High On Life Knows When Players Are Cheating
High on Life knows when you're speedrunning and actively encourages it.
Whenever a new game comes out, proficient gamers always look for a way to make the said game more challenging. It happened to the awarded Elden Ring when players sought to beat the game as fast as possible or to beat it without taking any damage. The same thing now happens to High on Life, a new game from the co-creator of the legendary Rick & Morty animated show—speedrunners are looking to complete the game as fast as possible, and the game is actually cheering them on.
According to Kotaku, the new comedic first-person-shooter High on Life game is totally cool, with gamers skipping some of its content in an attempt to speedrun the game and set a world record in the process. In fact, the game’s NPCs (non-player characters) will comment on the players’ breakneck pacing with words of encouragement. However, it will also notify you about the parts of its narrative that can’t be skipped for the purpose of speedrunning—it seems like a speedrunners’ heaven, were it not for player-trapping Space Applebee’s.
High on Life encourages players to speedrun through the game’s talking guns; the gun will playfully ask speedrunners if they’re trying to speedrun before telling the players that speedrunning is cool and that the game is okay with that. The talking guns will also wish the speedrunner all the best in setting the world record. And that’s not the only instance when this is happening, there are several instances within the game in which you can skip content in favor of a faster completion time, and the guns will always react in some comedic way.
As mentioned above, some parts can be skipped, and the game will notify you if you have to complete some other form of the assignment before progressing. It will do so through the talking guns, again, but this time the gun will have an almost apologetic tone. Each time the player tries to speedrun, either successfully or unsuccessfully, the suit’s AI or the talking guns will let them know whether they’re on the right track or not. In most cases, however, the speedrunners already acquainted with all the speedrunning antics within the game move so fast the game doesn’t have the chance to actually make a comment.
The recently released game is filled with this type of fourth-wall-breaking humor, and it doesn’t even shy away from letting the players wait around for a full hour, complemented with extra dialogue and videos to make your waiting time more bearable. It’s this type of humor that separates it from the rest of the gaming market and makes it so insanely popular at the moment. High on Life is currently one of the biggest hits in the history of Xbox Game Pass—it even surpassed the previously unchallenged champions, such as Minecraft, Halo, or even Forza.
Besides being a hit in the gaming community, mostly thanks to its whacky humor, High on Life also gathered some controversy for its use of AI-generated art. The game is currently available on PC and Xbox. There’s still no word regarding the PlayStation release.
