Friendly Steps 리뷰 (PC)

If there was ever a game that could underscore the reasons why you shouldn’t take advice from a drunk friend, it would be Friendly Steps—a multiplayer “walking” simulator that merrily and drunkenly tips its hat to the terrible ideas that arise after a long night on the town.

In most cases, you would rely on a local taxi service to ferry you home before nursing a god-awful hangover. In Friendly Steps, however, taking a taxi isn’t a viable option; it’s an inconvenient alternative that, with all due respect to the cabbies, fails to fabricate a sense of adventure. Walking home with your friends shackled to your side, on the other hand, makes for a story that you can proudly smile about in the morning. That is, of course, if you can ever remember it.

Friendly Steps aims to capture the aftermath of a good night out—the post-drink slump that often sees several friends stumbling through the neighborhood to reach their respective homes. Like Conker, it puts you in the shoes of an intoxicated patron who simply wishes to make their way back home to remediate a hangover and forget past mistakes. But of course, herein lies the bitter pill: home is a long, long way away, and it just so happens to be on the other end of several miles’ worth of high-rise paths, narrow bridges and deadly obstacles.

Chained Together immediately sprang to mind when I tethered myself to the other idiotic drunkards at the bar. Similarly, it hooked me onto a rope, gave me a vague idea of what I had to do, and then proceeded to tell me that I needed to learn how to walk all over again. Rather than giving me a trusty exoskeleton to help me sprint, it handed me two legs and a separate control for each. Manual Samuel, too, came to mind at that point. A sense that things were about to get out of hand real quick was also evident. The destination might have been obvious, but I knew for certain that the journey would be an absolute nightmare.

There’s an equal share of blame to go around in a game like Friendly Steps. Sure enough, if it’s not your friends who are dragging you down, then it’s physics. See, the problem you have here is that, as you are, of course, well over the limit, you cannot simply cure fatigue through conventional methods alone. Like Baby Steps, you must learn how to put one foot in front of the other, and, as if to make matters that much worse, lean on your friends to help you reach various checkpoints. You cannot run, and you cannot walk with confidence. You can, however, crawl.

Friendly Steps is a game that likes to make your life a living hell for no reason whatsoever. Mechanically, it isn’t all that difficult to grasp, as it is mostly involves operating two legs and collaborating with a group to overcome various obstacles. It’s what the game laces between that makes it a pain in the backside to slog through. If, say, you trip over your own shoelace, then you will either stumble and fall, or drag your friends into an abyss. The same applies for the other players, meaning, if even one of you happen to make a mistake during the trek home, everyone has to pay for it.

Like your traditional rage game, Friendly Steps comes with a question: can you trust your friends to bring you to your final destination? In most cases, there’s a simple answer to said question — and that’s a big fat no, you can’t trust ‘em to take you to the end of the street, let alone to the final hurdle. As you all find yourselves in the same boat, however, it isn’t just your friends that need to learn how to walk again. You, too, carry a lot of the burden on your shoulders.

While the act of putting one foot in front of the other isn’t all that challenging, Friendly Steps does, without thinking twice about the consequences, do all in its power to prevent you from breezing through its world. With several obstacle-riddled biomes to crawl through and dozens of environmental hazards to overcome, it is never feels as simple as alternating between two limbs and walking the tight rope. Everything—a slight gust of wind, even—can cause a ripple effect and send each of you flying through the air. It’s your job to ensure that the pain and suffering doesn’t linger any longer than absolutely necessary.

Beneath its rage-inducing antics and absurd obstacles is a surprisingly rewarding co-op game that gets a lot of things right. As infuriating as it is, the game itself brings a lot of lovable bits and pieces to the table, with some beautifully doughy visuals, hilarious characters, and a ton of customization options. Granted, it might not be the first game to pair physics-based chaos with rage-inducing mechanics, but it is one that captures the best of both worlds in a positively more-ish way.

When all’s said and done, there’s just no avoiding the imminent headache that you’re going to have to face in Friendly Steps. That said, if you can stick with the slack long enough to see your journey through to the bitter end, then you might just look back on your past mistakes in a slightly more positive light. It’s unlikely I’ll admit, but you get the point. Friendships will fall apart regardless, but the steps you take before all hell breaks loose might just overshadow the moments that induce the storm. Well, something like that. Honestly, though, it’s best not to get your hopes up.

Verdict

Friendly Steps drunkenly spouts the gospel of a post-party slog through a bizarrely crowded neighborhood of unconventional set pieces and deadly obstacles, all in the hopes of emphasizing a simple message to the rage-loving masses: that friends can be the perfect crutch for any pre-hangover predicament, should they ever be willing to lend a hand, an arm, or, more importantly, a leg. While it might not be the first of its kind to preach the same message, it is a commendable mouthpiece that checks all of the right boxes and gets all of the appropriate words across. To that end, I’d call it a good game. An original game, no — but a game that will most definitely give you something to write home about, nonetheless.