Justin Roiland and Squanch Games’s High on Life has reached the ranking of top four most played games on Xbox,according to a Sunday reportfrom Twitter user Benji-Sales. Having released just five days ago on December 13, this performance puts the game ahead of even well-known, popular free-to-play titles like Apex Legends, Roblox, and Overwatch 2.It’s a distinguishing achievement for High on Life at this early stage in its life cycle. Having just released, the game has already been listed as atop seller on Steamfor this week, coming in at number two behind the Steam Deck itself. SteamDB even shows the game ahead ofCall of Duty: Modern Warfare II, thoughSteam’s own sales chartsdo not yet seem to have updated to reflect that ranking. All this is in spite of High on Life being offered on Microsoft’s PC Game Pass subscription service, equivalent to the Xbox Game Pass service wherein the game achieved that top-four ranking on the console.RELATED:High On Life Creator Says AI Was Used To Create In-Game Art And VoicesHigh on Life’s performance is also notable as demonstrating the gulf between critical and audience reception. The game currently sits at aMetacritic average of 67based on 17 Critic Reviews, but has a User Score of 7.7, powered by generally favorable ratings. It’s almost certainly indicative of the hit-or-miss appeal of Roiland’s humor baked into the game, akin to the creator’s still-popular, but arguably overexposed,Rick and MortyTV series, which has continued to draw impressive ratings now into its sixth season.
That power of Roiland’s name and influential humor that permeates High on Life is likely a large part of its early rise to success. Given the aforementioned popularity of Rick and Morty, it makes sense that Xbox users would flock to what can effectively be seen as a video game equivalent of that series. That’s resulted in this strong start for what is technically a smaller developer and its title, to beat out these bigger, more established franchises. Whether the trend will continue for High on Life as its run goes on, or if its player base will level off once gamers have completed the game (seeing as the campaign is a single-player story with no multiplayer) will remain to be seen.
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