Excessive on Life was a Marmite sport again when it launched in 2022.
Your enjoyment of the sport was virtually solely depending on whether or not you loved the Rick and Morty-style humour from Squanch Video games’ now disgraced founder Justin Roiland. He resigned from the studio in 2023, however Squanch Video games hasn’t misplaced any of that type, crudeness, and satire in Excessive on Life 2.
It is managed to craft a way more thrilling and fleshed out FPS, with stronger gameplay because of its distinctive mix of skateboarding and taking pictures, in addition to a extra thrilling roster of weapons and areas.
However, the expertise is let down by a reasonably irritating set of efficiency and high quality points on PS5 and PS5 Professional that truly make Excessive on Life 2 look and play worse than the primary sport at occasions.
Excessive on Life 2 picks up proper the place the primary sport left off, with a number of returning Gatlians (your speaking weapons), Lizzie, and Gene. The set-up and construction of Excessive on Life 2 isn’t a lot completely different from the primary sport with you exploring quite a lot of alien areas, taking down key bosses, though this time as an alternative of a cartel, you’re taking down key figures working and funding big-pharma firm Rhea Prescribed drugs.
Nonetheless, you might have now made a reputation for your self by taking down the G3 cartel and are being chased by different bounty hunters, after a bounty is positioned in your head, alongside Lizzie’s as she has turn into a freedom fighter of kinds. So interrupting your efforts to take down Rhea, you should have some bounty hunters attempt to kill you throughout the sport’s numerous, numerous planets and locales.
General, there isn’t a lot past that to the story or the characters right here, just like the primary sport. However there doesn’t should be because the voice forged, writing, and comedy all through are glorious and as somebody who actually loved Excessive on Life’s comedy and writing, the sequel is on par, if not higher virtually always.
The humour hits tougher, the satire is completely on the nostril, and the performances from newcomers like Galactus, performed by Ralph Ineson, actually helps bolster the already spectacular writing and comedy the collection is understood for.
Nonetheless, should you couldn’t stand the writing, jokes, or characters within the unique, the sequel isn’t going to get you on board.
Talking of getting on a board, Excessive on Life 2’s large gameplay hook is the power to skateboard whereas taking pictures. It’s an insane concept when you concentrate on it as a result of the exact aiming of an FPS and the tempo of using round on a skateboard shouldn’t combine, however Squanch Video games has achieved a outstanding job at mixing these two features of the sport collectively.
Skateboarding feels easy, breezy, and pure — and it rapidly turns into muscle reminiscence to all the time preserve shifting whereas in a firefight. The extent design can be constructed round this with rails, fences, wires, balconies, ramps, and jumps to grind on or use in fight and when exploring the planets or looking down the assorted collectibles scattered across the maps.
It helps too that the roster of weapons this time round is much extra diversified and thrilling, with the sport handing out new weapons at a extra constant tempo. Excessive on Life 2 ensures that for nearly each goal you might have a brand new toy to play with, even when it isn’t a gun, as there are objects and animals you possibly can decide up and use as weapons like a fireplace turtle that spews flames out in entrance of you.
The sport’s finest moments are the place it makes use of the skateboard to craft some exhilarating and thrilling boss battles that you just haven’t skilled anyplace else. The sport’s last boss is particularly nice.
However, sadly virtually all of that is marred by what can solely be described as a tough expertise on PS5 and PS5 Professional in relation to the sport’s visuals and graphics. Whereas Excessive on Life 2 retains the identical visually placing, colour-injected artwork type of the unique sport, the sport really seems fairly muddy and ugly due to quite a lot of visible high quality decisions and efficiency targets that coalesce collectively to create an ideal storm of issues.
The primary large drawback is that the sport has no efficiency or graphics settings, apart from a render scaling possibility, in addition to upscaling choices on PS5 Professional (though each these choices have barely any impact on the sport’s visuals). Excessive on Life 2 is continually making an attempt to take care of 60fps, and doesn’t all the time hit it, dropping fairly persistently on PS5 and even at occasions on PS5 Professional. Due to this the decision is decreased considerably, working at about 720p or 792p on PS5 Professional, based on Digital Foundry.
This low decision and the upscaling choices each create a grainy visible expertise with numerous noise within the setting, on weapons, on character fashions, and even on the UI. It’s just a little higher within the closed off, inside environments, however Excessive on Life 2 has numerous open areas and the sport is simply not nice to take a look at more often than not because the visible constancy is so poor. Some noticeable pop-in points additionally seem all through the sport and these make it arduous to trace enemies or projectiles in boss fights as there’s a lot occurring that the visible constancy can’t sustain with.
That is worsened by numerous design decisions that spotlight Unreal Engine 5’s points. One key selection Squanch Video games has made is to make use of numerous reflective surfaces that show blobby reflections that don’t look engaging in any respect and infrequently do not resemble what they need to be reflecting. They largely simply distract and worsen the muddy, hazy look of the sport. We might have fairly taken higher visible constancy over reflections that don’t really feel wanted.
Excessive on Life 2 additionally makes use of screen-space shadows which pop up and disappear relying on the angle and path you are wanting. However these are used in all places giving the sensation that the pop-in is definitely worse as a result of slight changes of the digital camera may cause shadows to seem and disappear always.
All of it comes collectively to create a melting pot of graphical points that make Excessive on Life 2 look worse than it really is, and taking part in it may be disorientating as a result of a lot is occurring visually at anybody time.
