Friends Vs Friends

Friends vs Friends was provided by Raw Fury for review. Thank you!

It's time to turn your friends into enemies in this frantic PvP shooter! Friends vs Friends is a small first-person shooter that will pit you against your friends in 1v1 or 2v2 combat. As you fight, you will level up, unlock new characters, and get in-game currency! You will use the currency to buy new cards for your loadout deck, which are used to give you abilities and change each match in your favor. Want to make your enemy's head larger for easier headshots? Equip a grenade launcher? Nuke the entire map? There are cards for it all! Build your deck and demolish your friends in a fantastic multiplayer experience you won't want to quit from.

Friends vs Friends is one of the few games I have played from Next Fest that have stuck with me until release. I absolutely love this game. The 3 rounds of each match are quick, exciting, and surprising thanks to the cards and small maps. There are only 4 here, not including the map changes from nukes and such, but they are definitely unique from each other. The gameplay loop is pretty basic in this sense, you fight against friends with decks you build, but the loop is so addicting that, in all the time I played, I didn't get tired of it once.

On top of that, the game is priced at $10, which is very fair pricing for the content and how great the gameplay is. I have had a ton of fun playing each match and it didn't feel stale thanks to how fast-paced it was and tight the gameplay is. With some compromises, this can be enjoyable on the Steam Deck too, but it does come with a cost.

Friends vs Friends - Steam Deck Performance

Friends vs Friends, even with seemingly minimal graphics, actually is a bit hard to run on the Steam Deck. Without any changes, which is at maximum resolution and high graphics, the game struggles to maintain high framerates (35-40 FPS), which I find essential for first-person multiplayer games. Luckily there are a few changes we can make to get it to a higher framerate and generally make it playable.

Thanks to the aesthetic being more cartoony with broader borders around objects, lowering resolution and using FSR doesn't hurt the visuals as much. So, lowering resolution to 960x600 and turning FSR Sharpness 2 on keeps the game looking quite good, albeit slightly more blurry.

Paired with lower graphical settings, we can get to a mostly stable 55 FPS with rare drops in the Subway and Truck stages. While it isn't 60, this feels really close and I didn't feel it affected how I played. I was able to see the enemies clearly enough to shoot at them.

We can also play the game at a pretty solid 40 with high graphics settings, but due to it running at 40, it doesn't feel nearly as smooth. But, if you are playing against friends in a LAN-like setting and you both set to 40 to keep it fair, this could be a fantastic way to play with the game looking as good as possible!

The game does have 16:10 controller support, so there will be no black bars around your screen, but it doesn't have cloud saves. Friends vs Friends does have controller support too, but one thing to remember is playing online, you might be playing against others using a keyboard and mouse. This could lead to an unfair advantage they have, but if you have a dock, using a mouse and keyboard will be fantastic.

Conclusion

Friends vs Friends is quite possibly one of the best multiplayer versus games I have played in a long time. I can't recall a time I had so much fun just playing match after match. The different cards make each round feel unique and keep things interesting with each new set of cards. Add in new characters to unlock and new cards you can collect and this will be a fantastic addition to your library. While it can be a bit difficult to play on the Steam Deck, the compromises are worth it to enjoy this incredible experience. If you have friends with Steam Decks, this is going to be an essential game to get and play together!

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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