Official Review
Developer Angry Demon Studios has made a hard pivot from first-person horror to gaudy character platformer. The horror remains, albeit bathed in day-glow graffiti and coming in the form of cutesy but ravenous playthings.
Mankind has been overthrown by murderous toys, organizing under the banner of the Adorable Army. Gori, a kindly synthetic feline, escapes Earth with his sentient hoverboard F.R.A.N.K and anxious AI CH1-P (pronounced 'chip'). Under instruction from his lost owner, Gori must head back down to earth and assemble parts for a giant laser pointer that may turn the tide in the fight against the toys.
If the concept of a cat building a giant orbital laser pointer didn't already clue you in, Gori: Cuddly Carnage is not a serious game. It's a raucous, foul-mouthed splatter fest whose tone recalls N64 classic Conker's Bad Fur Day. You'll spend most of your time tearing the heads off rabid plushies, while your hoverboard curses like an adolescent Twitch streamer.
At its core, Gori: Cuddly Carnage is an old-school platformer in the mold of Banjo-Kazooie and its many contemporaries. While traveling across the toy-ravaged earth, you'll explore every nook and cranny to collect key pieces and solve platform puzzles. The aforementioned Conker similarities extend to the mix of cute and crudely horrible, including some mean-spirited boss fights in which Gori is at the receiving end of heinous insults and bodily fluids.
It deviates from the traditional 3D platform blueprint in two significant ways. The first is that Gori never gets off his board, so the entire game has you floating around on F.R.A.N.K. This takes some getting used to — at first, it feels like the constantly floating movement restricts exploration — but the levels are built to accommodate board traversal, so it's not long before hopping around and grinding up to platforms becomes second nature.
The other aspect where Gori differs from its peers is its heavy combat focus. Gori's board has an arsenal of offensive and defensive capabilities; alongside slashing melee and a shield-bashing slam, F.R.A.N.K can also be launched like a projectile to solve puzzles and take down aerial enemies. Each of these abilities has a powerful alternative that comes at the cost of fuel. Fuel recharges from killing enemies, so survival against waves of Zombiecorns will require some tactical thinking. Gori also has a shield that can deflect projectiles and counter some of the larger foe's attacks.
Everything can be upgraded using currency obtained from levels and totaled up at the end of each stage. Increased health and attack can be purchased, alongside cosmetics for our feline hero and his board. There's a nice accessibility option to allow for holding the attack button down, removing the need to button mash. But, despite the variety of abilities, combat isn't overly complex.
Enemy types are introduced steadily and escalate in size and ability. The zombie unicorns quickly upgrade to bladed, flying, shooting, and giant variants. Each is as creepy and disgusting as the last. The brightly coloured science-fiction horror style feels both unique and jarring. It's odd to see some truly gruesome enemy designs in such a gaudy setting.
That said, the art design of Earth's garish future is beautiful at times. Candy-colored storefronts show holograms of dancing unicorns, and Cybertruck-like vehicles wait to be slashed in half for their fuel pick-ups. Gori whips through the pink-hued cityscapes on rainbow-colored grind rails. Each level brings a new stylistic spin on the setting, so the aesthetic doesn't grow stale. One stage fuses gigantic arcade cabinets with pinball machines as Gori defeats enemies in a virtual game world.
Performance-wise, Gori is a mixed bag. Board traversal and combat with large numbers of enemies tanks the frame rate on Switch. This is more noticeable when docked and can be slightly improved by disabling motion blur. Some abilities, like the slam, fill the screen with debris and larger battles feature enemy waves that constantly spawn in. These moments make the game chug significantly. This is where the game's art style starts to get in the way, with bright flashing colors making it tough to discern what's going on in heavy combat. Another visual quirk is the texture of Gori's fur, which looks blurry from most angles.
As the hardware struggles with the busy visuals, the game also challenges the attention span with its erratic tone. The mishmash of influences and styles is sometimes hard to keep up with. There's the satirical edge and self-deprecating AI, which recalls Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Elsewhere, the heavy metal guitars and brutal slo-mo finishers are straight out of Doom. Coming back to Borderlands, that series' cartoonish style and puerile humor have certainly been a key influence here.
The overall tone will be an acquired taste for some, not least in the writing. Your mileage with F.R.A.N.K's incessant chatter will vary depending on your tolerance for characters like Borderlands' Claptrap. Thankfully Gori is a silent protagonist, aside from the odd meow.
Conclusion
Gori: Cuddly Carnage's hyper-violent, comic book spin on the character platformer is fun and easy to get to grips with. It's an entertaining ride, though the sheer volume of comedic banter will overwhelm as much as it entertains, and performance issues plague the experience throughout. Otherwise, it just about holds everything together and will no doubt appeal to some. Others may tire of the scattershot humor long before Gori has defeated the Adorable Army.
