High on Life, a shooter from Squanch Games coming to PC and Xbox on December 13, and while we’ve still only seen a few vertical slices, I’m not really feeling the vibe it’s going for, and I think a recent clip that’s come out during Gamescom this week has solidified why: it looks painfully unfunny, to the point where it has an entire bit about shooting a kid in its alien world, but I don’t really get what the joke is supposed to be.
In the game, you have a gun that is sentient and portrayed by Justin Roiland, whose voice you’ll probably know (or not, I’m not sure anymore) from his performance as Rick in Rick and Morty. Much of his delivery is just non-stop talking, and that seems to be the writing direction of the game broadly. The script and performances just don’t seem to care for leaving beats between dialogue for effect. Everyone just says a lot of wild things and doesn’t stop. It’s so wacky and fun, you know? I’ve only ever seen clips of Rick and Morty in passing, so I don’t have a broad, sweeping declaration for that show’s humor, but the criticism of things like the Pickle Rick scene as just being a constant barrage of words about the silliness of a situation are starting to make more sense.
But back to High on Life’s recent showcase, which included an underwhelming demo at Gamescom, but also footage from the game is starting to circulate online, and it includes a sequence where an alien child starts berating the player and Roiland’s living gun character is freaking out because you can’t shoot a kid, right? What kind of deviant would you have to be to want to shoot a kid in a video game. Who could ever think to do such a- oh, High on Life lets you do that. Then Roiland’s character just repeats how wild and crazy it is that you did that, and I’m just sitting here wondering what’s supposed to be funny about this?
It looks like High on Life isn't afraid to cross the line of video game decency. #gamescom2022 pic.twitter.com/bgC6UinyVz
— IGN (@IGN) August 26, 2022
The dialogue here is pretty clear that the shock of this is entirely tied to a video game letting you do something most games don’t allow you to do, so I will give Squanch Games the benefit of the doubt that this isn’t the joke at the expense of victims of actual gun violence happening to children in American schools and is instead remarking on how video games often make it impossible for players to interact with children in ways a developer naturally wouldn’t want their game associated with. Cyberpunk 2077 removes all the children from the Night City when the player enters photo mode, and a lot of games won’t allow the player to shoot a gun if they’re facing a child character to begin with.
But even in that context, I’m not sure what joke High on Life is going for. Is it that it’s letting you do a thing most video games don’t let you do? Because otherwise, the entire dialogue exchange is just simply repeated remarks about a child being in front of you and that Roiland’s gun doesn’t want you to shoot them. But you can and everyone just keeps talking about how those things happened. There’s no wit, there’s no dramatic effect, it just happens and no one on screen will stop repeating that it happened. That’s not funny, it’s just a loud recap of events put on a loop.
Further into the section, the player will meet the kid’s mother, who says he was actually 30-years-old (though says that’s still adolescence to the alien species), but even with that context, I’m still not sure what the joke is in the end. We’ve seen so little of this game that I don’t want to make a sweeping declaration about the game’s quality, but it has yet to make me laugh, and this is just a moment where I feel like what it thinks is funny just isn’t funny to me.
