High on Life: High on Knife

High On Life: High On Knife is not as funny as the base game, but it is just about as good in every other way.

I had a great time with High on Knife, and I do plan on going back in to clean up some undiscovered items, which thankfully, the game allows you to do, even after completing the main questline. If you loved the off-beat humour, gross body horror and Rick and Morty style humour of the original game, you’ll hardly be making a mistake picking this mini-expansion up. It’s Knifey’s time to shine (or stab everyone)…or both.

The pace is pleasant and combat is certainly not the only thing that the colourful and at times truly breathtaking environment has to offer. Each of the six usable weapons not only has its own attack and special utilitarian ability, but also awesome voice acting, distorted personality and brilliantly wacky design. [Issue#325]

I didn’t really talk about the story on purpose, and that’s because its extremely short. While I enjoyed my time with High on Knife, that time is only a few hours to see the story and maybe one more to wrap up side quests and things. And as fun as the new pinball type B.A.L.L. gun is, I had hoped for something that would add a new weapon and a new personality to my arsenal. Alas, the BALL gun is worked by three chubby members of the blue man group and only ever talks in ‘meeps’ and ‘oops’. Again, gun is DOPE and adds a lot to the gameplay, just wish it was voiced like the others. The most damning thing here though is the narrative just abruptly ends. I don’t want to spoil it but while the developer’s kind of make a joke about the ending and how it just fades to black; the overall experience just left me with a lot of questions and an unsatisfied feeling in my stomach.

High on Knife is a decent add-on for those searching for an excuse to jump back into Squanch Games’ gross world of naughty words and cartoon violence, but it doesn’t offer a whole lot of reasons to stick around for more than a couple of hours. With a disappointingly short questline and an ill-advised focus on some of the weaker members of the High on Life cast, it doesn’t come close to reaching the same highs (pun intended) as it did last year. There are certainly some decent laughs to be had, and more of this shamelessly idiotic world is by no means a bad thing, but there just isn’t enough here for me to be able to enthusiastically recommend anyone clear even this small amount of time on their busy gaming schedule.

It's clear that the team can carry on without Roiland, and I'd like to see them tackle the old-school FPS genre again with all the tricks they've learned along the way.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I really enjoyed Knifey in High on Life but felt he was underutilized compared to the other characters, so I was excited to plunge into a DLC centred around the stab-happy little psychopath. While Knifey’s eventual chainsaw upgrade does add some interesting new traversal and puzzle mechanics (not to mention some gnarly, Gears of War-style melee kills), the real strength of High On Knife continues to be Squanch Games’ signature gross, irreverent humour and their celebrity voice cast’s excellent performances — I particularly liked Ken Marino as Gary the Managing Parasite. If I have one issue with this DLC, it’s that the first, open area of Peroxis doesn’t really serve much purpose other than as a giant racetrack and a place to look for collectibles; the story doesn’t really take advantage of it or give you much reason to explore, which is a shame because it looks great. Despite being fairly short, ultimately I think that most fans of High on Life’s humour will find High On Knife contains more than enough laughs and old ultraviolence to justify its low price of admission — especially with that Xbox Game Pass discount! Knifey!!

Not the same without morty voice dude, but still a nice DLC. Still funny and clever, and much more STABBY! I wasn't a fan of "grinding" along puss veins to move up and around walls LoL. But whatever, it's different. Different in a good way. As opposed to Alan Wake 2, that's different in a bad way.

Strengths Extremely strong identity Smooth traversal and movement Fun moment-to-moment shooting Excellent comedic delivery Memorable artistic direction Strong technical stability Distinct personality in a crowded genre Weaknesses Weak enemy variety Forgettable boss fights Limited combat depth Repetitive mission structure Most characters lack depth Low replayability To make it short: it's enjoyable, I can recommend it.

Was nice to play a little bit more, after the short main game, but it was okay, nothing special. The explorations are pain in the ass not worth doing them