Hands-on with a unique blend of arena-style FPS and… collectible cards?
FvF is a cartoony first person shooter from Brainwash Gang and Raw Fury where the goal is to modify the play experience in unpredictable ways.
The game tasks us to build a deck of a dozen or so cards that denote what abilities and buffs we have during battle. Then, at the beginning of a match, a set number of cards are drawn from the deck, so for example in a 1v1 match we might be drawing four cards. The cards can be anything, too, like weapons or abilities or even map modifiers, and this is where the game moves from being just a neat looking FPS to something completely wild.
During one of my (several) play sessions at PAX East I drew one weapon, two ability cards, and a map modifier. The game always starts us with a pistol, which is good enough for the matches, but we can get new weapons, although again that’s not necessary. I drew the Giant ability card, which triples our health but also makes us super slow and very visible in the arena. But, I also drew an Invisibility card — which made me an invisible giant that only showed up on the map when I would shoot my weapon. I just stood in the corner waiting for my opponent to get near me before I took them out, because I wasn’t going to let myself get revealed by shooting early.
And then in another match I drew a nuke, a modifier that changes the whole layout of the map. The map flipped into a sort of post-apocalyptic scene. But my opponent ALSO had a nuke card, and when he played it the map suddenly changed and we were thrown to the moon. This messed with our gravity in our jumps and even affected how our bullets move.
Friends vs Friends a super cool idea that really levels the playing field when playing an FPS, and it’s a concept that could bring a whole new freshness to the genre. It’s due to launch this year.
Images and video courtesy Brainwash Gang and Raw Fury.
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