What happens when you take the over the top violence of Superjail, the heavy metal soundtrack of Metalocalypse, the sheer absurdity of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and the killer unicorns from the songs of Gloryhammer? You get Gori: Cuddly Carnage, a game I can only describe as an AdultSwim cartoon in video game format and I mean that in the best way possible as this game is insanely over the top and one of the most fun games I’ve played all year, though I do have some small gripes with it.
Let’s start with the few gripes I had, beginning with my biggest issue and that is that the camera is just a bit finicky. Due to its zoomed-in position, it’s sometimes hard to gauge where an enemy is before they hit you or if you’re going to fall off a stage, which happened to me more often than not. This is not helped by the fact that controlling the camera is a bit on the stiff side. Another issue I had were the various chase sequences in the game, where you glide like hell away from an oncoming threat, like in the sewers it’s green sewer water. On paper, they seemed fun and, in fact, I don’t usually mind these in games, but here it’s just a bit annoying due to both the camera and how easy it is to either misjudge your leap or waste a double-jump and you end up having to restart the chase from the beginning, which I ended up doing multiple times in the sewer section alone. Lastly, the game is somewhat buggy but not to the extent of game breaking or anything. Most of the bugs I encountered mostly involved an arena section not progressing after the last enemy was killed, which were easily fixed by restarting at a checkpoint and, thankfully, I only had this happen twice.
Truth be told, those negatives never really affected my enjoyment of Gori as I had a blast playing this game. It’s your somewhat basic hack-and-slash game, but with the twist being you’re an adorable cat riding a hoverboard and you’re killing various unicorn toys in brutal fashion on your quest to find and rescue your creator. ‘Brutal’ is probably the best way to describe the combat as, holy furballs, this game is gory, though not to the levels of Mortal Kombat, mind you, but just enough to warrant its M rating. This rings true with the humor and thank the felines it’s not the Rick & Morty style of humor many games try to emulate. No, this is humor on par with Suda51 games and films by James Gunn (which is funny cause they both worked together on Lollipop Chainsaw), complete with all the lovely swearing, especially once you upgrade your hoverboard to allow them to swear, and fun little pop-culture references. Some of the humor can be hit or miss, though, and I will admit a few jokes did fall flat, but the rest I was laughing hard at. I even got a chuckle about how, if you try to skip a crucial cutscene, the game will call you out for it, which I do admit I enjoy when games break the fourth wall in clever ways. I will say, though, that there are two characters I’m just not a fan of and do kinda drag the game down a bit whenever they’re on screen, the biggest offender being your ship’s on-board A.I CH1-P. The whole ‘I’m depressed’ style of humor just never sat well with me and, sorry to say, this rings true with CH1-P as I found myself getting annoyed every time he talked.
Graphically, this is a good looking game, though there are some rough patches here and there, especially regarding the chase scenes as the stuff chasing you looks just a tad bit last gen. Still, the rest of the game, like I said, looks good and I dug the variety of locals you visit, including one that gave me some memories of FreakZone from the arcade game CarnEvil, which I WISH we got a console port for as that game was fun. Gori, himself, is adorable (I mean, he’s a cat, of course he’s supposed to look cute) and I like how you can unlock new colors for both him and your psychotic hoverboard. That’s another thing I like about this game: The upgrade system is both simple and very easy. All you gotta do is just have enough coins, which you get plenty of in each level, and visit an upgrade station. Also throughout every level, you’ll find pieces of a key, which are easy to find as you just need to listen for a PSPS and a very ASMR voice calling to you, which is then used to unlock one of eight doors on your ship and, behind each door, is a room not only themed to the level you were just on, but they include a new outfit for Gori to wear.
You’ll definitely need the damage and health upgrades as both the enemies and bosses do get progressively harder as the game progresses but not to Dark Souls levels of hardness, thank goodness. Starting with the enemies, you begin by facing simple unicorns but later fight bigger ones, ones who can fly, ones with shields, and ones that can explode once they’ve taken enough damage. While you can just simply mash the main attack button to take them out, the game actively encourages you to mix it up with other moves in order to lay waste to the unicorn menace. See a unicorn with a bubble shield? Use your strongest attack to break it. See a small group approaching you? Hold down the attack button and you can do a super version of that attack and turn them into blood puddings. See flying enemies? Lock on with your board’s missiles and let loose the hounds of war on them. However, in-order to do the heavier attacks, you need fuel and, thankfully, this is super easy to obtain: All you gotta do is grind the rails or billboards and keep killing and you’ll get fuel back. This rings true with regaining health as well and I dig this. It’s kinda like the recent DOOM games in a way, meaning as long as you’re ripping and tearing, you are basically the unkillable soldier. All this killing, too, ties into the ranking system, with the highest being PPP (hehe), which I was able to pull off multiple times thanks to the multitude of enemies. Same goes with the bosses and these are beautifully designed, with the first boss looking like he came right out of that Demonic Toys movie or, if you want to use a better known horror movie, Krampus. The only boss I didn’t personally enjoy fighting was the ladybug boss, mostly due to the first phase and how easy it was to die on it. Lastly, the music kicked all kinds of tail, with that title screen alone being so earwormy and catchy to the point where I was humming it throughout the week.
It’s funny, I remember playing the demo for ‘Gori: Cuddly Carnage’ and not being impressed at all with it, yet the full game was some of the most fun I ever had. Which is surprising as, usually, it’s the opposite where I had more fun with the demo then I did with the full game (cough Vanquish cough). Goes to show one should never judge a book by its cover, huh? Anyway, Gori: Cuddly Carnage, despite a few minor issues I had, is truly the cat’s meow and one I see myself returning to whenever I want to inflict gori carnage on cuddly animals.
