Think about E.T. snorted your dad off an area rest room. You’d be mad, however there wouldn’t be something you could possibly do about it. Except you occurred to have an arsenal of highly effective alien weapons and a few tricked-out energy armour. That is the story of you, an unassuming child who simply occurs to like video video games, and the way Earth getting taken over by an enormous interstellar drug cartel seems to be the making of you.
The occasions of High on Life begin at the outbreak of alien invasion on a seemingly regular day in sleepy suburbia. Your mother and father are out of city, your cokehead sister, Lizzie, needs to throw a wild celebration, and all you need to do is lose your self in a Legally Distinct first particular person shooter. Relatable.
Out of nowhere arrives the G3 Cartel, led by a disgusting slimy slug man referred to as Garmantuous; a blob of distorted flesh extra hideous than Jabba the Hutt and twice as imply. He’s right here as a result of, sadly, human beings are a really potent leisure drug. In a spot of obscenely dangerous luck, evolutionarily talking, we simply so occur to be like catnip to the numerous species that make up galactic civilisation. So the G3 cartel is right here to enslave us, stick us all in jars, and promote us on avenue corners, displaying completely no regard for our rights as sentient beings. They even homicide beloved Hollywood stars Jack Black and Susan Sarandon!
Happily, an early probability encounter with ideas the scales ever so barely again in humanity’s favour. You meet Kenny, a sentient gun from the planet Gatlus. The Gatlians are proud race of residing weapons who’re additionally enslaved by the cartel, subjected to a brutal bioengineered plague. Any survivors are pressganged into forming the bulk of the cartel’s deadly arsenal.
You know, I’m beginning to assume these guys aren’t very good.
Kenny seems to be an affable younger gun with an axe to grind towards the cartel and a plan for you each to get even. Together with his assist, you escape the ravaging of Earth by warping your complete home to Blim Metropolis, an alien metropolis stuffed with gleaming towers, incredible expertise, and, effectively… pawn outlets, legal gangs, filthy slums, and gobby delinquents. It’s a metropolis in any case. They’re all Birmingham or Detroit or no matter whenever you get right down to it.
So right here’s Kenny’s plan: you develop into a licensed bounty hunter and destroy the G3 cartel’s complete sordid operation by systematically murdering all of its high brass… which includes chaotically murdering a lot of its backside brass. All of which is kind of unattainable with out the assist of Gene Zaroothian: a down-on-his-luck, previously well-known bounty hunter who has sooner or later resorted to promoting his personal legs for a little bit of fast money. In change for a everlasting seat on your sofa and custody of the TV distant, he units you up with the aforementioned Tricked Out Energy Armour and the all-important Bounty-5000, an enormous alien laptop that mixes the features of a contract board and a Stargate. He additionally units you up along with your first mission: head to the slums, get better Gene’s knife “Knifey”, and assassinate 9-Torg, a neighborhood crime boss. And in addition 5-Torg, her cloned sister, in the event you like.
Whereas not strictly talking a part of the G3 Cartel, 9-Torg’s gang do enterprise with them as drug runners and so it feels completely morally constant to, y’know, homicide all of them. With Knifey recovered and the related expertise of knife crime and grappling unlocked, your campaign to avoid wasting humanity from the scum of the universe begins in earnest.
Goal 1: Krubis
Your first goal is Krubis, the large cheese of G3’s mining operations on the planet Zephyr Paradise, with a thick New Jersey accent and drills for arms.
“Mining operation?”, you say? “I assumed this was a drug cartel? What might they presumably be mining for?”
Medicine. They’re mining medication. Particularly, a residing drug referred to as Furgles, one other sentient race having fun with the doubtful honour of someway having developed to present different aliens a extremely good excessive when snorted. They have a tendency to reside underground in caves, therefore all the mining. Furgles share the planet with the Moplets, a race of Despair Bears with scrotums for faces who’ve been brutally enslaved by Krubis as a way to hold the mines working.
Krubis, nevertheless, has an issue. With the discovery of people, who’ve confirmed a way more potent narcotic, the demand for Furgles is about to break down. He and his product is now quick slipping out of favour with Garmantuous, which means his place inside the G3 Cartel rests on very shakey floor. Which is what occurs whenever you dig too many tunnels.
Quickly sufficient, nevertheless, that’s the least of his considerations, since you kill him and take his gun, Gus, the JB Smoove voiced frog-faced shotgun with a vacuum perform who can shoot massive sawblades that you should utilize as platforms. He’s additionally the solely Gatlian who has arms, which is ironic for a race of arms. You know, armaments. Ah, overlook it.
In the meantime, again dwelling, whereas Lizzie has been stepping into the alien relationship scene, Gene has been making himself a bit too comfy on the sofa, and so you discover the two at one another’s throats.
Goal 2: Douglas
The second G3 goal is Douglas, the cartel’s head of coaching. And in addition torture. And whereas some stage of evil is required to work in recruitment, Douglas’ unrelenting cruelty and hedonism makes him extraordinarily dangerous at his job, usually making new recruits struggle one another to the loss of life regardless of the G3’s existential staffing issues. This, after all, means he’s quick slipping out of favour with Garmantuous, which appears to be a working theme right here. How can such a chaotic and badly managed organisation be the dominant legal conspiracy in the galaxy? It’s nearly like another person is basically pulling the strings right here…
Douglas is a small, susceptible octopus creature who’s obsessive about setting pointless, arduous coaching duties. In disguise as Dr. Joopy, he nearly convinces you to guide him again to the energy armour he’s by accident locked himself out of whereas on a bender, however the ruse is uncovered by Gus, and so you’ll be able to simply shoot him as an alternative of enjoying his silly video games. Or not. Both means you find yourself preventing his swimsuit, win, and purchase a brand new Gatlian companion: Sweezy, an obnoxious needler with a nifty time bubble alt fireplace which can be utilized to get into air ducts.
Goal 3: Physician Giblets
Clugg Nuggmin, Blim Metropolis’s Justice of the Peace, summons you to his workplace to congratulate you on your marketing campaign towards the drug commerce, and affords his help in rescuing the human race by constructing a protected haven in your folks and a supplying you with a tool to teleport any people you discover instantly there. Setting apart for now the excessive likelihood of this man having a nefarious agenda, you proceed to the subsequent assassination mission… stopping briefly to resolve one other home between Gene, Lizzie, and her dipshit boyfriend, Tweeg.
The subsequent goal? Physician Giblets, the cartel’s deranged warp scientist, who’s at the moment hiding out on Zephyr Paradise. Present intel on Dr. Giblets says he’s gone into hiding after murdering all of his personal males, and is in possession of a robust Gatlian. Upon discovering his secret base, nevertheless, you discover solely a Busted Gatlian, which is completely damaged and inoperable after being experimented on. Before you’ll be able to deal righteous revenge on his abuser, although, Giblets by accident journeys over and… dies. Removed from saving you the hassle of a boss struggle, although, this results in one in all the hardest battles in the sport in the type of Dr. Giblets’ posthumous revenge.
Giblets finally ends up completely handled, and the Busted Gatlian is delivered again to Gene to see if something may be completed for them. However Giblets wasn’t the solely G3 boss on Zephyr Paradise performing horrific medical experiments.
Goal 4: The Skrendel Brothers
Subsequent on the hit record: the Skrendel Brothers, overseers of Skrendel Labs, an enormous drug facility the place the cartel are experimenting on people as a way to enhance their efficiency. On the means there you rescue one other Gatlian, Creature, and be taught of the nasty experiments which have turned him right into a gun that’s completely pregnant, able to taking pictures his personal offspring as projectiles. What’s it with these guys and horrific medical experiments?
The Skrendel Bros are a compound being of triplets who mix into an extremely type throughout your last battle with them, which they clearly lose. By now you’ve develop into sufficient of a thorn in the cartel’s facet to garner the consideration of Garmantuous himself, who warns you to again off, with the implication that your lengthy misplaced mother and father shall be harmed in the event you don’t. Nonetheless, it truly seems that Garmantuous has Hollywood’s beloved Jack Black and Susan Sarandon, not your mother and father, in one in all the sport’s funniest twists and long-form gags. Which I fully spoiled in the intro to this recap. Hey, look, in the event you have been bothered about spoilers, you wouldn’t be studying a recap, proper?
In the meantime, it seems that the busted Gatlian is a former resistance chief by the identify of Lezduit, who’s now a shadow of his former self attributable to mistreatment, however continues to be a vastly highly effective firearm. Nonetheless, evidently he has a troubled previous with Kenny…
Blim Metropolis Invasion
It wouldn’t be a online game with no perilous third act the place you almost lose every little thing. Firstly, Lizzie has gone lacking, and so that you head to Area Applebees in the slums the place her boyfriend, Tweeg, works as a prepare dinner. That’s proper, there’s a Area Applebees, in one in all the funniest and very unlikely items of product placement ever featured in video video games. This may be like having a licensed OMEGA watch in a Bond sport that you simply solely ever see lined in shit.
At Applebees, Kenny takes one in all the sport’s uncommon quiet moments to elucidate his unwitting half in the downfall of the Gatlian race, confessing that he grew to become the private firearm of a G3 smuggler and ended up, by means of cowardice and incompetence, main the Cartel instantly again to his dwelling planet, triggering a warfare which his folks misplaced attributable to a genetically engineered illness that turned most of them catatonic. Feeling the an enormous pressure from this guilt, Kenny vows to avoid wasting humanity to atone for the genocide of his folks. Which is all fairly heavy stuff for a daft Rick and Morty first-person shooter, however the pathos is recurrently interrupted by an Applebees waiter simply to maintain issues as mild as attainable. That is, indisputably, the greatest bit in the sport.
Transferring on, it seems Tweeg is a G3 agent tasked with infiltrating your house by romancing Lizzie and gaining her belief. He’s seen kidnapping her in his house RV and fleeing Blim Metropolis, however earlier than you’ll be able to chase, the place is overrun with Cartel, forcing a hasty escape involving as soon as once more warping your home to a brand new location. This time, you arrive on the poisonous ruins of Gatlus, the dwelling planet of the Gatlians.
Lizzie’s high quality, by the means.
Goal 5: Nipulon
The penultimate boss is Nipulon: Garmantuous’s proper hand man and the G3’s chief of buyer relations. He runs an notorious drug den and is, opposite to the knowledge of most high-level operatives in the unlawful drug commerce, keen on his personal merchandise.
And, after all, like Batman’s Scarecrow or a drained mother or father with entry to kid-grade Tylenol, Nipulon is expert in weaponising medication. This results in one in all the trippiest boss fights in fashionable gaming, through which we be taught that, regardless of the odds, any problem may be overcome with the energy of teamwork. And that dealing with firearms whereas intoxicated can generally result in a constructive final result. Truly, you realize what, I don’t assume there’s a ethical to this story, it’s only a bunch of stuff that occurs.
End the Battle
After dispatching Nipulon, Gene manages to avoid wasting the highly effective Gatlian Lezduit from oblivion: with no extra weapons to gather and no extra upgrades to buy, the solely factor left to do is return to Earth and kill Garmantuous, completely ending the tyranny of the G3 Cartel as soon as and for all and saving the human race from the ignoble destiny of turning into ecstasy for ALF.
Even the firepower of Lezduit gained’t fairly be sufficient to take down Gamantuous, nevertheless. The one technique to kill this crime lord, surmises Gene, is to ram a bomb up his bottom. And so, at the climax of a chronic Bullet Hell battle, with an incapacitated Garmantuous displaying his complete ass metaphorically and actually, the butt bomb enema fails to blow up. The distant detonator is defective.
Sure, the sport’s punchline requires you to sacrifice one in all your newfound associates by pushing them up the villain’s anus. A becoming finish for the galaxy’s greatest asshole, for certain. The one query is: who to sacrifice?
Essentially the most prudent alternative is Kenny, given how this noble sacrifice completes his redemption arc, but it surely doesn’t actually matter as a result of your alternative is straight away undermined when it seems that whichever gun you solid into the void instantly comes again after surviving the ensuing explosion.
That’s proper: Oh my god, they don’t kill Kenny. Besides they may as effectively have completed, as a result of when the High on Knife DLC rolls round his character will get unceremoniously written out with a little bit of exposition, for causes which are past the remit of this recap.
By the way, the main revelations from the DLC are: Knifey just isn’t a kind of melee Gatlian however a local of the planet Australia 2, hailing from a race of pacifist knives who can’t stand him. And in addition that eliminating the dysfunctional G3 Cartel doesn’t truly make humanity any safer from the intergalactic drug commerce, however we already figured that out from the secret ending of the base sport, through which the large villainous mastermind behind all of it is revealed to be Dr. Gurgula. He is present in the bowels of the Human Haven arrange by Justice of the Peace Clugg, ostensibly that can assist you save your folks however truly to recapture them and supply human topics to Dr. Gurgula for much more horrible experiments. The sport is fairly unequivocal that this reveal is a tease for the sequel, through which you, your sister, Gene, and no less than a few of the returning Gatlians are fugitives on the run from galactic authorities.
And that’s the complete story of High on Life, or no less than the stuff you truly must know earlier than you play High on Life 2.