The Indie Informer

In its quest to achieve ultimate rad status, Gori: Cuddly Carnage combines two genres specifically designed to make you feel cool: stylish action and skateboarding. Its premise also feels straight from the mind of an angsty pre-teen. As a sentient toy cat, you’ll surf a colorful post-apocalyptic world atop a foul-mouthed hoverboard slaying monstrous versions of cuddly stuffed toys. Gori is a tale of two experiences: an enjoyable blend of gory action and skateboard shredding, and a relentless barrage of bad jokes and mute-worthy dialogue.

Gori: Cuddly Carnage’s world sees humanity wiped out by mutated killer toys. Gori, the hoodie-rocking toy kitty protagonist, wants to find his missing mother figure, a scientist, and the last remaining human. If you sat a kid down with a sketchbook and told them to draw a world as innocent and whimsical as My Little Pony but if Fluttershy tore the heads off of her enemies and drank their blood, this would more or less be the result. This colorful but bloodstained world has no shortage of nightmare-inducing residents; Exhibit A: the main antagonist, a spider-legged jack-in-the-box sporting a terrifying teddy bear head with its skull exposed is a neat concept. From the various types of killer unicorns, with some sporting jagged blade arms and Xenomorph-like second mouths, Gori’s presentation stands out for how off-putting it can be. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I love the art, but I like the direction.

Since every creature makes my brain go “Nope”, slaughtering them feels all the sweeter. With single-button inputs for unleashing blade and hammer attacks, Gori is no Devil May Cry but manages to make tearing through foes simple and satisfying. Weakening enemies leaves them vulnerable to executions, like drilling the hoverboard into the chest of a downed unicorn. Basic attacks get the job done fine enough, but I coasted through most fights by spending a fuel gauge to activate powerful special moves such as a fast-spinning buzzsaw-like assault.

Since you can quickly zip from threat to threat, I rarely needed to use the game’s Bayonetta-like dodge mechanic, where evading at the right moment activates a time-slowing effect. The same goes for its lock-on targeting, as Gori’s offense is geared towards mowing down mobs rather than focusing on individual threats. 

A decent variety of foes that often made me go “Ew” mix up the encounters all the way to the game’s conclusion. Playing on Normal difficulty, you can easily cheese the game at points after upgrading your basic attacks to max effectiveness. Boss fights, while often creative and incorporating fun platforming elements, can be quickly ended by expending a full meter of special attacks on enemy weak points. Ending a big threat, sometimes in less than a minute, undeniably feels good, but a bit anticlimactic, like I broke the game somehow. 

Like the combat, the skateboard-style platforming isn’t Tony Hawk levels of deep but it distills the formula down to essential and fun mechanics like wall riding and rail grinding. It feels good, and the best arena battles unfold in areas where you can surf objects to reach or avoid foes. Best of all, performing skate moves refills your special meter, seamlessly folding platforming into combat. Escape sequences, like fleeing the multi-limbed teddy bear monstrosity that will forever haunt my dreams, offer some of the best platforming challenges. Although Gori goes to back to the well on these segments too frequently, I enjoyed putting my hoverboard skills to the test. 

Unique themes differentiate Gori’s handful of worlds. One stage has a retro arcade aesthetic with Gori fighting for his nine lives inside the digital worlds of arcade cabinets. Another, somewhat annoying, world centers on navigating an underwater network of pipes and managing oxygen and water levels. With respectable level design and solid combat, Gori is a fine gameplay experience. But whenever a character, namely your chatty hoverboard F.R.A.N.K., opened its mouth, I wanted to throw myself out of a window.

In short, the game’s writing ranges from lame to outright awful. I have nothing against raunchy humor – I’m a long-time South Park fan – but most jokes focus less on wit and lean more on the idea of “isn’t it funny that these cute characters curse so much?” That approach loses any novelty within the first thirty minutes since F.R.A.N.K. doesn’t shut up for long. Although Gori himself doesn’t speak and only meows (thank goodness), his buddies, including a depressed spaceship AI and, later, a talking goldfish, pick up the slack with aggressively unfunny chatter that tries way too hard to earn a laugh. Imagine combining the core premise of Stray with the comedic stylings of High on Life but worse. Now, the game isn’t totally devoid of humorous moments; a pair of childlike AIs modeled after the Etch-A-Sketch provided some chuckles. But if I wasn’t playing Gori for evaluation, it would have been muted indefinitely. 

Although its humor mostly whiffed, Gori: Cuddly Carnage’s neat blend of action and skateboarding made a better impression. It’s a fun blend of action and platforming that provides a good, solid arena battles that should satiate anyone looking to plaster a candy-coated world with blood and guts.