Guns, Gore and Cannoli is a side-scroller shooter set in the misery soaked prohibition years of the 1920’s. You play as Vinnie Cannoli, an enforcer for a mob boss who desires a man by the name of Frankie that resides in Thugtown, considerably a hostile area. Narration provides us with a sort of semi-mystery to the plot, as the people of Thugtown are becoming zombies for some unknown reason and Vinnie only tasked with bringing back someone to his mob boss gets stuck in the teeth of the undead.

The story presented in the game is nothing more than something to drive the gameplay. Detail and depth in this storyline are barely there, with very little interest in pushing anything meaningful, the story is never told in the gameplay and is limited to cutscene which hold not value or depth. This can be considered understandable as the game’s whole reasons for its existence is to blow up zombies in the 1920’s-era.
The story aside, the gameplay which is the main focus of the entire game is worthy of merit. The game has you blasting away at zombies non-stop with 1920’s guns and a few other weapons that are somewhat science fiction-like but still fit in due to the non-nonsensical nature of the game. Gunplay provides satisfaction as the game provides much of the gore goodness to come out of the both genres, I never would have expected such enjoyment in using a Tommy Gun in disposing my enemies. Though there’re some downsides to the gameplay, that is that the featured variation of zombies to be found can be quiet annoying and a unfair disadvantage on the player at some moments of the game. Other enemies (rats for example) found in the game also have similar annoyance due to the size and the amount of time it takes to unload the unnecessary amount of bullet into them to be killed. Though one can consider this a little bit of a nick-pick on my part, these moments I felt were unsatisfactory.

Graphically speaking the game has some very good looking appeal to it. The hand drawn design of the world and animations have a charm to them that can’t be replicated in 3D games. The sense of the 1920’s feel is perfectly captured. Audio also has a role to play in this game, though somewhat overlooked in areas (this would include music), the music in the game has the aesthetic appealing to that of the 1920’s though over a period of time, it becomes very much a chore to listen to it while playing the game and becomes sort of uneven with dramatic moment in the game. Other elements of the audio production though were reasonably good. The voice actor have that cliché gangster tone or the sort of New York accent, all of which were good fun hearing during game.

Lastly, I have to mention was the game was unfortunately unnecessarily short which did disappoint me, clocking around 3 hours to finish it normal with multiple deaths on occasion.

Conclusion: An overall look at the game and I can certainly say that I had a good experience with Guns, Gore and Cannoli. I wish though it was a little longer which hinders it from having more good times blasting zombies Italian mob style but sometimes that doesn’t happen.