Parents' Guide to High on Life

Though it's very cartoony, silly, and full of mature content, this sci-fi first-person shooter is also exciting, challenging, and engaging. In High on Life, you have to work as a bounty hunter on an alien world so that you can become proficient enough with firearms, and get more guns to rid Earth of the alien invaders who want to turn humans into drugs. So you run around, getting into fire fights with all manner of crazy aliens, while exploring and navigating some elaborate, layered, and hazardous locations. What really gives this game its personality is that it's made by Squanch Games, the studio co-founded by Rick & Morty co-creator and voice actor Justin Roiland. That's why the game has a similar mix of clever and scatological humor, which comes courtesy of your weapons ... which talk. A lot. And are also rather odd, but effective. Gus, for instance, is a shotgun that can suck enemies toward you or shoot giant metal discs at them, while Kenny, who sounds like Morty, is a pistol that can shoot explosive globs.

Admittedly, people who hate Rick & Morty -- or Roiland's other sci-fi sitcom cartoon, Solar Opposites -- will quickly get annoyed with this game's goofiness and naughty nature, even if they go into the options menu and tell the guns to keep it down. It has the same filthy sense of humor as those shows, with characters cursing nonstop, or you having to do rude things best left to your imagination (or your proctologist). It's also not for people looking for a serious shooter like Call of Duty. But if you love, like, or just appreciate this humor and you want a shooter that's challenging but not super serious, this game scratches that itch in the same way as the Ratchet & Clank games. That's why you also do a lot of jumping, climbing, and sliding on zip lines when not using offbeat guns to kill even odder aliens. All of which makes High on Life as clever and effortlessly fun as, well, the best episodes of Rick & Morty.