Review: Gori: Cuddly Carnage (Nintendo Switch)

I suppose if your game involves a synthetic cat toy riding a hoverboard, it’s important to clarify in the title that it’s not all cuteness and Instagram-shares ahead. And so, we’ve got Gori: Cuddly Carnage, an action/adventure platformer that manages to surprise in numerous ways.

These surprises begin with the setup. Mankind is on the verge of being wiped out by vengeful toys. Gori, a sympathetic stuffed cat, has escaped Earth with a sentient hoverboard and an AI computer chip. However, Gori’s last owner calls him back to Earth to assemble a giant laser pointer, which could apparently be used to save humanity.

Seems like a lot to entrust to a cat toy, but Gori is not without impressive hoverboarding skills. And his hoverboard, F.R.A.N.K., is not without its share of deadly armaments. F.R.A.N.K. also has a potty mouth, for what it’s worth. Take the game’s M rating seriously and keep this one away from the young and impressionable.

Gameplay centers on Gori’s hoverboarding, zipping the cat along walls and rails through mostly linear levels at breakneck speeds. The game constantly requires the player to pay careful attention to the environment, trying to determine where amidst the cacophony of cartoon color is the access to the next area. No worries if you fall from the path, however; Gori: Cuddly Carnage mostly lets you bounce around aimlessly until you figure out what to do, then forgives you until you’re able to pull off whatever hoverboarding trick is required to get there.

Amidst all the platforming and puzzle solving is plenty of graphic violence—or at least as graphic as disembodying synthetic unicorns can be. (And who knew this many deadly unicorn variations were out there?) You have the option to make the visuals less “realistic” if they’re bothering you.

Enemies mostly come in waves in confined battle areas, and defeating them will require you to master F.R.A.N.K.’s arsenal of attacks: spin to slash groups of enemies, bash them all shield-like, launch forward for a projectile attack, etc. The heavier attacks will deplete F.R.A.N.K.’s fuel supply, but killing enemies fills the tank. So, combat (especially against the game’s bosses) requires a balance of performing basic melee attacks before unleashing your more deadly options.

I appreciate that Gori: Cuddly Carnage’s combat isn’t all that complex. The simplicity allows the game to keep moving forward at a decent speed and facilitates the exploration necessary to recover key items and power-ups. Abilities can be enhanced at the player’s discretion between levels, so there are plenty of options to compensate for your personal shortcomings.

This all takes place throughout and across numerous toy-store-colored environments, each of which manages to be fairly distinctive. The variety helps to prevent the garish design from becoming overwhelming. And when gameplay repetition starts to set in, it’s alleviated by the randomness and surprises of the locales in which that gameplay takes place. It’s a fun world to explore…unsettling as it may be.

Unfortunately, those visuals also present some performance problems. Framerates are a noticeable problem at times, as you’d expect. The camera doesn’t always cooperate, either, requiring you to attack blindly at times. I do suggest sticking with docked mode, here, as the busy visuals are hard to clarify in handheld mode. Also, there were a couple times when I somehow busted out of the game’s world and fell into the ether. It’s been a while since that’s happened to me in a game, but I could do without that bit of nostalgia.

Finally, the thing about juvenile humor is that, if you’re not juvenile, it becomes tiresome pretty quickly.

Those gripes considered, I was surprised by just how involved I became with Gori: Cuddly Carnage. I attribute this mostly to its energy and commitment to non-stop action. Platformer action games are certainly not my thing. Neither are toy cats or foul-mouthed hoverboards. Here, however, they combine for a wholly unique and addictive (if not occasionally disturbing) experience.