I like annoying-sounding things, like feedback loops on Discord calls, un-WD-40’d door hinges, and small dogs who are losing their shit over the existence of reality. But not everyone likes to be annoyed while playing video games, and that’s why the developers for recently-released first-person-shooter High on Life just issued a patch to deal with one of its more divisive elements: talking guns that just won’t quit it.
High on Life, a Metroidvania first-person shooter that was described in our review as “this fucking talking gun game,” released yesterday on PC and Xbox. Generally it seems to be a fun game to play, but not one to listen to. The game comes from the mind of Justin Roiland, co-creator of Rick and Morty. Perhaps that’s all you need to know. But if not, know that High on Life is a very vibrant, cartoonishly silly first-person shooter where your gun, who has a mouth and eyes that face you during gameplay, will say things like “welcome to fucking space!”
It’s on brand for this kind of Adult Swim-style humor. But when it arrives in a video game form, where you’ll spend multiple hours at a time playing as opposed to a 30-minute silly cartoon, the constant chatter is sure to get annoying. It seems that the developer, Squanch Games, is aware of that and has thus issued an update to give players more control over how frequent the guns talk.
As you can see, these patch notes look very much like what you’d expect from a game these days: A chunk of digital nips and tucks to address outstanding bugs, improve quality of life features, and tune up certain gameplay mechanics. That includes, in this case, the 11th item (as if it were buried to say, “yeah, we know it’s annoying”) under the Content Updates section that reads out “improved player control over gun and enemy combat chatter within the settings menu.”
As observed by GamesRadar, High on Life isn’t the only game to get a feature like this. Forspoken, which is playable as a demo on the PlayStation 5, also has a talking inanimate object: a seemingly sentient bracelet. Like High on Life’s guns, it too has gotten under enough nerves to earn an option to adjust how frequently the thing spouts random dialogue at you.
Chatter and annoying voices can sour an otherwise pleasant game, though often this kind of thing won’t be pervasive throughout a game. The ability to adjust such features is certainly appreciated and allows more room for experimental, quirky choices like talking guns or bracelets; I’m all for giving people the choice of how they want to tailor, or hear a game. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play some Gex.