If High On Life's talking guns, bright alien worlds, filthy jokes, and fast first-person combat are still living rent-free in your head, start with Sunset Overdrive for movement, Borderlands 3 for loot, and Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition for pure gunplay. Those are the three closest matches, while Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Void Bastards, and The Outer Worlds cover the same irreverent, colorful, science-fiction itch from different angles.
High On Life is an unusual target. Its combat is not as mechanically demanding as Doom Eternal, its role-playing systems are lighter than The Outer Worlds, and its comedy is far more aggressive than most shooters. The games below are ranked by the things that actually make Justin Roiland's shooter click: weapon personality, vertical movement, enemy variety, exploration rewards, comic timing, and how quickly the action gets back on its feet.
Before you jump in, check the official High On Life Steam page if you want to revisit the original PC requirements and feature list. This isn't a list of games that merely contain aliens and guns. It's a shortlist for players who want that same sense of ridiculous momentum in 2026.
The best games like High On Life ranked
There isn't one perfect replacement because High On Life blends several genres at once. Its talking weapons give every firearm a character, its bounty-hunting structure keeps objectives readable, and its upgrade economy rewards poking around rather than rushing straight to the next boss.
| Rank | Game | Closest High On Life match | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| S-Tier | Sunset Overdrive | Fast traversal, loud humor, colorful sci-fi | Players who loved bouncing through alien spaces |
| S-Tier | Borderlands 3 | Weapon variety, banter, loot-driven shooting | Players who want a longer campaign |
| S-Tier | Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition | Creative kills and outrageous combat | Players who value gunplay over exploration |
| A-Tier | Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart | Inventive weapons and animated sci-fi worlds | Players chasing polished spectacle |
| A-Tier | Void Bastards | Strange weapons, dark comedy, alien threats | Players who like tactical decision-making |
| A-Tier | The Outer Worlds | Satirical space writing and branching quests | Players who want more role-playing |
Sunset Overdrive takes the S-Tier spot because it captures High On Life's most overlooked strength: motion. Grinding power lines, bouncing off cars, wall-running, and chaining aerial tricks lets you cross Sunset City without ever settling into a predictable strafe-and-shoot rhythm. Its guns are absurd, its color palette is aggressively cheerful, and its jokes land with the same knowingly stupid energy.
Borderlands 3 is the better recommendation if the weapons were your favorite characters. Its four Vault Hunters have meaningfully different skill trees, and the arsenal produces far more build variation than High On Life's fixed loadout. Bulletstorm wins for immediate impact. The Skillshot system turns kicking, sliding, and firing into a playground, though its 2011-era campaign structure feels more linear.
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View on Steammoz Store →Sunset Overdrive is the closest overall match
Sunset Overdrive is the one to install first. Developed by Insomniac Games, it replaces traditional cover shooting with a rule that sounds simple but changes everything: staying mobile keeps you alive. The PC version includes the base campaign and the Mystery of Mooil Rig and Downs of the Awesomepocalypse expansions, giving you a substantial open-world comedy shooter with a sharper traversal loop than High On Life.
The core movement kit is built around grinding, bouncing, wall-running, and aerial dodging. You don't sprint toward a battlefield and stop; you ricochet through it. The game's Overdrive meter rewards stylish aggression, while Amps modify your character and weapons with effects such as elemental damage, melee bonuses, or extra damage after a traversal move. That makes movement more than a defensive trick. It is part of your damage rotation.
For a reliable early setup, pair a weapon such as the Dirty Harry pistol with the TNTeddy or Proximity Mine to control clusters, then use bounce objects to stay above the crowd. The Flaming Compensator and Fizzie weapons are particularly good when enemies surround you, because their area damage punishes the ground-level mobs that make traversal difficult.
The difference between Sunset Overdrive and High On Life is pacing. Sunset Overdrive throws more enemies at you and expects you to read the environment constantly. There are no long stretches of walking through a hub waiting for dialogue to finish. If High On Life's funniest moments came between fights, Sunset Overdrive's joke is the fight itself: every encounter asks how stylishly you can avoid touching the floor.
Its main weakness in 2026 is age. Character animations and facial presentation are less polished than modern releases, and the PC port has limited graphics options. Still, a stable 60 frames per second matters more here than ray-traced lighting. The game feels excellent at high refresh rates because the traversal chain responds immediately to each jump, grind, and dodge.
Borderlands 3 has the best arsenal
Choose Borderlands 3 if you want High On Life's talking-weapon idea expanded into a full loot shooter. The guns don't literally hold conversations with you, but their manufacturers, firing modes, elemental effects, and bizarre reload animations create a much broader personality system. Tediore weapons, for example, can be thrown after reloading and transform into grenades, turrets, or chasing explosives.
The four Vault Hunters create four distinct ways to approach the campaign. Amara is the closest fit for an aggressive run-and-gun player: her Phasegrasp can lock down a target while her elemental action skills amplify close-range damage. Moze brings Iron Bear and works brilliantly for players who want a panic button during hectic fights. Zane can deploy a Digi-Clone and Barrier, while FL4K combines stealth, critical hits, and pet support.
Borderlands 3's combat feels best when you stop treating every gun as a permanent upgrade. Weapon level and manufacturer bonuses matter, so a favorite pistol can fall behind after only a few story missions. Keep a Cryo weapon for slowing flesh targets, an Incendiary weapon for unarmored enemies, and Shock damage for shields. Corrosive damage is especially useful against armored targets, while Radiation spreads explosions and damage-over-time effects between nearby enemies.
| Combat need | Recommended tool | Why it works | High On Life connection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shields | Shock weapon | Deals strong bonus damage to blue shield bars | Fast elemental swapping |
| Armor | Corrosive weapon | Efficient against yellow armor bars | Clear target-based weapon choice |
| Enemy groups | Radiation or Tediore thrower | Spreads damage or creates explosive pressure | Chaotic crowd control |
| Boss survival | Moze Iron Bear or Zane Barrier | Provides emergency damage and protection | Ability-driven recovery tools |
The campaign is much longer than High On Life, but it also has more downtime and a louder, less consistent script. Some players will find the Calypso Twins less charming than Gene or Gus. The reward is mechanical depth: skill trees, class mods, Guardian Rank progression, Mayhem levels, and millions of possible weapon rolls. Start with Borderlands 3 on Steam if replayability matters more to you than a tightly paced story.
For performance, disable volumetric fog before lowering texture quality. Borderlands 3 is often GPU-limited at higher resolutions, but medium textures can look noticeably soft. On a modern midrange PC, a high preset with volumetric fog reduced and screen-space reflections lowered is a sensible 1080p starting point.
Bulletstorm still owns outrageous FPS combat
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition is the purest pick for anyone who remembers High On Life's combat more vividly than its dialogue. Its defining mechanic is the Skillshot system, which awards points for creative kills. You can kick an enemy into an electric wire, leash a target out of cover, slide under a heavy, or send a group into the air before detonating them with a charged shot.
Your basic tools are deliberately complementary. The leash pulls enemies or objects toward you, the kick launches targets, and the slide lets you reposition through dangerous spaces. The Peacemaker Carbine is your dependable rifle, while the Flailgun wraps enemies in explosive chains. The Bouncer fires a cannonball that can bounce targets around the arena, and the Penetrator impales enemies to surfaces. Every weapon asks you to think about the room, not just the health bar.
That makes Bulletstorm's combat loop more expressive than High On Life's. Kenny, Gus, Sweezy, and Creature each have distinct functions, but Bulletstorm's tools interact with geometry and enemy positioning more dramatically. If a fight feels difficult, the answer is usually not a better weapon. Look for a ledge, explosive barrel, fan, electrified surface, or gravity opportunity.
The Full Clip Edition runs at a target 60 frames per second on modern hardware and includes the Overkill campaign mode, which unlocks the full arsenal from the start. Play the normal campaign first if you want the intended weapon progression; Overkill is better for replaying encounters and chasing high Skillshot scores. You can also explore the separate Echoes mode for score-focused combat challenges.
Bulletstorm is linear, short, and occasionally crude even by High On Life standards. That's also why it works. It never asks you to spend twenty minutes searching a hub for a collectible before giving you another fight. Visit the official Bulletstorm Steam listing if you want the most direct route to inventive first-person shooting.
Ratchet & Clank is the polished family-friendly alternative
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a terrific substitute if what you really want is an imaginative arsenal and a constant stream of colorful science-fiction set pieces. It is less vulgar than High On Life, but its weapon design is just as playful. The Topiary Sprinkler turns enemies into shrubs, the Ricochet bounces between targets, and the Negatron Collider rewards lining up enemies before releasing a powerful beam.
Ratchet's weapons also use a clean upgrade economy. Spend Raritanium on weapon nodes to improve damage, ammo, radius, or special effects. Surrounding the gold upgrade nodes unlocks stronger bonuses, so the best approach isn't blindly buying the first damage square. Upgrade the weapons you use for different ranges: the Enforcer for close quarters, the Blast Pistol for accurate shots, the Shatterbomb for groups, and the Blackhole Storm when you need sustained automatic fire.
The campaign alternates between Ratchet and Rivet, with both characters sharing the same weapon inventory. Rift Tethers let you pull yourself across gaps instantly, while dimensional rifts create short bursts of arena repositioning. These systems aren't as freeform as Sunset Overdrive's traversal, but they make encounters feel carefully choreographed and visually spectacular.
The PC version supports ultrawide displays, unlocked frame rates, ray-traced reflections, DirectStorage, and several upscaling options depending on your hardware. For 60 fps at 1440p, start with high textures, ray tracing off, ambient occlusion on, and a balanced upscaler. The visual gain from ray-traced reflections is real, but the frame-time cost is hard to justify if you care about responsive weapon swapping.
Read our PC settings advice for smoother FPS before tuning a weaker system, especially if shader compilation stutter bothers you. Rift Apart is the most technically demanding game here, but it also has the cleanest presentation and the best-feeling checkpointing.
Void Bastards and The Outer Worlds reward curious players
Void Bastards is the sleeper pick. It looks like a comic book, sounds like a dark workplace comedy, and plays like a tactical first-person roguelite. You command prisoners from the Ark, board derelict ships, scavenge resources, and decide whether to fight, sneak, or leave before the ship's hazards overwhelm you.
Every vessel has a map of connected rooms. Oxygen shortages, security drones, fire, radiation, and automated turrets turn navigation into a risk calculation. The Spiker is useful for accurate ranged damage, the Clusterflak clears groups, and the Ripper handles close encounters. You also manage resources such as fuel, food, and warp cells, so grabbing one more upgrade can expose you to a fight you can't afford.
It lacks High On Life's open hubs and cinematic boss encounters, but it shares the pleasure of discovering a weird tool and immediately imagining a better use for it. The procedural structure also makes each run feel less rehearsed. If you enjoy planning your route before the shooting starts, Void Bastards is a better match than another straightforward campaign.
The Outer Worlds is the answer for players who loved the satirical space writing and wanted more consequences from their dialogue choices. Its skill system divides points among attributes such as Intelligence, Perception, and Temperament, then lets you specialize in dialogue, stealth, science, engineering, or weapon types. The result is a slower RPG, but quest solutions can change depending on who you recruit and how you build your character.
Companions including Parvati Holcomb, Vicar Max, and Ellie Fenhill add personal quests and combat perks. The tactical time dilation system briefly slows the action and highlights body parts, letting you target an enemy's weapon arm or head. It isn't as frantic as High On Life, yet it gives your decisions more weight than simply buying the next damage upgrade.
For another recommendation built around exploration and hidden rewards, see Steamoz's guide to secret locations and hidden rewards. The same habit applies here: check side rooms, read terminals, and talk to every companion before leaving a settlement.
Which High On Life alternative should you play first?
Pick based on the specific part of High On Life you want to preserve. Sunset Overdrive is the closest overall match and the best first download. Borderlands 3 is the right choice for a huge arsenal, co-op, and long-term builds. Bulletstorm wins if combat creativity matters more than exploration. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart offers the most polished presentation, while Void Bastards is the smartest option for players who enjoy resource pressure.
| If you want... | Play this | Why | Expected commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| The closest overall vibe | Sunset Overdrive | Movement, jokes, colorful open-world combat | 20-25 hours |
| More loot and build depth | Borderlands 3 | Four classes, elemental weapons, endgame systems | 30-60+ hours |
| Constant combat invention | Bulletstorm | Leash, kick, weapons, and Skillshot scoring | 8-12 hours |
| Premium visual spectacle | Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart | Rifts, cinematic levels, inventive weapons | 12-18 hours |
| Tactical replayability | Void Bastards | Procedural ships and resource management | 15-30 hours |
| Deeper role-playing | The Outer Worlds | Dialogue checks, companions, branching quests | 25-40 hours |
My 2026 play order is simple: start with Sunset Overdrive, move to Bulletstorm if you want a shorter adrenaline hit, then commit to Borderlands 3 when you're ready for a sprawling loot campaign. Keep Rift Apart installed for a polished weekend adventure, and save Void Bastards or The Outer Worlds for the moment you want more planning between firefights.
High On Life works because it never takes its bizarre universe too seriously, but its real appeal is the constant handoff between exploration, banter, upgrades, and shooting. These six games understand at least one of those ingredients exceptionally well. That makes them better follow-ups than any generic sci-fi FPS, and they remain strong picks for a 2026 backlog.
If performance problems get in the way of your next shooter, Steamoz also has guides for PC crashes and low FPS and maximum-FPS settings. Get the frame time stable, turn up the volume, and let the weird weapons do the talking.