Gori: Cuddly Carnage is A-Meow-Zing
If you haven't gotten to it, you must.
Have you ever wanted to play a game where you are an adorable cat flying around on a sentient Hoverboard that has blades on it and helps you destroy enemies in DMC like combat and with constant witty dialogue and cursing? No? What's wrong with you. Gori: Cuddly Carnage is this and so much more. It came out last year in August and I only heard about it because of Steph Sterling and their love for it. I bought it during the Steam Winter Sale and I am so glad that I did. After the frustrating, but fun, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and the trauma filled 1000xResist, a good Hack and Slash game with a strange theme was what I needed so I didn't get burnt out since I play a new game every week or two for this blog.
Gori is the third game from developer Angry Demon Studio, both of their prior ones were horror games and I am NOT a horror game person. I get scared very easily. I've played a few, a couple Resident Evil games (will be playing and reviewing more) and the original Outlast for a YouTube channel back when I was 20, but I'm still not a fan of them. It's just not my thing. Gori has horror parts, including terrifying Dolls and clowns, but I would say it is not a Horror game. You can definitely see the Horror DNA from the Devs prior games particularly with the design of the enemies, especially the Bosses. Thankfully though it's much easier to deal with for someone that gets scared easily. You can also very clearly see the DNA of DMC like games, but there's also DNA from platformers, especially Ratchet and Clank, and even clever shooters like Shadow Warrior or Sunset Overdrive. It's a very interesting mix with an intriguing design that just makes you want to experience it the moment you start it up. So with that, let's get going.
The Premise
Gori: Cuddly Carnage is a game where you play Gori, an adorably Cuddly kitty that you get to customize the fur and clothes of. He is a genetic creation of Professor Y for the Cool Toyz toy company but he wasn't good enough to mass produce so was supposed to be destroyed/killed, but Professor Y loved him too much to do that so brought him home where he got comfy and became friends with FRANK, the hoverboard, and they all watched movies together. Then, the other toys of the Cool Toyz toy company revolted French Revolution style and murdered everyone they could. Turns out they were made with toxic waste so they ended up getting all mutated and fucked up which leads to you having a variety of different and interesting enemies to fight throughout the game. FRANK is also a bladed hoverboard that is your way of attacking. Then in a desperate bid to escape, Gori and FRANK get on a space ship and get sent into space without Professor Y, where they stay until the start of the game. It’s not a complicated premise and reminds me a lot of Sunset Overdrive. Yet the whole basis for the game just makes ya’ curious. Makes ya want to know more.
The Good
Ya’ know what makes a game bad? Not having a personality, being too generic. Gori is the opposite. The personality leaps off the screen. It's colorful, it's witty, it's fucking hilarious, it's bloody, it's meta, it's amazing. Within the first few moments of the game you find out that CH1-P is your ship and he obviously is depressed and tired of being in orbit for so long but then the Hull gets breached and Gori grabs his hoverboard FRANK, and goes out the airlock and just flies down to earth. FRANK, by the way, has family friendly language software which keeps his cursing bleeped, and FRANK curses like a fucking sailor (you can remove the family friendly language software later on for in game currency). He's clever with it too, it's well placed cursing, and the bleeping of it just makes FRANK have this personality that is fantastic. Even when you remove it he has that personality, its just different and as he does the majority of the talking since Gori is, ya’ know, a cat, FRANK being well written and well acted Makes The Fucking Game. Seriously, I haven't experienced the referential nature and wit in a videogame character since Sunset Overdrive or the Shadow Warrior games or Hi-Fi Rush. It’s amazing and immediately pulls you in because of it. Then the first enemy you meet is a Unicorn, it does a splash screen of it similar to both Sunset Overdrive and Shadow Warrior, and then, immediately trips and zombie Unicorns come up behind it and eat it, turning it into a fellow Zombie Unicorn, which then gets another Splash screen. It’s just fucking fantastic and most games are only able to keep this going for a short time but no, in Gori this continues throughout the ENTIRE game. The cleverness extends to all characters, splash screens, and events as well, it's just fantastic.
The combat is wonderful and weird and funny and enjoyable. FRANK is upgradable so, like in other Hack and Slash games, you can increase your damage and other things like getting another life or increasing how much fuel you have access to. Its not super deep, but I don't think it has to be super deep to be good and satisfying. Besides, I'm not good at games like DMC because I'm just not good at doing combo moves, so this being more simplistic allows those who are terrible at Combos to be able to have fun and feel powerful without not engaging with something you can't handle. Plus the game adds text in combat in the middle of the explosions of blood which is a really cool touch that adds some extra personality. Add in that the Bosses are some of the best Bosses in this kind of game I've ever experienced and you have a recipe for amazingness that will repeatedly make you smile with enjoyment.
As you go between levels you learn more and more about the world Gori exists in. How the Cool Toyz toy company has been making toys with toxic waste and when those toys get thrown away, they pollute the world. Over time it’s lead to toxic waste flooding cities, and the toys turning on their human creators. Each level you are greeted with a comic book cutscene that explains all this by deepening the relationship between him and his creator/owner, Professor Y. You also learn more about the world through characters in the level divulging the corporatized nature of the world and how fucked up everything has become since the Toy Uprising. Its a really interesting story filled with quirky moments that lead you to laughter quite often and I really appreciated how well written it was and how fucking weird it was.
Something I really appreciate in games are customization options. So here you're able to change Gori's clothes, fur color, and eye color. But that's not all, you can also change up some of FRANK, and you do this all through either spending money you collect from levels or unlocking doors by finding the pieces to keys in each level. I really enjoyed games back in the day that had large amounts of customization without charging for it and this hits that mark dead on.
The Bad
There's not more of it. No seriously, the game is so great that that's really my biggest issue with it. I just desperately want more of Gori and FRANK exploring and slicing and dicing and cursing and being witty. I desperately hope there is a sequel to this game because of all the indie games that I've played recently, this has some of the most potential for more of these characters and this toxic world, only tied with Stray Gods.
That said, the only other issue I had with it was that in a couple of the Boss fights I did have issues figuring out what was going on. I ended up having to look it up. It's not that difficult, and after looking it up I felt like an idiot, but I still think it's important to say that sometimes it can be hard to figure out what you need to do. But once you do, the fights are easier to do and are enjoyable, it can just be frustrating occasionally.
Also, the jumping is often kind of floaty. It's meant to be since FRANK is a hoverboard, but that can be a bit frustrating when trying to move quickly and then just barely overshooting or undershooting where you needed to land. Often this ends with you just going back to the most recent solid ground but if you do this enough, you'll die. I only had that happen once, during a Ladybug fight with an electrified floor and not many places to stand, but when it happened it was fucking frustrating. Yet despite that, it still controlled well most of the time. It's more something you kinda just have to get used to. Often, as well, you're able to just skip some of the platforms and go to the next one because of the floaty nature of the gameplay. It's just kinda hit and miss. I think if this could be refined in a sequel that would be ideal.
The Ending
Who is really the bad guy in this game, you might find yourself wondering. You might think it's the Cool Toyz company itself or the CEO, but you'd be wrong. A bit over half way into the game you discover that there's a Rabbit toy, similar to and made at the same time as Gori, named Pinky. She's been orchestrating all of the uprising from the beginning because she felt absolutely betrayed by her creator, Professor Y. A reasonable feeling since she was taken for Mass Production while Gori got to go home and live with Y (secretly so he didn't get killed). Y gave her a serum to help Pinky survive and be strong, but that didn't matter, Pinky stole the serum because it made her feel good and set off the apocalypse. Then, of course, she decided to say Fuck it and destroy the world. Abandonment is rough. After a lot of mutating she was kept locked up by the Bear and after you kill him, Pinky is released, which he tells you in some expository dialogue post boss fight.
Then you have to go through a 3 stage Boss fight with Pinky while the others find Professor Y. Once you're done with that, you go through a tube labeled "end chase" and, obviously, have the end chase! You zoom through areas that have the themes of the levels that you've played over the short game, and you're done! It's great!
All the humans are gone, you've saved Professor Y, and you've left Earth. Our main characters then talk about how this isn't the end for them, how they're together and there's gonna be more, this is just the beginning! Which is great since, as I mentioned above, that was something I really wanted out of the game.
All in all, a good ending. Not too complex, pretty satisfying. All it did was just leave me wanting more. It also has an after the ending section that allows you to go through the levels again and collect Unicorns in order to unlock the final room where Professor Y has her desk. While I might do it eventually, that will not be part of this review.
The Conclusion
Gori: Cuddly Carnage is an amazing game. And a very short game, my playthrough was 6 hours. Now, while I played on the easy difficulty so the game definitely went by faster, I'd imagine the game is likely closer to 8 on the higher difficulties. And I also did not get or do everything, as I said earlier, I left the post-game Unicorns undiscovered, so that likely adds more time, maybe even doubling the length. Yet even with such a short playtime I couldn't help but enjoy every single fucking second of it. It's not just enjoyable, its funny. Not a lot of games can really hit that balance between great gameplay and witty dialogue. Yet, besides the few problems I had with it, Gori manages to do it perfectly.
I would highly recommend playing it, particularly if you are able to get the game on a sale. For 13 dollars, it was a great purchase and despite desperately wanting more of the world that Angry Demon Studio has created, I would never regret the purchase even with it being so short. You should totally get Gori, it's amazing and needs to be played by more people.
Meow,
Cat