Gorn 2 brings more gladiatorial violence to VR this year

digitaltrends.com:

Devolver Digital announced that Gorn 2 is coming to SteamVR, Meta Quest, and PlayStation VR2 later this year. Digital Trends went hands on with three of its levels on Meta Quest 3S ahead of its reveal, which showed off its new weapons and familiar gore.

The original Gorn, a hack and slash action game developed by Anger Foot studio Free Lives, launched for VR headsets in 2019. It was a success on Meta Quest, selling over one million units as of 2021. Its sequel looks to recapture that success with a new studio at the helm. Wands developer Cortopia Studios is leading the project in collaboration with Free Lives.

Gorn 2 doesn’t switch up the original game’s formula too much, tossing players into a series of wave-based gladiator battles. The goal is to survive by slicing enemies up with oversized weapons and utilizing arena traps. The sequel will up the ante by giving players 35 weapons to toy with, from bows to floppy nuncucks to steak axes. It will feature five arenas, and endless mode, and custom game options.

The slice I played dropped me into its second arena, where I cut my way through three levels. I got the hang of it quickly, as I picked up a sword and started hacking away at incoming meatheads. The morbid fun of Gorn 2 comes from the fact that enemies can be hacked apart. I quite literally disarmed an enemy by lopping his entire arm off. I killed another instantly by bashing in his skull with a giant mace. Others got shredded into sheets that laid around the arena. Yes, it’s Gorn alright.

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Traps are a big part of the sequel, and I got a taste of three different environmental hazards during my demo. The first were spinning blades that rotated around the arena. I could knock enemies into them to slice them up (or just let them wander into them on their own).