Ali<p>November 10, 2023 - Day 314 - NewPlay Review<br>Total NewPlays: 333</p><p>Game: Friends vs Friends</p><p>Platform: Steam<br>Release Date: May 30, 2023<br>Installation Date: Nov 10, 2023<br>Unplayed: 0d <br>Playtime: 16m</p><p>Friends vs Friends is a combination multiplayer PVP FPS and deckbuilder.</p><p>Those two things go together like chocolate ice cream and nachos; I like both of those things, but not in the same bowl.</p><p>It's the fourth game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and is reinforcing my theory that some devs are trying use the bundle to juice their player base to try and reach critical mass.</p><p>The opening of this game took me by surprise. I do not remember another game that has a fully animated theme song intro.</p><p>For a moment I was genuinely wondering whether this was a cartoon of some kind, because it feels just like the opening to a 90's Saturday morning cartoon.</p><p>The theme song alerted me to the fact it was a deckbuilder, but not that it was also a FPS, so when I found myself staring at a cel-shaded 3D environment, and while the environmental design and character designs were well done, I was at a loss as to what to do next. </p><p>I wandered around hoping that I'd trigger some kind of tutorial, some idea of how to play the game... nothing.</p><p>I found a shop, and guns I could try out, but no idea how to obtain them. I couldn't work out how to start a match, and I didn't want to start a match without knowing how to play.</p><p>Eventually I gave up, and started a 1v1 quickmatch; I muddled my way through, winning 1 out of 5 matches. I tried a 2v2 match with bots, in which my "team" lost both times.</p><p>Turns out, the guns are cards in your deck, you win matches, get cash, use the cash to buy new cards, build a new deck (or upgrade the old one).</p><p>After the 2v2 match, I spotted a question mark icon tucked away in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, which on a 3440x1440 screen wasn't exactly obvious, and it contained a set of instructions for how to play the game.</p><p>For me there are few issues with the game; the first one is in the title. It's a game that would probably work best with 1 or 3 friends (multiplayer options are 1v1 or 2v2).</p><p>With everyone either in the same room in a LAN game, or all on voicechat together, this could be amusing, because some of the card effects were amusing. Playing against randoms? No-one to laugh with.</p><p>Some cards were confusing "If I play this, does it affect me or the opponent?" No idea, even after playing it...</p><p>...because it's a PVP FPS. The pace of the game means it either feels like nothing is happening, or feels like everything is happening, as I'm trying to shoot, and look at my deck, and not get shot, and pick out a card, and I'm dead.</p><p>Unfortunately, Friends vs Friends feels like it had potential, but it all ended up just a bit:</p><p>2: Meh</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/FriendsVsFriends" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FriendsVsFriends</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PVP" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PVP</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/FPS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FPS</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Deckbuilder" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Deckbuilder</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/HumbleChoice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>HumbleChoice</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Gaming" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Gaming</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Project365ONG" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Project365ONG</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Project365" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Project365</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/NewPlay" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NewPlay</span></a></p>