guys we're on a roll we're on a roll you know when i win things like this like the only two times that i won the bonus round uh drafts i won them back to back so next week's my week again it is twig by the way twig there you go yeah all right so uh here's where we all rate this game individually is it make love marry or murder is this game marriage material we

recommend it people should go out and buy it is it just make love potential where maybe it's worth picking up but it's not that great kind of teeters on line, or maybe it's kind of overpriced, or is the game just a straight up murder where you should not pick it up? Let's start with you, Josh. What are you going to rate High on Life? This is a perfect example of where price comes into play for a game. 60 bucks. It is a $60 game. Unless you have Game Pass. Yeah, unless you have Game Pass. It is on Game Pass. And that's a good thing to mention,

Paul, is that it is on Game Pass. So for me, this is a very easy make love for me. I actually had... I found this game to be very refreshing. And that's honestly... Talking to people that have played it, I feel like that's the one word that people use is it's refreshing. It's not like any other video game that's come out. It's unique. It's fun. It's simple. It doesn't try to be more than it is. At one point, they even make fun of DLC content and talking about, oh yeah, and this stuff. So I love the humor. The gameplay is fine for what it is. I don't think it tries to be more... If this was a $30 game, this would probably be a marry from me, to be honest with you.

It's just, it is a short game, and I don't know that it's going to resonate with everybody, but it's an easy make love at the $60 price point. If it was cheaper, I think I would bump it up to a Mary. Michael? I mean, insert my comments or insert Josh's comments. Copy and paste those here, because honestly, yeah, Game Pass, absolutely play this game if you're on Game Pass. 100% you have to play this game if you're on Game Pass. It's comments. Copy and paste those here because honestly, yeah, Game Pass, absolutely play this game if you're on Game Pass. 100% you have to play this game

if you're on Game Pass. It's hilarious. It's a lot of fun. If you're a Call of Duty player who wants to have fun and laugh and shrug off the eliteness of sniping and stuff, you'll have a blast this game.

If you want to take it too seriously, you're going to hate this game. But I loved it. So I'm going to put it firmly in the make love territory because like i mean it's an eight hour game it's 60 bucks like it's a little rough it has no replayability i think aside from space balls like i just said um so absolutely make love to it but it's a high make love i really really i and again it's so funny josh you said refreshing because it's exactly the word that came to mind for me yeah for me i was kind of struggling whether this is murder

or make love i would say that the game was entertaining and it was fun but given the 60 price tag i don't even think i can give it make love um this is a very high price to play a game that has almost no gameplay. I almost wonder if this game would have functioned better as an interactive movie, kind of like The Quarry or whatever. Maybe beef it out more with more scenes and more decisions and lean into the comedy even more. Because I found myself spending half of my eight hours running around fighting, not really enjoying the combat. So that's the only reason that I say I almost wonder if this would have been better as an interactive movie. And plus on top of that, the price range. Now, I'm not saying it wasn't fun. I'd say the experience of playing it was like a solid

seven out of ten. I enjoyed it. I'll never play it again. I have zero desire to go and play anything else at this point. I'm going to give it a murder, but it's really right on that borderline. But like Michael said, if you have Game Pass, absolutely go play it. If you're already paying for it and it's included, you'll have fun doing it. But I would not go out of my way and pay for this game as much as it pains me to say, because I love Justin Roiland. I hope he makes more games, but man, $60 is really hard for me to swallow for this. I wonder if I enjoyed the combat more than you guys did, because I am terrible at shooters, and this one wasn't really that hard. That's probably why me and Josh didn't

like it so much. Maybe just a little too easy. All right. Well, now that we are done with Make Love, Marry or Murder, let's go on to the leaderboard segment and see where this game stacks up. All right, Josh, if anyone out there is listening to a deep dive for the first time, tell them about our leaderboard. Number one, I hope you enjoyed this episode if this is your first time listening. Number two, we rank every game that we deep dive on a nonsensical leaderboard because how do you put High on Life up against Civilization VI, right? Like, it's just, you know, but that's what we're doing.

You have to be a little bit to try. Yeah, and we are. So our leaderboard is an overall list of every game that we've done a deep dive on. At the top, we have some just absolute bangers like Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Overwatch, Cyberpunk 2077, Disco Elysium, and so on. And then way down at the bottom, we have some real turds like Battlefield 2042, Overcooked 2, Hood Outlaws and Legends, and so on and so forth. So this is basically how we rate the games overall. For me, I enjoyed High on Life. I did find it refreshing. I think it's a different type of

game and I think it's a different type of experience. You just can't go into it looking for a really good shooter mechanic gameplay in my opinion. Um, so I mean, I am probably in the, uh, I don't know, late thirties, mid forties, somewhere around there, maybe don't know, late 30s, mid 40s, somewhere around there. Maybe even a little bit higher for me. I'll be honest. I'm having a hard time kind of landing this one. And normally I have a spot where I go, I think this is the spot, but this one's a little tough for me. It's the price, right? If this was a $10 game, I think all of us would kind of put it in exactly the same spot, but being $60, like,

would I rather spend 60 on high on life or would I rather drop far less to play something like keep talking and nobody explodes, which I can probably squeeze 80 hours out of. I'd way rather do keep talking and nobody explodes. So yeah, this one's kind of tough to rank when I'm looking, I was kind of thinking somewhere in the 50s was my gut shot so we're not that far away from each other josh i

mean that's a murder i'ma make love yeah i mean so michael you what are you at yeah i'm i'm kind of i'm a little baffled by this one too because as i started scanning down the first thing that ticked my eye first was like bro force okay bro force was like what five bucks that is the game my eyes kind of keep going and you're like bro force is kind of same thing you're gonna get these chuckles here and there from this arnold schwarzenegger as he's shooting his gun and stuff but that's a five dollar game and it belongs exactly where it is so this game has to go below it uh maybe not considerably but semi-considerably so i think late 40s mid 40s kind of works for me. I'm kind of malleable in wherever you guys want to put it.

I kind of agree with where both of you have it, honestly, because again, the price tag. Mid to early 40s? Early 40s. What are you thinking, Paul? You were about to say something there. I was going to say, as I start to look down at like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes at 48, I think that's far better value and such a good multiplayer experience that that's got to be way high up there. For me, it was kind of like Borderlands 3, Little Nightmares 2, The Saints Row Reboot. That's kind of where I would put it.

Does anyone have a strong opinion and just want to nominate a certain spot like i would i was gonna say 45 killing floor 2 is pretty much nonsense as well um i i 45 would be i think a good landing spot for me i feel comfortable there only because of game pass we've all got game pass i I don't. I don't. Some people have Game Pass. One of us has Game Pass. All right, we can do 45. That's okay. There's no way I would put this above RimWorld, Far Cry 5, Raft.

I think those games are all far better. So all right, I can live with 45 cool i think that's a fair spot i was actually it's funny because i was looking at far cry 5 and then i was kind of like far cry 5 has humor but it's got better gameplay yeah much better you know um it doesn't have as good of humor in my opinion but it is just kind of a better video game so i think that's the right that's the right spot yeah okay i can live with that i'm not losing all right we're good. Yeah. We will lock it in at 45.

If you guys want to check out our leaderboard, you can see it at multiplayerpodcast.com. It's right there on the main page. Just scroll down a little bit and you will see it there. Any closing thoughts or anything else to share for High on Life? I do have a question for you guys because we were kind of, at least I was kind of hyped for High on Life. We were very disappointed with Callisto Protocol. High on Life was coming out right around the same time, and I kind of moved my hype from Callisto Protocol to High on Life. Were you guys disappointed

with this game? Slightly. Only a little bit. It was almost exactly what I thought it was going to be. I thought this game was exactly what i was expecting and so i was not disappointed i was actually kind of relieved that i'm like you know it was funny the guns were fresh to me i had a good time with it um the only reason i thought maybe it would have been a little bit more than what it was is because it was a triple a title 60 price tag but overall i'm like you know when i watched the preview the first time we talked about this game when i was in the show like six months ago we were like that looks pretty funny. It looks hilarious. Oh, Rick and Morty created this.

Great. That's exactly what I got from it. I was not disappointed. I wasn't. And that's the kind of thing that takeaway for me was I had good expectations for this game. I was not disappointed in it. Is it expensive? Yes.

But I left kind of going like, I'm glad I played that game, even for the $60. It was different enough and refreshing enough that I kind of went, I'm glad I played that game. Even for the $60. It was different enough and refreshing enough that I kind of went, I'm glad I played that. So I was just curious. Okay, this game or The Quarry? Oh, this game. Oh my goodness, this game by far. High on life for sure.

You can ask me 100 games or The Quarry, Michael, and it's probably going to be... I picked the wrong AAA price tag title. I think the last thing I'll say about High on Life is I did not want them to give me more content for the $60 price. I don't want to pay $60 and then give me three times the size of the game. I wanted it to be short. When I beat this game, I was done. I was like, it was fun.

I enjoyed it. i don't want to play it anymore and it kind of ended at that point so um when i come when i not complain but when i talk about it just being overpriced it's not that i want more content i actually just would highly recommend waiting till it's on sale yeah does it help or hurt that the game starts with an easter egg uh that helps okay i don't know if we're gonna spoil that or not so i won't i adored the first five minutes and all the jokes about the divorce attorney and prioritizing crouch over double jump yeah all that stuff i thought was great yeah you're literally playing a game from 1993 looking like doom it was doom it literally was doom yeah you could definitely tell it was hysterical yeah all right well for You're literally playing a game from 1993. Looking like Doom. It was Doom.

It literally was Doom. Yeah, you could definitely tell it was hysterical. Yeah. All right. Well, for those out there who are curious to know, our next deep dive is going to be Dungeon Defenders, which was selected by legendary supporter Remy. We are actually going to be running a couple of deep dives back to back. So normally we alternate every other week between a bonus round and a deep dive. In this case, we actually had quite a few legendary games to catch up on.

So since a couple of them are rather short, we're actually just going to do a few deep dives in a row. This one here, Dungeon Defenders, is like a co-op shooter slash tower defense game. I think it'll be a lot of fun to talk about. We'll cover that a week from today. And just as a reminder, if you haven't already done so, please check out our Patreon page at MultiplayerSquad.com, which will give you those extra episodes. You can also follow us on socials everywhere at MultiplayerPod. And we hope that you guys will join us again on Thursday for This Week in Gaming when we talk about gaming news. And until then, happy gaming. Cheers all. Alright, see you everybody.