• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

High on Life 2, good so far

Esquie

Esquie

Member
Just came out today, anyone playing? I'm a couple hours in and having a blast. The first one is one of my favorite of the gen. They don't make single-player FPS like this anymore.

Graphics are great, it's genuinely technically impressive. They're milking UE5 pretty well here. The shaders and character models look great, environment is quite detailed. Gunplay is solid, the new skateboard traversal works pretty well… it takes the place of sprint. The maps have rails and other stuff you can grind on too. I'm about 2 hours in, past the title drop and at the new HQ. Feels so nice to play an FPS campaign like this again.

Launch trailer:

 
Preloaded last night. First wasn't the greatest thing ever, but it was fun for what it was. You are right that they don't (often) make single player FPS games like this anymore.
 
I didn't see there was another thread already, the review thread. I guess you can nuke this one

Careful with the reviews for this series tho. The first one had a 68 Meta and it was much better than that imo.
 
MidGenRefresh said:
What's the Steam average?
Click to expand...
elf-six-inches.gif
 
It released 5 hours ago, the numbers are still increasing, but very slowly.
And a 68% user score. The original is sitting at 89%.
This is not an encouraging start.

yJkmuUu1yNcNvlzJ.png
 
winjer said:
It released 5 hours ago, the numbers are still increasing, but very slowly.
And a 68% user score. The original is sitting at 89%.
This is not an encouraging start.

yJkmuUu1yNcNvlzJ.png
Click to expand...

High on Life 1was a huge hit on Game Pass and never did big numbers on Steam either. Still, the first game did feel like a lighting-in-a-bottle situation with it's success. I feel like the sequel has way, way less buzz around it.
 
analog_future said:
High on Life 1was a huge hit on Game Pass and never did big numbers on Steam either. Still, the first game did feel like a lighting-in-a-bottle situation with it's success. I feel like the sequel has way, way less buzz around it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but the original did manage to get 11,608 concurrent players and an 89% score.
So far, a lot better than this sequel.
 
Crypto rug pulls, epstein, human pets and a skateboard - all in the first 30 mins :messenger_beaming:

Youd be silly to miss this one. The dialogue alone is worth it.
 
Last edited:
The Cockatrice said:
k60beQ6HygPYyOX9.png


pretty much a flop. More expensive than the first, worse performance than the first, lower quality/comedy as well. Anyone buying this on steam is a tool. I think it's on gamepass, so thats about as much as it deserves I guess.
Click to expand...
I just skimmed all 92 reviews

- not a single one mentions "lower quality/comedy", why lie? There's like 50 that say the exact opposite

- every single negative review is due to performance, stuttering or whatever PC issues. Not everyone seems to have them tho. Even the negative reviews say it's fun from what they were able to play. System requirements are high
 
Last edited:
I've only been able to play for 30 minutes or so through Game Pass, and the first thing I noticed is that graphically it's better than expected (we'll see later if it's more inconsistent), and it feels like it's very much like the previous game, which I enjoyed quite a bit. I hope to have a satisfying experience with this one too.
 
Esquie said:
Just came out today, anyone playing? I'm a couple hours in and having a blast. The first one is one of my favorite of the gen. They don't make single-player FPS like this anymore.

Graphics are great, it's genuinely technically impressive. They're milking UE5 pretty well here. The shaders and character models look great, environment is quite detailed. Gunplay is solid, the new skateboard traversal works pretty well… it takes the place of sprint. The maps have rails and other stuff you can grind on too. I'm about 2 hours in, past the title drop and at the new HQ. Feels so nice to play an FPS campaign like this again.

Launch trailer:

Click to expand...

Sounds good. And humor wise? Because with Roiland not there I am slightly worried it isn't nearly as funny as the first.

I get that humor is subjective but...
 
Stafford said:
Sounds good. And humor wise? Because with Roiland not there I am slightly worried it isn't nearly as funny as the first.

I get that humor is subjective but...
Click to expand...
I'm just 2 hours in but it's the same tone as the first, same type of humor. I've chuckled a few times already

Sucks that Kenny (roiland gun) isn't in it but the humor should still deliver
 
Opened the game, it couldn't work in windowed fullscreen, it wouldn't put my actual monitor resolution. I check steam reviews, everyone says it's crashing and stuttering.
I force the resolution in the config, it sticks, I open the game, 3 mins later I crash. Good job guys
 
does anyone know the specific command in UE to turn off screen space shadows? I tried r.ContctShadows but that's not the right one.
the devs apparently smoked some crack and thought it was a good idea to give massive objects and all characters fucking screen space shadows... absolute morons

edit: never mind, I am an idiot and misspelled it originally. it is r.ContactShadows=0 ...

so, r.ContactShadows=0 guys. and essential graphics change imo.
 
Last edited:
Took me forever to download it. it's over 80Gigs. I'll be playing tonight.
I hope they have a recap and review. It's been a while since I played the first game.
 
Hate to say it, but I miss the roiland type of humor from the first game. It was a bit too much some times, but it had its moments.

I played about an hour or so and I think I only really found one thing somewhat amusing (the person exhibit, where the dude is just chilling )

Also it's runs like ass on PC.
 
Stafford said:
Sounds good. And humor wise? Because with Roiland not there I am slightly worried it isn't nearly as funny as the first.

I get that humor is subjective but...
Click to expand...
Like you say, humor is subjetive, but for me yes, is very funny, the prologue at least.....There is a reference to Epstein files in the prologue that was funny 😂
 
Playing this after Requiem in the order Yakuza 3 Kiwami -> Requiem -> High on Life 2.

A shame Roiland is not on board for this, first game was damn funny
 
yeah... I think I'll just not play this.
it's insane how you can release a game looking and running like this on consoles and PCs that are 10x more powerful than an Xbox One, while looking worse than most Xbox One games.

absolutely insane.

usually I'd just shit on UE5 here (and it's part of the reason it looks and runs like shit) but even for UE5 standards this is beyond abysmal. it's absolutely unfathomable to me how professional game developers these days can deliver something like this and it's not a pre-alpha build but actually a "finished" game.

and that's after I manually fixed some of the brain-dead shit they did through editing the config file. it would look even worse if I didn't do that...
 
Last edited:
Uffff, don't know what to say other that I'm glad I only got a month of PC game pass for this instead of buying a key. I loved the first one, it had me howling at points…this one is, as of right now not as funny as the first one. Performance is awful, running it on a 4080S and performance dips are noticeable. Tbh, I thought the whole time I was playing the opening hour that the game is still on UE4, pop in is horrible. While appreciate the skateboard, I would've preferred if they didn't bind it to sprint, it feels clunky to me. I just finished the opening before being dropped off at that Halo city so I hope my impressions improve, either way I'll play through it and probably never think about it again.
 
I was enjoying it. Graphics look really nice on XSX. I'm on the third bounty and I'm either stupid and can't figure it out or it is broken. I think it is broken because I also had to revert my save right before this when the taxi cab mission crashed the game.

On the James Stevenson mission the portal paintings don't seem to work at all for the first two. The bathroom is always occupied, and most times I can't teleport in there at all (sometimes it says occupied and kicks me out, sometimes it just teleports me back to where I jumped in immediately). I found a window to jump through to get to the third one, and the game literally said "oops I hope you didn't break the game", and then wouldn't let me fight the boss. Reverting to the last checkpoint save did nothing so I guess I have to start the game over.
 
Last edited:
Game crashed on me during the opeining sequence, The part with the obstacle course everything just froze, but the music kept playing.
I'll have to try again later this weekend.

Edit-PC gamepass version
 
Last edited:
Playing on pc, graphic are pretty mid for a ue5 game, very inconsitent but the game is fun, maybe a bit less funny than the first game in terms of writing for now but the skateboard add a new dimension to the gameplay.

It does have more ue5 hiccups than usual, and you need to use both dlss and framegen for a decent framerate even if i optimized the settings a little.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

High On Life 2 - Review Embargo Soon
Hype 
25
431
Putonahappyface replied
High on Life 2 | Review Thread
Analysis Review 
34
158
intbal replied
Hands on: High on Life 2
33
2K
Closed replied
LTTP: High on Life - This Game is Great!
2
52
814
Deerock71 replied
IGN First: High on Life 2 Boss Fight Gameplay, Spoilers: Still annoying
7
246
IbizaPocholo replied
Top Bottom