What do you get when intelligent toys turn on their creators? Humanity’s extinction. That’s the scenario you’re thrust into when Gori: Cuddly Carnage starts off. It’s been a little while since all the humans were killed by AI-powered intelligent toys, but not all the toys became bad. Gori, a bipedal cat, along with allies FRANK the potty mouth hoverboard, and CHIP, a rather depressed AI, set out to destroy the evil toys in as efficiently chaotic way as possible.
Gori: Cuddly Carnage’s narrative is decently written but a pretty by-the-numbers plot. However, the comedy is on point. Yes, it’s juvenile and reliant on lots of swears, but the delivery is great, with the factory mission and the manager standing out as a fun comedy highlight. The delivery of lines just sounds like the team is having a fun time with the script. It is silly but it will make you laugh. It’s worth mentioning that finishing all the levels will get you one ending, but to get the proper ending you do need to find all the key pieces and rescue every single unicorn.
Gori: Cuddly Carnage is an action game which is split into eight main levels plus 14 challenge missions. Each main mission gives you a star ranking based on how long it takes to beat it, the top combo you can put together, the total score, and the difficulty level. Challenge missions also have a three-star rating, though the measuring stick for these varies from combo scores to time remaining on the clock. Gori: Cuddly Carnage’s difficulty ranges from Indoor Cat, aka easy, all the way up to Cuddly Carnage, the ultimate difficulty.
I played through the levels twice, first on House Cat (Normal) and then Cuddly Carnage to gauge the difficulty jump. Aside from enemies dealing more damage and bosses having a couple more attacks, I didn’t really notice a huge step up in challenge. However, that’s more than likely down to the fact I had unlocked the majority of upgrades giving Gori more health, stronger attacks, and more fuel to move faster and perform special attacks for my second run.
FRANK is more than just a hoverboard. FRANK is Gori’s weapon, equipped with blades and a whacking attack, with both used in motion as the pair speed around environments. Gori also gets a grenade launcher to hit big groups from range. In each mission you’ll move between arenas filled with enemies before coming up against mini bosses and final bosses. The enemies start off as basic unicorns but evolutions of the mythical horned horse are gradually introduced as you move through the game. There’s a decent variety of enemy types from blade-wielding melee attackers to flying bomb-droppers, and larger ones that can perform high powered attacks. Yet, even with this range of enemy, combat boils down to a handful of attacks.
That said, combat itself is enjoyable and rewarding as you pull off combos using the different attacks, and while there’s an extensive move list there is generally enough fuel to use the special slash and whacking attacks near-constantly. While it is satisfying to wipe out masses of enemies using these moves, it can get a bit repetitive and going back to normal moves feel slow in comparison. Enemies can be relentless, swarming towards Gori with lethal intent so the thankfully-slick movement is paramount to survival. There are occasionally issues with judging distances between jumps in platforming sections, and some combat areas can work against the power moves due to there being so many places to fall off the edges.
Gori: Cuddly Carnage is full of bold and bright colours, and some of the level designs are packed with excellent ideas. The arcade level in particular, as you jump into different machines, is a great imaginative experiment. Enemy designs are fun too and you can tell the designers have thought of lots of different ways to turn childhood toys into nightmarish creatures. The bosses are also well-designed, but suffer from having very obvious weak points highlighted.
While Gori: Cuddly Carnage is a fun game there are a couple of downsides. The camera can be finicky at times which isn’t helpful when the action is so fast-paced. There’s also a lock on for enemies so the camera follows them, but it is hit and miss with the angles it chooses to use. During my playthrough the game did also crash a couple of times back to the PS5 homescreen, though this can hopefully be ironed out in an early patch.