Review: High on Life 2 (PS5) – Slick Skateboarding and Shooting Suffocated by Poor Performance

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High on Life was a Marmite game back when it launched in 2022.

Whether you liked High on Life 2 really came down to whether you enjoyed the quirky, often crude, humor similar to Rick and Morty. This style was heavily influenced by Justin Roiland, who used to lead the game studio Squanch Games before stepping down in 2023. However, the game still maintains that same humorous tone.

The game has evolved into a much more engaging first-person shooter. Combining skateboarding with shooting creates a unique and improved gameplay experience, and the variety of weapons and environments adds to the excitement.

However, the game’s potential is hampered by noticeable performance and quality problems on both the PS5 and PS5 Pro. These issues sometimes cause High on Life 2 to look and run less smoothly than the original game.

I’m really excited about High on Life 2! It continues the story right after the first game, and you get to hang out with all your favorite talking weapons – the Gatlians – plus Lizzie and Gene are back too. Honestly, the gameplay feels pretty similar to the first one, where you’re running around exploring cool alien worlds and battling big bosses. But this time, instead of taking down a drug cartel, you’re going after the people in charge of a massive pharmaceutical company called Rhea Pharmaceuticals. It’s a fun change of pace!

You’ve gained notoriety for dismantling the G3 cartel, and now bounty hunters are after you – and Lizzie, who’s become a symbol of rebellion. This means your mission to defeat Rhea will be constantly interrupted as you’re pursued by these hunters across the game’s many different planets and environments.

The story and characters aren’t particularly deep, much like the original game, but that’s okay. The voice acting, writing, and humor are all fantastic. As a big fan of the comedy and writing in High on Life, I found this sequel to be just as good, and often even better.

The show’s humor is sharper than ever, its satire is spot-on, and the acting – especially from newcomers like Ralph Ineson as Galactus – elevates the already strong writing and comedic timing the series is famous for.

If you didn’t enjoy the first one – its writing, humor, or characters – you probably won’t like this sequel either.

One of the main new features in High on Life 2 is skateboarding while you shoot. It sounds crazy – combining the careful aiming of a first-person shooter with the fast movement of skateboarding – but Squanch Games has surprisingly pulled it off, making the two elements work really well together.

Skateboarding in the game feels smooth and intuitive, and you’ll soon find yourself automatically keeping up momentum even during battles. The levels are designed to support this, featuring plenty of rails, fences, balconies, and ramps that you can use for both skillful movement and strategic combat, as well as for finding hidden collectibles throughout the game’s planets and maps.

One of the biggest improvements in High on Life 2 is the wider variety of weapons. The game gives you new tools to use much more frequently, meaning you’ll almost always have something fresh to try against enemies. And it’s not just guns – you can even pick up objects and animals, like a fire-breathing turtle, to use as weapons!

The most memorable parts of the game are the thrilling boss battles, which cleverly incorporate skateboarding in unique ways. The final boss fight is particularly impressive.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from noticeable visual issues on both the PlayStation 5 and PS5 Pro. While it retains the vibrant and colorful art style of the first game, it often looks blurry and unappealing due to a combination of poor graphical choices and performance limitations. These factors combine to create significant visual problems.

One of the biggest issues with the game is a lack of options to adjust performance or graphics, aside from a basic scaling setting and some upscaling features on the PS5 Pro – though these don’t noticeably improve the visuals. The game constantly tries to run at 60 frames per second, but often fails, with frequent dips in performance on both the standard PS5 and even the more powerful PS5 Pro. Digital Foundry reports that this results in a significantly reduced resolution, typically around 720p or 792p on the PS5 Pro.

As a fan, I have to say the graphics in High on Life 2 are pretty rough. Everything looks grainy and noisy – the environments, the guns, even the characters and menus. It’s a little better indoors, but a lot of the game takes place in big, open areas and honestly, it’s just not very pleasant to look at. Plus, things constantly pop in and out, which makes it really hard to follow the action, especially during intense boss fights when there’s already a lot happening on screen. The visuals just can’t keep up.

Honestly, as a fan, I’m a little disappointed by some of the visual choices in the game. It feels like they really leaned into the shiny reflections Unreal Engine 5 can do, but it’s actually hurting the overall look. Instead of making things clearer, these reflections are often blurry and don’t even reflect things correctly. They just add to a muddy, hazy feeling, and I honestly think the game would have looked better if they’d focused on sharper, more detailed graphics instead.

Okay, so High on Life 2 has these screen-space shadows, which is cool, but honestly, they’re a little distracting. They show up and vanish depending on where I’m looking, and because they’re everywhere, it feels way more noticeable than in other games. Even tiny movements of the camera make the shadows flicker on and off, and it’s kind of jarring!

The game’s many visual problems combine to make High on Life 2 appear less appealing than it could be, and the constant visual clutter can be confusing and overwhelming for players.

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2026-02-17 20:37