I hear you, out there in the blogosphere.

“So you’ve played High On Life – why are you giving us a First Impressions rather than playing through more and giving us a review?”

Here’s why: I absolutely hate High On Life.

Though it starts out with what could have been a clever satire of Duke Nukem style classic gaming and toxic masculinity, even the characters in that retro spoof just refuse to shut up.

And the writers clearly haven’t met any jokes they couldn’t run into the ground; the incessant, puerile, unfunny script is just relentless and – in an almost impressive way – completely devoid of laughs.

I’m more than willing to accept that this is just because High On Life’s profanity-laden, narcotics-obsessed gags just aren’t my bag. I’ve seen enough people posting clips and comments on social media that refer to the game as hilarious that I’m willing to concede that I just might be a grumpy old bastard – but then the unceasing, unfunny humour is far from the only issue the game has.

It also goes to great pains to point out the problems with the game design and limitations, while not bothering to do anything that pushes it beyond those boundaries. So it draws attention to its own flaws in an attempt at humour and self-referencing, but still ends up exhibiting those exact issues anyway… which seems kind of self-defeating.

It does have a really cool art style, but that’s about the only positive I’ve found. The idea of talking weapons is a good one, but again the dreadful writing and irritating voice acting just scuppers the promise of the concept.

Anyway, I won’t be playing any more of High On Life. It’s utterly appalling unless you’re in the mood for Justin Roland toilet humour and flat attempts at meta jokes.