Gori: Cuddly Carnage Photo Mode Review

Mik Bromley

Aug 187 min read

ℹ️ - Gori: Cuddly Carnage Photo Mode Review

Developer: Angry Demon Studio

Publisher: Wired Productions

Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox X|S

Initial Release: 29th August 2024

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I do not like cats! All that purring and rubbing up against you, it's just a facade and you're only ever a second away from the hissing and the claws. Soft and cuddly? Not a chance, cats are the embodiment of evil and Gori is here to prove it.

So, this one is apparently a "synthetic cat" but that doesn't matter, they're all the same. Just look at it, massacring magical unicorns. What's that you say, the unicorns are mutated toys who have wiped out all humans? Don't believe a word of it, it will have been the cats, and this is all just propaganda!

Still, if you are going to gratuitously dismember mythical rainbow beasts, it may as well be done in style and this cool-cat is a skater with a sentient hover board. Oh, and the board also has huge blades as well as a rocket launcher and can grind on hologrammatic rails in mid-air. That is pretty cool it has to be said, and there's a photo mode too so you can immortalise every blood-drenched series of tricks and spins.

"There's a clever little innovation in that the photo mode UI will automatically disappear whenever you move the camera..."

Key Photo Mode Features:

Manual focus & aperture control
RGB colour grading
Camera light

Controls & Implementation:

Gori: Cuddly Carnage actually sees another implementation of the Advanced Photo Mode blueprint from the Unreal Marketplace. That's the same base module that is found in the likes of Deliver Us Mars, Atomic Heart, and The Talos Principle II, so many of the features will be familiar to some of you.

It's available at any time outside of cut scenes and there is a quick access shortcut assigned to the Touchpad on PS5. In theory, that is a great way to jump straight in during the fast-paced action, but it does fail to trigger sometimes when other button presses are going on meaning you'll certainly miss a few moments.

The camera is free to move and look in any direction with intuitive use of the analogue sticks and triggers, with roll also found on the photo mode UI. My only real complaint is that each input moves with different speeds. For example, truck & dolly with the LS are nice, smooth, and steady enough for fine adjustment. The RS however, moves too quickly making pan & tilt very twitchy, especially when zoomed in, while the vertical craning is comically slow.

Camera range is decent though and you should have no trouble finding the right composition within the relatively tight environments. There's also a clever little innovation in that the photo mode UI – which is nicely skinned to match the game's art style – will automatically disappear whenever you move the camera for an unobstructed view.

I can't think of another example of this off hand and it should be a great feature, it's just that it hasn't been fully thought through. You see, the UI also reappears as soon as the camera stops which can cause a distracting flicker as you tweak a composition, but the main issue is that it even comes back if you had manually turned the UI off by pressing ☐ and doesn't let any settings be changed while hidden.

Funny how a well-meaning feature can quickly become as annoying as, well not as annoying as a cat, but somewhere close!

I also wish that someone would think about the order of the tabs in this photo mode. As is always the case when this blueprint is used, the depth of field and focus settings are separated from other camera options like field of view that are likely to be used together. Please, just put them next to each other.

That's a minor complaint though and the manual focus does at least work well with a simple focus distance and aperture f-stop values to control the field depth and add defocused blur to the foreground and background. Notice too, that the depth of field is shallower at longer lens lengths, i.e. narrow field of view, just as it should be.

Some of the main strengths of this photo mode are undoubtedly in the rich colour grading and image effect options, most of which you will find here. That means you get Saturation, Contrast, and Gamma (or 'None' as it is currently named here), each with full RGB control. Just be aware that a quirk of these is that they affect complementary colours, so increasing the green saturation will take magenta up with it for example.

On top of those options, there is also Brightness, Temperature, and Tint for comprehensive colour control as well a bunch of filters that are unusually locked for now, at least in the current demo. Film Grain and Vignette add some imperfection, and even Chromatic Aberration – a feature that I probably do dislike more than cats – actually works here. The crude RGB channel separation feels somehow in-tune with the vibrant and chaotic visuals, and it's nice to be able to limit how much of the frame is affected.

In terms of unique customisations, there isn't a huge amount extra to mention. 3 game logos can be moved through 9 preset locations, characters, enemies, and particle effects can be hidden, and the vertical or horizontal bars can be tuned to any colour with RGB sliders. There is also a custom light feature, well, just a camera flash actually that can't be moved separately and isn't very bright. It's nice to have but so it's only of any real us in close-ups.

The biggest piece of personality probably comes in the form of faces for Frank – that's Gori's expletive favouring hover board. The 64 designs include various moods, logos, and even damage that can be fun to pick through, it's just a shame that the little display screen can be hard to see in a lot of shots.

Photographic Opportunity:

This game features a synthetic cat in human-like skater clothes riding a weaponised and slightly insane hover board as they team up on a murderous crusade to eviscerate mutant toy unicorns – what more is there to say?! In-game photography often serves up unique opportunities to capture images that you're unlikely to find anywhere else, and it doesn't get much more unique or unlikely than this.

The over-the-top action and abundant carnage, cuddly or otherwise, is complemented by the brightly coloured visuals and plenty of gore. Every fight is drenched in blood and scattered with dismembered body parts to make sure that Gori lives up to his name.

If that's a bit much for you then there is always the optional "Purple Juice" mode that swaps blood for, I dunno, blueberry smoothie or something. It's not the default but I actually think that it works better with the overall art style and excess of rolling unicorn heads that you'll see scattered about the place.

Capturing the fast-paced combat can be tricky at times though there is no shortage of chances to try. There's also a host of stylish slides, grinds, and spins to enjoy as you explore the colourful streets, factories, and messed-up carnival spaces. Wherever you go, you find the levels filled with those killer unicorns and big bosses that are definitely totally evil. Or so the cats would have you believe anyway.

Verdict:

Gori: Cuddly Carnage is jammed with style and over-the-top action that certainly offers something unique to shoot with a virtual camera. The photo mode may be a standard module and doesn't boast many novel customisations, but it works well enough here to let you do just that as you slash through the madness on offer. I still don't like cats, but I'll happily admit that this one is actually pretty cool.