High on Life Story Recap: Everything You Need Before Playing the Sequel

The only thing worse than a hostile alien invasion is finding out that you are the galaxy’s favorite party drug.

It is a hell of a wake-up call. One minute you are a jobless teenager playing video games in your room, and the next, a slimy alien cartel called the G3 has turned your suburb into a dispensary. That is the opening pitch of High on Life. Now that the sequel is finally out, I know for a fact you don't remember the finer details of the first game. You probably just remember the swearing guns and the bright colors.

I played through the headache-inducing chaos so you don't have to replay it. Here is exactly what happened to the Earth, the guns, and that purple alien with the drill for a head.

The Setup: Humanity is the New Meth

The game kicks off when the G3 Cartel, led by a massive slug-monster named Garmantuous, invades Earth. It turns out that smoking humans gets aliens incredibly high. We are a "hyper-bong" or something similar.

You team up with Kenny, a Gatlian. Gatlians are a race of sentient, talking guns from the planet Gatlus. Kenny is neurotic, loud, and can turn his own offspring into bullets. With his help, you warp your entire house (and your sister, Lizzie) to Blim City. This is a hub world on a different planet where you meet Gene Zaroothian.

Gene is a washed-up bounty hunter who sleeps on your couch, watches alien TV, and is generally a useless mooch. He gives you his old bounty hunting suit and sets you up with a machine called the Bounty-5000. The loop is established. You kill G3 bosses to save humanity while Gene insults you from the living room.

The Hit List

To get to Garmantuous, you have to dismantle his organization. This involves murdering a series of increasingly incompetent mid-level managers.

First up was 9-Torg. She ran the slums of Blim City. This was your tutorial boss. You kill her, get her knife (named Knifey, because creativity is dead), and Knifey immediately wants to stab everything. He is the most relatable character in the game.

Then you went after Krubis and Douglas. Krubis was a drill-headed guy running a mining operation for Furgles (another drug). Douglas was a weird octopus creature who ran the torture and training department. Both were terrible at their jobs. The important takeaway here is that you acquired Gus (a shotgun) and Sweezy (a needler similar to the one in Halo).

The plot thickens with Dr. Giblets. He was the mad scientist researching how to synthesize the human high. When you finally track him down to his lab, you don't even fight him. You startle him, he falls off his chair, and dies. It is stupid, but I laughed.

The "Emotional" Twist

Somewhere between turning aliens into paste and listening to your sister date a weird alien named Tweeg, the game tries to have feelings.

You go to Space Applebee’s. Yes, really. Kenny confesses that he is the reason his home planet, Gatlus, was destroyed. He sold out his own people to the G3 Cartel hoping to get rich, but the G3 just enslaved them all instead. He has been carrying this guilt the whole time. It is a surprisingly heavy beat for a game that features a gun that shoots sperm, but it explains why Kenny is so desperate to help you save Earth.

Meanwhile, your sister Lizzie gets kidnapped by her boyfriend Tweeg, who reveals he is actually a G3 double agent. Because of course he is.

The Final Stretch

You rescue the remaining Gatlians, including Creature (who shoots his own babies) and Lezduit (who is brain-damaged but powerful). You assault the G3 headquarters to save Lizzie and stop the operation.

This leads to the fight with Nipulon, the G3’s drug kingpin. He drugs you, forcing you into a hallucination sequence that drags on a bit too long. Once you snap out of it and kill him, the path to the big cheese is open.

You return to Earth, which is currently being harvested. You confront Garmantuous. He is wearing a mech suit and is generally unpleasant. After you beat him down, the game presents you with a "choice." You have to stick one of your guns up Garmantuous’s ass to detonate a bomb inside him.

The game acts like the gun will die. I chose Kenny to complete his redemption arc. He goes in, the bomb explodes, Garmantuous dies, and the G3 Cartel is broken. And then... Kenny just flies out, completely fine. No consequences. Classic video game logic.

The Sequel Bait (Don't Miss This)

You might have turned the game off after the credits, but the most important part for High on Life 2 is the secret ending.

Throughout the game, you were helped by Magistrate Clugg, the mayor of Blim City. He claimed he was sheltering rescued humans in a "Human Haven." If you used the jetpack to sneak into the upper levels of the Haven, you found out the truth.

Clugg wasn't saving humans. He was feeding them to a secret villain named Dr. Gurgula.

Dr. Gurgula is the one who actually destroyed Kenny’s planet. He kills Clugg to tie up loose ends and escapes, vowing to continue his research on human DNA. The G3 Cartel was just a symptom. Gurgula is the disease.

So, as you start the sequel, remember this: The Cartel is gone, your sister is traumatized, Gene is probably still on your couch, and there is a mad scientist out there who wants to turn your species into a science experiment.

Good luck. You are going to need it.