Mount Your Friends Review
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Sexual innuendo! Who doesn’t like it? Well, people who are kinda awkward about the whole „crotch-in-your-face“ thing Mount Your Friends has going for it. Also, it’s not really implicit when the game has you controlling a dude in a speedo grabbing other similarly dressed dudes and climbing them in a rather jittery fashion. Anyhow, this is what the game focuses on – two players, time limit and a whole lot of disturbingly readily available „athletes“ climbing on top of one another. Bear with me, it’s much better than it sounds.
In the last decade or so, hot seat multiplayer took a step back and let online multiplayer to take the spotlight. This isn’t an issue in and of itself, but most developers decided to either make hot seat available only on consoles or, even worse, ditch it altogether in titles that were a natural fit. However, it would seem that more and more games that get released on Steam bring hot seat with them. Mount Your Friends is guilty of doing this too, and we can only sing praise to it for that reason. See, this game is built not to be played with a stranger over the Intrawebs, but with a pal who’s easily made uncomfortable by your in-game crotchgrabbing skills. In all seriousness, though, if you can disregard a couple of… wobbly… things on the characters, you’re in for quite a laugh with each and every game.Â
The clever thing about Mount Your Friends is its surprising elegance in conveying gameplay to the player. There are no levels, per se. The game just places you in front of a strangely content goat and tells you to climb the bugger. You do so, only to set a new target to the opposing team. Once the other player does so too, it’s your turn to overcome the newly grown mountain of bodies again. This switching goes around until one player is unable to top the last record. Why is this elegant? Because there’s no content to wade through and there is nothing but pure gameplay to keep the players at it. It’s just a single „arena“, so to say, where the gamers create their own kicks and laughs – and that’s what makes it the perfect party game. Even better, there are additional game modes to increase its replayability and amusement level when there are more than two pals at your place. Naturally, the online multiplayer is also available for the more introvert gamers among us.
This is disturbing in all the wrong ways.
The one thing that had me worried about how well Mount Your Friends would translate to Steam is how the controls might be handled. I can confirm that this was nicely translated into the new ecosystems and that the mouse/keyboard combo does wonders when it comes to precisely controlling your chap’s limbs. Some might argue that it’s easier to play with a controller, but this is not the case with me. It’s all about personal preference, in the end, and we can only be thankful that this game’s rather unorthodox control system translated nicely to PC. Regarding the visuals, there’s nothing new here, and the game looks exactly the same as it did back on X360. This is not a bad thing, mind you, as there really isn’t much one could do to upgrade the style that works really well with this game. The sounds are the technical detail of the game, however, as the slapping sounds and unfathomable weak punches you’ll clumsily land every once in a while make the whole thing even funnier than it already is. Mount Your Friends will also probably work on a week-old pie if you manage to get it installed on the damned thing. This guarantees that the game is playable on a very wide range of computing machines – in return, its low, low price also makes it an extremely desirable thing to buy. These two traits are something most people who find schlong-wrestling interesting will definitely want to consider. And yes, I am so, so sorry for making you read that sentence.
In case your randomly generated human climbers get to you after a while, you can always turn them into zombies or unholy Cthlhu spawn to amuse you again. The options are limitless! Actually, no, they aren’t, and there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself in short supply of stupid stuff to wear. This is really the only thing I resent in Mount Your Friends. And implementing Steam Workshop would certainly go a long way towards guaranteeing even more replayability here. Sadly, I cannot see that happening as there’s very little in the way of Steam integration available here. And while the whole thing might get stale soon if you don’t have a pal to play with, this is still a very good investment that will amuse you every once in a while.
Finally, Mount Your Friends serves us an experience like no other and due to that fact alone deserves a place in everybody’s gaming library. Naturally, this is the game you want to play with as many people as is humanely possible, so it’s the perfect choice for those of us who are hotseat-starved in these dark years. If you’re an awkward person who dislikes seeing dongs while playing, I suggest avoiding it, though.