When I turned on the computer this morning for my morning press review, the news was everywhere: "GORN leaves early access!". Interesting, but…. what the heck is GORN? It is unlikely that a title of this magnitude, mostly developed by a team that has recently made sparks like that of Free Lives - developers of BroForce - goes unnoticed. With a pinch of curiosity I opened the Steam page, finding the following description: “GORN is a ridiculously violent VR gladiator simulator […]. The only limits to the slaughter are your imagination and modesty, in the wildest and most brutal skull-smashing game ever created ". After a week of work, breaking skulls seemed like a great idea to spend a Friday night, and completely locked out I downloaded the game.
Will GORN manage to win glory, or will it be yet another thumbs-up title? Helmet on, let's proceed with ours review!
Violence
No time to finish the initial mini tutorial that I am catapulted into the arena. From the height of his throne the emperor harangues me, while all around little dressed gladiators show their fists as a sign of defiance. A greeting gesture, and the first slaughter begins. With my bare hands I start hitting left and right, the blood gushes like rivers while more and more big men peep out from the side doors. A few minutes, and all around me there is only blood, death, and destruction. After the first initial skirmishes the emperor decides that violence is not enough, and he gives us as well as our enemies the first weapons. Finally armed with a knife, I throw myself back into the fray ready to cut limbs and scapitozzare heads.
These first quarrels give me the first taste of what is then the leitmotif of GORN: at the beginning of each wave a weapon is provided, often and willingly inadequate for the challenge that faces me. It is up to my ability to try to use it at its best or try to retrieve another one from the ground, without forgetting to detach the enemy arm before use (or maybe not, which works a lot anyway). The violence continues to increase exponentially as I progress, the arena is now a lake of blood and human eyes begin to decorate the walls.
Wave after wave the weapons vary more and more, and by dint of waving them left and right I learn their intrinsic skills: war hammers are perfect for destroying shields and armor, while edged weapons can not only cut off parts of the body, but even pierce the chest of enemies to tear out their still beating heart. The game description was not lying, there is really no limit to the violence I can achieve.
After the first twenty minutes I finally come out of the arena as the winner, full of adrenaline and full of dripping sweat. I find myself inside a tower, on my left a panel with the floors, three to be exact, and with a variable number of doors, each of which leads to a specific challenge. You go from the level with only edged weapons to that with only long weapons, passing through the one with the firearm or with melee weapons such as crab claws or wolverine claws. But everything beautiful has an end, and after about five to six hours of play, I finally arrive at the final room, unlockable only after completing every other challenge. The tone changes completely, the opponents are different in skill and form, and the aim is not to kill but to destroy the temple of evil that has so far trapped me. It's time to earn my freedom! After several attempts and with a lot of effort I finally manage to get the better of all my enemies, and I come out the winner from the arena!
The right weapon at the right time
When I first approached GORN I made the big mistake of taking it seriously. In reality it is evident from the first bars how the focus of the whole experience is not so much on giving the player an accurate fighting simulator, but on making it fun. Patience if the game still has some bugs, especially in terms of artificial intelligence, seeing these runaway big men who hit themselves makes everything even clearer, GORN is a game to be taken with a smile, not seriously.
This does not mean that GORN is an easy game, on the contrary, but winning or losing is not essential to fully enjoy the experience. GORN is a fantastic physical and mental outlet, masterfully designed to make the player and any crowd on the couch laugh. Also because if from the point of view of the genre it is not too innovative, it manages to stand out among the jungle of VR games thanks to its simplicity and its contagious hilarity. The repetitiveness of the gameplay is hidden by the large amount of weapons and enemies that meet, the feeling of having a unique and different challenge behind each door is satisfying and often generates unique situations based on the decisions we make.
Furthermore, the difficulty in the clashes increases linearly, bringing with it an increase in comedy and not making the fact that the enemies are always the same or almost the same at all. For a game that does not have the presumption of guaranteeing who knows what longevity, the mix of weapons, arenas, possible attacks and game situations is enough to make the experience as varied as it is repeatable. Perhaps a final scene is missing, of a moment of pure enjoyment that makes us realize that we have finally won. The final level is unique and stands out from the rest of the game, but those few seconds of victory leave a certain bitterness in the mouth, making you want something more.
Going further, the learning curve of the game is perfectly calibrated and is adequate for the various challenges that are posed to us, as well as well balanced by the weapons that are gradually provided. Sometimes I felt the need for some more instruction, as in the case of the wrist bomb that I couldn't get fired at first, but they are all in all venial sins that don't really affect the gameplay. The same goes for the end of life. In GORN, one hit is enough to start the death countdown, and the only way to save yourself is to kill an enemy before it's too late. Without any similar information in any tutorial, it took me a while to notice this mechanic. Let me be clear, it works and works well, but it is not intuitive at all and without a good dose of luck I would have missed it.
In all this it is a pity that GORN does not have an achievement system, given the great variation of weapons, arenas and enemies, it would have been nice to give players one more reason to return to arenas already won, not only to have fun again but with a further goal. The choice is even more surprising when you consider the fact that each arena has, before the final boss, a free-for-all with a bonus goal that goes beyond survival. Not having achievements is not a lack in terms of the game, but it remains a missed opportunity.
Violent, raw and wild, but it also has flaws
Despite leaving Early Access, GORN still carries a number of bugs, especially in relation to the artificial intelligence of gladiators. The main problem is the movement, the characters have legs too short compared to the body and the walk that follows is clumsy and confusing. I don't know if having such clunky characters was the developers' intentions, but seeing bosses enter the arena hitting and stunning themselves doesn't feel good. Even the navigation system of the AI is revisable, especially in the (few) characters who use ranged weapons. These tend to keep a predefined distance from the player, it doesn't matter if behind them there is a moat already filled with gladiators who have fallen for having set their foot wrong. Tragicomic.
The upper body is unfortunately not much better. Enemies only take one target, and they don't give a damn about everything in the arena. It therefore happens to be surrounded by three or four opponents who inexorably end up hitting each other precisely because they neglect the presence in the area of other NPCs. Imagine being surrounded by 4 gladiators in armor: the first attacks, hits the second that flies at the third and fourth. Shrug, hit your unexpected ally on the big head, and win. Much ado about nothing, and in the long run it annoys you.
Other small bugs are also present in the management of state changes. For example, the game may slow down after an animation, or that it is not possible to continue if you kill the enemy while he hits you in turn. In short, small annoying bugs that should not be impossible to solve, but which are still present in a game that is no longer Early Access but that is definitively released and therefore must be evaluated as such.
VR must also be known how to do
Despite being the first VR title developed by Free Lives, it's hard to find any flaws in the design. The choice of using the arm swing for movement is particularly appropriate, even if it partially limits the rotation in the game by forcing the player to move 360 degrees. Some key choices may not be particularly happy, such as using the secondary trigger to wield weapons by default, but they are all in all venial sins and which tend not to get noticed too much during the experience itself.
As for the graphics instead, GORN is a great sight, net of the big men very little dressed always in front of our nose (which in VR are never the best of the show). The arenas are few but vary substantially from each other in size and style, giving a pleasant feeling of progression in the game. The comic style works very well overall, and the particle effects of blood, smoke and dust are as light as they are consistent with the rest of the setting. At length it feels like you've been catapulted into an HD remastered of “Tom and Jerry” for audio, video, and comedy.
Physics management deserves a separate note. GORN allows you to detach parts of the body or armor, but it does it as if it were a cartoon, making the limbs stretch - and a lot - before they can finally detach. In technical terms these are called "soft-bodies" - that is solid objects that can be compressed or expanded through physics - and are very complicated to manage in terms of programming. GORN succeeds with a coarse but effective implementation to exploit even the cases in which the deformation is inaccurate, giving the feeling that in the general calculation of idiocy physics has long been a problem for the South African team, to then become a feature, even being applied to weapons. It's downright odd to see a two-handed hammer dangle like a willow branch, but there's no denying it makes the game more comical and arguably easier to handle.
Final comment
GORN is a game that, net of some technical problems, keeps its promises. There has hardly been an experience - in VR and beyond - as chaotic as it is fun. The blood, the weapons, the arenas and the clumsy enemies work extremely well overall, giving the player a fulfilling, violent but above all comic experience.
