My Friend Pedro - Review
The best way to describe My Friend Pedro is that the game is absolutely bananas and that is a good thing, but is it a fresh banana or has it gone a little ripe?
The story, well it makes little sense, you wake up, no idea who your are or what is going on but you are quickly introduced to by a floating banana named Pedro, he gives you some basic information and then tells you to get a move on. Walking into the first human people, you discover you were to be turned into meat by a butcher, but still no reason who you are, or why you were captured, but in the grand scheme of things, that does not matter. The game is more about style than story and it is something that it does quest well.
If you have seen any trailers of the game, then you know what I mean, you can run and gun, killing an enemy or two with ease, but it is when you begin to combine that, with the combination moves of tony hawk and Deadpool that things become more exciting. When you jump, if you are in motion, then you will do a flip in the jump, but unlike some games, you are still able to aim and shoot at targets, while this makes you look cool, it also helps make you a smaller target for enemies to shoot at, which is always a good thing. If you need to climb up to a higher ledge, you can do that by wall jump and yep, you guessed it, you can still shoot whilst you do it.
All this shooting and jumping though, can get a little much at times, especially when there are hosts of enemies out too kill you, which is where your time slowing mechanic comes into play. At anytime, with the press of the left stick, you can slow down time, letting you line up a shot faster and take out enemies with a little mor ease. This does make you remain the same speed though, as you slow down just as much as the enemies do, it does give you more of a chance to line up a shot, before they can line up on you. In addition, once you pick up the second of some guns, you can lock onto one enemy, then aim at another and let the bullets fly, it is a nice touch and helps clear out some rooms a lot faster than simply taking them down one at a time. Finally, the move that I never used, until the game reminded me that I could, dodging, if you don’t dodge, you will take a lot of fire from those out to do you harm, it is not an indefinite thing, but you can do it for a few seconds, before you have to stop dodging. The best part about this though, so that all the moves listed before this work at the same time, so you can jump, lock onto two enemies, slow down time and then dodge, all the while raining down a hail of bullets upon those who would stand in your way, it is a real treat to the eyes when it happens.
Sadly though, all that comes at a cost and that is the controls are a bit of a mess, there is something about them that is just not intuitive, in order to lock onto a second enemy you need to hold down the left trigger, after aiming at them with the right stick. On its own, it sounds easy enough, but when you have to to dodge with the left shoulder button, it becomes trickier to grasp, which is why I rarely dodged. In addition, you can kick items at people with X, at least on Switch, which is simple enough, but you need to aim them first, with the right stick as well, else your kicked item is going nowhere fast. With time slowing, being assigned to the left stick, it becomes a mess of options and if you are only using a few of them, it is passable, but when you need to combine them all, it is something that leaves ones fingers tied up like a contortionist’ body.
As far as the presentation goes, it borders a realist vibe, but with a cartoony edge, which is sold by the banana that pops up from time to time, delivering hints and random thoughts. There is a series of levels that take place in the home world, of Pedro and they are just out there crazy, which is a brilliant thing. The levels before then and after are very generic locations, which do match the story being told, but they tend to blend together, making it feel like just more of the same, but when you dive into the water and enter, Banana World, for lack of a better name, it just feels like a breath of fresh air.
On the audio side, there is something simple about it, the music matches and helped elevate the action, where appropriate, but nothing of it stands above the rest. The sound effects are punchy, without overwhelming the action, I mean there is something about the sound of bullets, that are bouncing off a cast iron skillet, as it is juggled in the air, with the ricocheted shots landing in any near by body mass. There is no speech in the game, it is all done as text, with Pedro getting some talking noises, it does not hurt in anyway, especially as your character is mute.
My Friend Pedro is not going to be a game for everyone, especially given how complex it can be at times, with the number of moves that you can combine, it does offer a lot of choice. The controls though are going to be a roadblock for many, they are just too complex and as a result, a lot of the options will be ignored, which removes a bit of wow from the game as a whole. That said, with each level having a best score to go for, there is a lot of replayability and those who master the controls, could easily find themselves being lost in the world of high scores and leaderboards and there is nothing wrong with that.
