What is missable in High on Life?

High on Life, Squanch Games' crazy sci-fi shooter, launched into Game Pass for Xbox and PC yesterday, but with a lot of missables, you'll be hard pressed to get everything done in one run unless you know what to look out for...

High on Life threw itself in amongst the best games on Game Pass when it launched yesterday, and while we make up our minds whether the comedy FPS has a place among them, it's likely many of you are already cracking on with the High on Life achievements. If you are, we just wanted to bring up the many missable things in the game to make that process as smooth as possible — we'll try to keep things as light on potential spoilers as possible, but some mentions will be hard to avoid, especially when dealing with specifics for individual achievements, so please bear that in mind!

Missable achievements in High on Life

The Fallout Doesn't Let You Do This achievement in High On Life worth 21 pointsKill Slumsley.

The very first missable achievement comes early in the game, when you are harassed by an annoying kid as you first make your way down into the Slums area. For this achievement, you have to kill him and be shamed by your gun for doing so — if you ignore him and move on, he will not respawn, making it impossible to unlock this without starting a second run. Killing him appears to have no major consequences.

The Don't Knife The Hand That Feeds achievement in High On Life worth 23 pointsTake Knifey's advice and stab Gene in the gut.

After recovering Knifey, you'll return home and your stabby new friend will be insistent that you stab Gene. That's what you need to do for this achievement, although the option will disappear after this first opportunity. Again, stabbing Gene appears to have no serious consequences.

The Gunning For Your Job achievement in High On Life worth 50 pointsUse Sweezy to boss around the Office Moplets.

This one's a little awkward as it involves selecting the second set of bounties (Krubis and Douglas) 'out of order.' You have to pick Douglas' bounty first, and completing that will unlock Sweezy as a new weapon. Then, when you play through Krubis' mission, you'll want to have Sweezy out when you select "I'm the new boss" in the office dialogue options with the receptionist, which will trigger a new event in place of the usual paperwork mini-game — one missable thing for another, then, but this way you get an achievement out of it (and avoid a few minutes of marking up documents).

The Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood achievement in High On Life worth 37 pointsPay your bill at Applebee's.

A little later into the game, you'll have to go and find your sister between bounties, which will lead to meeting Kenny at Space Applebee's. Before leaving the restaurant, be sure to check and interact with the bill on the table, as you'll be locked out of getting this later if you exit without first settling up your (thankfully minimal) bill.

The A Starfish is Born achievement in High On Life worth 163 pointsWatch Globo's rise to fame.

This one's even less obvious, and will take some time to play out after you set it in motion. The key step here is to find Globo in Blim City fairly early in the game and give him the drum you can buy from the pawn shop. Exact steps required beyond this point are unclear, but later in the game, you should be able to see Globo performing on the nearby TVs — watch this for a bit and the achievement should pop. Some folks have reported additional steps such as talking to the father, but these don't seem necessary and may simply speed up the process as others have reported simply seeing the performance later in the game having only given Globo the drum. We've heard mixed reports about Globo showing up later and haven't had confirmation of anyone fulfilling the requirements for this after beating the game yet, so while there's a chance this may not be 100% missable, it's probably best to treat it as such for now and hand over the instrument early just to be on the safe side.

The Secret Achievement achievement in High On Life worth 110 pointsContinue playing to unlock this secret achievement

During a late-game boss fight, Kenny will offer to sacrifice himself to help you win. All you have to do for this is to ignore him and instead sacrifice any other weapon. Don't worry, though — you don't actually lose whichever weapon you pick to sacrifice for good!

The Secret Achievement achievement in High On Life worth 54 pointsContinue playing to unlock this secret achievement

After unlocking the jetpack upgrade, Stan should appear in Blim City — he's a shifty-looking alien who will call you over as soon as you get anywhere near him so he's not exactly easy to miss. You might not want what he has to offer, but you'll need to accept his gross gift if you want this achievement, then finish the game with it in your possession. There's no way of losing it and it doesn't actually do anything as best we can tell, so as long as you grab it from Stan before beating the game, you should be all set.

Missable dialogue in High on Life

Oh jeez, where to start? High on Life is a game that loves the sound of its own voice(s), and even things as simple as which weapons you have out when interacting with folks can lead to new conversations. Most characters also have tons of additional dialogue that you can exhaust either by just hanging around them, or by repeatedly interacting with them when possible. It's safe to say that you'll probably never hear every line of dialogue in this game, and any attempt to do so would be a descent into madness.

Missable items and upgrades in High on Life

Since you can return to previous areas at will outside of missions, it doesn't appear that any of the collectables or upgrades in High on Life should be strictly missable, although it's worth noting that there are a few Luglox chests that don't appear on the radar like the others. However, we've encountered a few issues so far (more on these below) that have, for instance, made it impossible to interact with certain unique upgrades in stores outside of Blim City and more recently, completely broken the bounty hunter forums (locking us out of some potentially important rewards) so this might not be as clear cut as it seems. Getting all 27 collectable cards for the Playing Card to Get achievement in High on Life is seemingly one of just two things no-one on TA has managed at the time of writing (the other being completing the hunter forum, which is currently broken for some players), so with a few bits apparently still left to find, we may yet discover a missable or two in these collections — we'll drop an update in here as soon as we can confirm either way.

High on Life bugs and glitches

As mentioned above, High on Life is still suffering from some teething troubles having only launched yesterday — on top of our issue with the forum challenges (which we've seen affecting other players as well), a few more have suggested that something may have caused other collectable tracking to stop working correctly, potentially interfering with those achievements as well. Thankfully, the latest update fixed the jetpack tutorial glitch that would previously soft-lock the game if you didn't follow the given instructions, but it appears Squanch still has work to do with sorting other issues affecting the game... perhaps leaving those last couple of 0% unlocks in the balance until they are fixed, depending on how widespread the issues we're seeing actually are.

Anything to add to this list? Encountered any frustrating issues so far yourself, or has it been smooth sailing? Let us know!

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Written by Luke Albigés

Luke runs the TA news team, contributing where he can primarily with reviews and other long-form features — crafts he has honed across two decades of print and online gaming media experience, having worked with the likes of gamesTM, Eurogamer, Play, Retro Gamer, Edge, and many more. He loves all things Monster Hunter, enjoys a good D&D session, and has played way too much Destiny.