Gorn Review: Welcome To The Blunderdome!

Developed by Free Lives, the South African indie studio behind Broforce, Gorn has been delighting bloodthirsty VR players with its slapstick brand of slaughter for nearly six years. Now, after cleaving a bloody swath across seemingly every headset on the market, the gory game of gladiatorial combat has made its way to the PSVR2, giving owners of Sony’s new hardware a chance to bash the brains out of the competition with a variety of pointy medieval weaponry. Unfortunately, while Gorn certainly looks better than it ever has on the PSVR2, it’s definitely starting to show its age, making it hard to recommend since games like Blade and Sorcery and Hellsplit: Arena have demonstrated just how far the physics-based brawler genre has come since Gorn first debuted in 2017.

Maiming Is The Name Of The Game

Gorn puts players in the loincloth of a newly-minted gladiator who must fight through three different arenas teeming with musclebound marauders. As you endure the various challenges and defeat each floor’s champions, you’ll amass a sizable arsenal of brutal tools to wield. In the beginning, you’ll arm yourself with more conventional weapons like swords, spears, and massive war hammers, before wielding wackier weaponry such as crab pincers that can crush the skulls of your opponents or wrist-mounted crossbows that excel in dealing death from a distance.

While the selection of weapons Gorn puts at your fingertips is impressive, they feel mostly weightless in your hands, almost as if you’re clobbering your enemies with inflatable toys rather than weighty instruments of war; a sensation made even worse by the way your weapons tend to wobble around like rubber props. With this in mind, Gorn made me feel less like a badass gladiator mopping the floor with my opponents and more like an extra at a Gwar concert. Whether you see that as a plus or a minus, well, that’s entirely up to you, of course.

That’s not to say this sense of weightlessness is without its appeal. Enemies bumble around the room like sentient helium balloons and float like viscera-stuffed zeppelins as they smash into the arena’s walls from a well-placed hit. Watching your Herculean attackers’ limbs, teeth, and eyeballs soar through the air in the heat of battle is quite the spectacle and made for some genuine laugh-out-loud moments as I hacked my way through Gorn’s campaign.

Rip, Tear, Rinse, Repeat

Gorn’s gruesome gauntlets are highly physical and provide a decent workout while you bash your brawny attackers into gladiator goulash. However, within your first ten minutes, you’ll essentially have seen all the game has to offer. The campaign unfolds across three arenas, each with three challenges to undertake. Each of these challenges starts with you facing wave after wave of identical enemies while using a variety of weapons. Beat them, and you’ll have to survive a free-for-all brawl. Manage to make it through this blood-soaked battle royale, and you’ll get the chance to go up against a Champion: Gorn’s version of boss encounters.

Sure, it sounds good on paper. But a lack of variety and pudding-thick AI makes these slapstick slugfests start to feel repetitive in no time at all, a problem made worse by the fact Gorn only features a single enemy model dressed in various states of armor. I’ll admit, some bosses do make things more interesting occasionally, like the Crab Champion, who, as you probably already guessed, battles atop a giant crustacean. Another Champion, Achilles, is the Emperor’s fiercest — yet most forgetful — fighter, whose only weak point is his single bare foot.

Extending Gorn’s replay value is a custom mode, which allows you to use the weapons you unlock during the main game in custom brawls. And honestly, it’s pretty fun for what it is. Customization options include a host of modifiers that add some pretty zany effects to the proceedings. For example, you can relive your childhood with the GoldenEye-esque Big Head mode, which gives each character a colossal cranium to clobber. Another fun modifier lets you reduce the stage’s gravity, allowing you to send foes into the stratosphere with your fists. However, this mod does tend to create some pretty funky visual effects on occasion. Personally, I found they just added to the overall ridiculousness of it all.

Not Exactly A Next-Gen Update

In case you missed it, this Gorn review is based on the PSVR2 version of the game. I feel like this bears repeating because the developers seem to have forgotten the fact that this Gorn, released in 2023, for a headset designed with two lovely analog sticks to guide your character, features some of the most frustrating locomotion options I’ve seen in ages. The default mode of getting around requires you to reach out and pull yourself forward like a gorilla. However, upon finishing the tutorial fight, you can travel to the options floor (yes, you read that right, there’s no in-game menu to speak of). Once on the options floor, you can finally choose the standard smooth locomotion option. Additionally, you can switch between 45 and 90-degree snap-turn modes.

There is a smooth turn feature, but you won’t want to use it. If you do, you’ll be treated to the most jarring tunneling effect I’ve ever seen in my many years of VR ownership. It genuinely looks like a black hole is devouring your screen or as if you’re observing your enemies through a peephole (or, in Gorn’s case, maybe a Goryhole is more appropriate?)

Now, I looked through every option to find a way to disable this feature. Perhaps I took a few too many morning stars to the noggin, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to do so. However you slice it, it’s bad and truly hurts the experience that makes finding a way to play comfortably feel akin to enduring your own personal grueling gladiatorial gauntlet.

Speaking of things not working quite like you’d imagine they would, Gorn also seems to have an issue with its audio mixing. Whether using my TV’s sound system, PSVR headphones, or Sony’s Pulse 3D wireless headset, everything sounds distant and muffled. The best way I can describe it is as if you were playing the game while submerged underwater (which I don’t recommend for many reasons). Here’s hoping this issue will be resolved in a patch soon because it takes away from the experience and doesn’t exactly sell the sensation of standing in an arena surrounded by throngs of cheering spectators.

Unfit For The Arena

There was a time when Gorn’s over-the-top melees were pretty amusing. However, six years since it first slugged its way onto headsets, the physics-based brawler genre has seen numerous impressive offerings that vastly improve upon the foundation it laid, making its addition to the PSVR2 library seem mostly unnecessary. Hobbled by a disappointing lack of variety and questionable design choices that feel rooted in the early days of home VR, Gorn’s gladiators fail to entertain.

Final Verdict: 2/5

Available on: PSVR2 (reviewed); Publisher: Devolver Digital; Developer: Free Lives; Players: 1; Released: March  30, 2023; MSRP: $19.99

Full Disclosure: This review is based on a copy provided by the publisher.