Gori: Cuddly Carnage Review (Xbox Series X)

STAFF REVIEW of Gori: Cuddly Carnage (Xbox Series X)

Monday, October 21, 2024.
by Brent Roberts

There have been numerous tales of horror stories where children's toys have come to life and attacked humans, and now developer Angry Demon Studio has ventured into that twisted, dark realm with Gori Cuddly Carnage. This indie game would best be summarized if the South Park woodland critters decided to mate in an unholy ritual with the humor of Borderlands, the over-the-top gore of your favorite slasher film, and the psychosis of Alice in Wonderland. Priced at $21.99 it's on the higher end of the spectrum for indie games, but the big question that needs answered is: Is it worth it? Well, take a look when you have a developer team that decides to push the envelope of "fantasy violence" and dive into the realm of tremendously disturbing.

As is with all toy makers, developers make toys that they think kids would want. Then these ideas are prototyped and sent to offices where people sitting around mahogany desks make choices on what to make and not to make for the kids. Ever thought about what happens when the toys that don't get chosen get pissed off? In Gori: Cuddly Carnage, that very question gets answered. The story basically involves this inventor making two toys: One Rabbit and One Cat, and these toys were supposed to interact with children, make their lives better and bring all kinds of sunshine and rainbows. Well, as you may have guessed from the title of the game, this didn't happen. Turns out the executives were doing experiments on these toys and rejected Gori in favor of the Rabbit. That turned out to be the best decision, as these toys mutated and fought humanity for their freedom and wiped out all human life on earth. Now Gori was separated from his creator during this fight and is on a quest to find and rescue her. Standing in your way of this, however, is an undead zombie army of twisted, demented demon toys that you must disembowel along the way to save your creator.

When I say demented demon toys, here's an example of what I'm talking about. Your standard enemy is a stuffed zombie unicorn toy with blades for the front two hooves, called "Slicey-corn" (you can start to see a naming convention forming here). Then you have the same enemy but with guns instead of blades, called "Shooty-corn". If that weren't twisted enough you have doll heads that float around the room and shoot a laser pointer beams out of their good eye until they're out of energy, and when they do, their brains literally drop out of their heads and you have to sever them from the head to kill them. To say that the enemy list provides some form of psychological profile on the developers would be a safe theory to have. Not to mention that the language in Gori is highly adult and at times humorous on a highly disturbing level. For example, you have the manager which is Gori's version of an Etch-A-Sketch, however, the voice of this is a young child under the age of 10 and when he starts dropping F-bombs and telling you how much he is going to dismember you and how much enjoyment he takes out of watching you suffer, then you quickly begin to grasp just how twisted this game is.

This type of language is found throughout all characters in the game. Your main hoverboard that you ride F.R.A.N.K. could be best compared to knifey from High on Life. In fact, one would almost say that they are related as F.R.A.N.K. will openly talk about how much joy and happiness that death and destruction of your enemies can bring to both him and Gori. Then you have your other supporting character CH1-P (Chip) who is basically an AI program that is shoved into a Super Nintendo cartridge and has the mentality of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, as it is eternally depressed and in serious need of cheering up. These are your two primary companions at the start of the game, but you will gain others as you progress through the story.

Gori’s home base focuses around your main spaceship that acts as your centralized hub for all things violent and informative. Around the outside of the main room of the ship you have eight different doors that can be unlocked through finding key fragments while navigating each level. Each one of these rooms provides various forms of entertainment, but the primary one to focus on is the first room as it allows you to unlock and purchase upgrades for Gori and F.R.A.N.K. that stem from cosmetic upgrades such as color of the fur, eye, and clothing, to increasing your slashing attack, your heavy attack, your gun upgrades, and more. The other doors offer insight to your enemies, some training rooms, and other various oddities that really serve no rhyme or reason to the game itself. The main room of your ship acts solely as the world map and is where you will go to navigate through the levels of the story as you take on the demented Adorable Army and rescue any stray Unicorns that haven't been infected or twisted yet. Yes, not only are you on a quest to reunite and save your creator but each mission has a side challenge where you can try to save unicorns that still maintain their innocence.

The gameplay behind Gori is fairly straightforward as well. Your 'X' button does your slash attack, and 'Y' activates heavy attack. 'A' is used for jumping which you can double jump to reach higher levels. Right Trigger and 'B' buttons impact your speed, as your B button acts as a quick dash move while the RT when held down activates the thrusters on F.R.A.N.K. and dramatically increases your speed at the cost of F.R.A.N.K.s energy. Your Left Bumper is your basic block maneuver while your Right Bumper will allow you to grind your board like a skateboard on these illuminated rails and billboards found throughout the game. The maneuvering acts a lot like the classic game Jet Set Radio, and when you grind on these rails and billboards you can use that to recharge F.R.A.N.K.s battery level which you need not only for your boost, but for your charged gun attacks as well which is done with Left Trigger. So, you can use the LT to bring up your gun which you have a limited amount of time in the aiming window but then you can hold down RB to do a charged attack at the expense of some of your energy.

There is a little bit of an issue though with Gori's mechanics, and that's the target lock on feature which is done by pressing in the Right Stick. Normally this should lock on to an enemy close to you, however sometimes that doesn't happen. When you're locked onto an enemy you can also use the RS to move the auto lock on cursor to another enemy, but you don't choose the enemy it locks into. There were times when I was trying to lock onto a big enemy close to me and an enemy further away got locked onto. Then, when I went to switch enemies, it took awhile for the cursor to scroll through them until it finally locked onto the enemy I originally wanted. Now keep in mind, while all this is ongoing, I'm trying to dodge attacks and circle around and keep my focus using the RS to move the camera and the LS to move Gori. This gets especially frustrating when enemies spawn outside of your field of view and you don't know what's coming until it's too late. For this reason, I found a good solid strategy for these encounters is to use the perimeter of the arena which maximizes your field of view and if/when you take towards the center of the arena to fight larger enemies, immediately try to get back to the perimeter to see where enemies may have spawned while you're focused on that larger target.

Gori: Cuddly Carnage offers all this combat and gore in a nice, Saturday morning cartoon kind of feel that is crossed with some of the most sick and twisted Halloween horror vibes. This dynamic contrast of the various levels makes each one highly unique and incredibly fun to experience. Seeing the Duck Hunt dog pop up as a cameo on the arcade level that also has Tetris rooms is quite different, to navigating the nerves and synapses of a demonic cat's brain that has a haunting voice that lingers throughout the game that whispers "pspspspsps" and "heeeeeer Goriiiiii" in such a haunting level that you don't think you hear it at first, but then you take note and is an excellent addition to the already unique audio found in each of the levels. This combination creates a disturbing experience beyond measure but also equally fun and entertaining to the point where you want more from the game given it's only eight levels long.

And that's a big downside when you gather that most levels can be completed in under 5 minutes. Yes, unfortunately Gori's structure formula is one that we've seen countless times. Arena battle which leads to a navigation path, which leads to another arena battle, rinse and repeat. I can understand that the development team behind Gori may not be as extensive as a major AAA game company, and yes there is a ton of detail and quality to each of the levels, but that's where the double edge sword is. You want more of the game because it's so good, and when you don't get that you're left disappointed. So then is it really a negative to do what you can well to the point where your customers are disappointed when they can only get so much content? I'll leave that debate for you.

There are some other bits of issue found in Gori as well. Sometimes the gameplay itself will glitch, lag, and completely break to the point of having to completely quit the game and restart. There were moments in a boss fight with a ladybug where I could ride the rails, turn and bring up my gun to aim, and it would lock the game and freeze entirely. When I reload the game, IF I pass that section of the rail and THEN bring up my gun the game will not freeze. These spontaneous moments of complete and total failure of the game really hurt the experience of Gori, especially when you're having a boss fight. There are also some glitched achievements as well which hopefully will be patched in future updates, but other than that, Gori is a solid little title from hell.

With all this going on, is this worth $21.99? In short, yes. While there are some game breaking bugs and issues and achievements, all of these can be fixed with future updates. While the quantity is limited, the quality is not. It goes without saying that Gori: Cuddly Carnage is one title that delivers a quality story that is full of mind ****s and rewards you for going further down the rabbit hole.

**Gori: Cuddly Carnage was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 8.0 / 10
Gameplay: 8.0 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 8.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Gori: Cuddly Carnage (Xbox Series X)

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