I Got High and Schwifty Inside 'Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality' for 4/20

Adult Swim and Job Simulator developer Owlchemy Labs today released Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-Ality, a virtual reality game based on the popular animated show Rick and Morty. Today is also the blessed marijuana holiday 4/20, so I did what they probably expected me to do, which is smoke a ton of weed before I tried this VR adventure for the first time. I thought it'd be a good gag, but it turned out to be a surreal and profound adventure.

I don't have a VR headset at home, so I headed to WME, one of Hollywood's biggest broadcasting and talent agency, to use its spare HTC Vive room before the game's 4/20 release. When I arrived, I find a way to slyly (windows up, seat pushed all the way down) partake in my two medical-grade smoking technologies of choice: the DomPen Disposable pen stacked with a California Citrust strain and a poorly rolled joint with White OG Kush described as "a good choice for social and creative activities."

My shit's already way too lit after I manage to jump through all the necessary hoops to get to the 5th floor of one of WME's many identical-looking buildings. I'm half an hour late to my appointment, naturally. In my fragile mental state, I'm starting to panic, and welcome WME's VR representative's overwhelmingly accommodating attitude as he gets me situated. I stumble through the setup process with an unnecessary amount of giggling and let out an entirely unironic "whoa" when I strap on the headset.

I'm dropped into the animated show's living room, a TV in front of me displaying a Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-Ality logo. After wasting about four minutes individually picking up, staring at, and unceremoniously throwing away each useless item around the TV in search of how to even start the game, my gentle, non-judgmental tour guide suggests I look to the CDs on my left. It takes me another two minutes to realize I must physically remove the CD with my floating Vive hands, plug it into the console, and press its big obvious play button to get things going. I then arrive in Rick's legendary garage, greeted by the titular crew's onslaught of insults, which inform me that I am a barely functional, idiotic Morty clone. Gaping at my floating hands, I wholeheartedly believe in this premise.

The incredible achievement of Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-Ality is how it fits seamlessly between mediums where just about every other property's attempt to do the same failed miserably. The VR game stays true to the personality of the TV show, while simultaneously adding some of the most incisive commentary on gaming through its premises. Amazingly, it also finds the time to invent some sorely-needed VR techniques for telling a story in the language inherent to that medium. Granted, Rick and Morty's success at this point isn't surprising, considering the show's reputation for being a gaming and technology-literate piece of entertainment. But this is a whole other beast, with some of the most nuanced takes on tech and its societal effects, in between jokes about Ass Universes and the tragic tale of Mr. Poopy Butthole.

At the heart of Owlchemy's uniquely form-fitting approach to VR is its total embrace rather than avoidance of the nascent medium's limitations. In-game, I am a rudimentary Morty clone with iffy intelligence and motor skills. IRL, I'm a stoned-out VR noob trying to acclimate to the basics of moving in my new, disembodied VR body. It's a good match.

At one point, my point-and-click adventure instincts took over when I had to care for my alien jellyfish baby I hatched by throwing its egg into the dryer. Tasked with entertaining and taking care of said jellyfish alien baby, I followed it from area to area as it asked for things like fruit, video games, and a laxative, which I inserted right up its gelatinous…. butthole? Mouth? I'm high for sure, but the game is actually this weird.

As I stumble my way through more of Rick's bizarre tasks as his discardable clone, I realize the game solves one of gaming's most inexplicable conventions: If the player is always supposed to be the most powerful hero in the virtual world, why are they always saddled with running everyone else's errands? Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-Ality answers this by assuring me that my only purpose in this virtual world is to be an expendable errand boy of minimal competence. The game also addresses another narrative problem games never address: multiple lives. When I die, Virtual Rick-Ality's game over screen dropped me into clone purgatory and asked me to the talk to devil's supposed assistant on a phone in order to get back in the game as a new Morty clone.

The patience of my WME guide in the real reality is unwavering as I continue my tirade across every area, throwing around all the shit I can get my hands on like a three-year-old having a virtual tantrum. In the spirit of meta narratives, I ingest every kind of alcohol, drug, pill, or unknown substance I come across—from chugging Rick's infamous flask, to the "enhancement pills" that make my hands get all big and veiny, to some sort of pipe cleaning fluid under the kitchen sink that makes me puke. Eventually, though, my WME guide leaves me to my own devices for three whole hours. I can't vouch for how far I made it through the game. The weed certainly didn't help my speediness, as I at one point found myself wrestling with the HTC Vive menu screen for several minutes, clicking every wrong button before finally inexplicably jumping back into the game.

Rick and Morty Virtual Rick-Ality is much bigger than the sum of its individual parts, rising above mere than satire, parody, media crossover, or any medium-specific conventions, to instead say something with a piece of technology that desperately needed to be said. In the same way the animated show questioned the conventions of animated shows, Rick and Morty Virtual Rick-Ality masters the art of discomfort inherent to its medium. At the risk of overstating things, the game's never-ending layers of multiverses, virtual realities, and insistence on my insignificance in the grander scheme of things—well, it feels like the voice of an entire generation adrift and questioning their place in this unreal, broken world.

Then again, I was really high.