It was inevitable that as cozy games rose, so too did the number of games where you get to play as an adorable cat. As the number of games where you play as an adorable cat grew, so, too, did the number of games where the adorable cat rides a talking skateboard and slaughters armies of demonic robot unicorns. Actually, wait, there’s just one of those, and we are all blessed for its existence.
Gori: Cuddly Carnage should be the most irritating thing in the universe. It’s a game that thinks it’s hilarious that the talking skateboard can’t actually swear, where cute little unicorns twist and contort into the kind of fleshy, toothy, tentacled abominations only Kurt Russell is equipped to deal with. It’s like if you let American McGee make Stray in 2003, and all the funding was being provided by Spike TV. Somehow, despite how it sounds on paper, Gori is this year’s buried treasure of a game, maybe the closest actual kin to what Suda 51 and James Gunn were going for with Lollipop Chainsaw. It’s a game where an entire race of sentient supertoys go full Skynet and wipe out the human race, and our only hopes are Gori, the last surviving superpet, and his sentient skateboard, F.R.A.N.K., skating and grinding across what’s left of neon-bright future Earth. They’re slicing and dicing anyone that stands in the way of them, and the kindly scientist who created them and then sent them into orbit for their own protection when unicorn Judgement Day went down.
Somehow, despite all that, it never forgets to have a beating heart. The flashback cutscenes, in particular, are actually soft-hearted. Even during gameplay, Gori himself is still a sweet little guy who can still only talk in endearing meows. F.R.A.N.K.—despite never shutting the fuck up—gets a pass just because he’s such a legitimately supportive cheerleader for everything Gori needs to do. Also, sometimes, F.R.A.N.K. turns into a rocket launcher, an endearing trait for any true friend. If you ever played Metal Arms back in the day and thought it could use more kitty-cats, this should immediately be your goddamn jam.
