Mount Your Friends
The goal of “Mount Your Friends” is simple: you have to climb up increasingly tall towers of your friends, using each button on the controller to control each limb. Once you get to the top, you become the next link in the man chain, and it’s the next person’s turn to climb.
At first, “Mount Your Friends” has a QWOP-like appeal. Dramatic music swells as your functionally incapable climber fumbles his way to the top. Limbs will get tangled up in other limbs, and your climber will inevitably fall down to earth.
But once you get used to the controls, it becomes a fun, competitive sporting event — just one with shirtless men climbing over each other. The game’s physics engine allows for a lot of advanced technique, like launching yourself upwards or rolling for momentum. It’s all against the clock, and when a room is cheering you on to climb to the top in time, it can get intense.
“Mount Your Friends” is a bizarre pleasure. It’d be amusing enough just to watch the game, with its unnecessarily beefy men and their crazy costumes, but it’s satisfying to play, too.
Worms Battlegrounds
The “Worms” series does not, strictly speaking, make sense. Why the titular worms are blowing each other apart with bazookas, and why their weaponry ranges from flying sheep to concrete donkeys, isn’t explained. But it doesn’t really need to be — once you’ve dropped a holy hand grenade on another worm and quickly squirmed away, it’ll all come together.
“Worms Battlegrounds” is the latest entry in the “Worms” series, and features some cool things like classes and water physics, but things haven’t really changed. You can play any “Worms,” going back to the classic “Worms 2: Armageddon,” and have a great time.
“Worms” is a turn-based game, so each turn has a built-in audience. That can range from allies cheering you on as you nuke another worm to your enemy cursing you out.
Party games shouldn’t just be judged on the quality of their gameplay — they also have to make for fun social interactions. “Worms,” with its absurdist violence and frequent opportunities for self-destruction, does everything a good party game should. It’ll create rivalries, alliances and laugh-out-loud moments. Hopefully, your playgroup will focus on the laugh-out-loud moments and let the rivalries end when the game does.