Squanch Games has just released High On Life 2 on all platforms. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.
For our benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 591.86, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 26.2.1 drivers.
High On Life 2 does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, I used the starting area of the first main mission. This area has a lot of NPCs, so it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of it runs.
Squanch Games has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Textures, View Distance, Shadows, and more. The game also supports NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Gen, and AMD FSR 4.0. However, there is no support for Intel XeSS 2.0.
High On Life 2 is a GPU-bound title. Even at 1080p/Very High, our NVIDIA RTX 5090 was used to its fullest. This means that most of you will be bottlenecked by your GPU, and not by your CPU. From what I could see, the game uses 3-4 CPU cores/threads.
Our top five GPUs were able to push framerates over 60FPS at 1080p/Very High. The AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX was slightly faster than the RX 9070XT. The AMD Radeon RX 6900XT was able to beat the NVIDIA RTX 3080. Finally, the NVIDIA RTX 5080 was faster than both the AMD RX 9070XT and the RX 7900XTX.
At 1440p/Very High, the AMD Radeon RX 9070XT could drop below 60FPS. Still, those with a FreeSync monitor will be able to get a smooth gaming experience. The other NVIDIA and AMD GPUs were able to push 60FPS (I’m not obviously talking about the GPUs that are weaker than the RX 9070XT, duh).
As for Native 4K/Very High, the NVIDIA RTX 5090 was able to provide a 60FPS experience. That’s with both Nanite, Lumen, and Virtual Maps. So, this is a UE5 game that can run with 60FPS at Native 4K on the NVIDIA RTX 5090.
It’s also worth noting that the game can scale well via its in-game graphics settings. By dropping our settings to High, we were able to boost our performance by 15%. Medium Settings brought an additional performance increase of 33%. Then, with Low Settings, we got a 10-15% boost.
Graphics-wise, High On Life 2 looks great. Its biggest feature is its lighting. There are scenes and areas that will make your jaw drop. I honestly wasn’t expecting the game to look this good. Sadly, there are also areas in which the lighting is not THAT impressive. There are some shadow and lighting pop-ins here and there. Thankfully, though, there aren’t any major object pop-in issues (as the game uses Nanite). The alien models also look amazing. However, the human characters do not look that good (especially their hair looks kind of meh).
Before closing, I should note that the game does not suffer from shader compilation stutters. However, it does have traversal stutters. These stutters are not as bad as those we saw in Oblivion Remastered. Still, those who are sensitive to them will immediately notice them. I also experienced some crashing issues. From what I saw on the Steam forums, I wasn’t the only one who had them. So, here is hoping that the devs will address them via an update.
All in all, High On Life 2 runs better than a lot of Unreal Engine 5 titles. It does not require a high-end GPU at 1080p or 1440p, and it can scale well with its in-game graphics. It also supports both NVIDIA DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 4.0, which you can use to further boost your performance. At times, it can also look gorgeous. Its only downside is its traversal stutters (and its crashes). Overall, though, this was a pleasant surprise as I wasn’t expecting much from it!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
