MY FRIEND PEDRO
This banana’s split
Every slow-mo headshot is getting us closer to our goal: to invade the internet and take down the alwaysangry Orphelia for reasons only our masked hero and his banana sidekick understand. It’s not the deepest ruse but it holds the gunplay together, and that’s all we need.
My Friend Pedro is an arcade shooter that wants you to feel like a cartwheeling, guntoting superhero. 1 Every screen is a neatly arranged set-piece of bloodletting, and the controls – for the most part – enable you to take out rooms of goons with gymnastic precision. Gun-aim is handled on the right thumbstick; when dual-wielding pistols or Uzis you can target one enemy and manually aim at another for double-death. Add in a slow-motion move at the tap of p, coupled with the handy ability to wall-jump, and balletic ballistics are a cinch. Bullet-dodging on o makes our hero spin from enemy fire, spraying bullets as he does so.
It’s all peachy, then? Not quite. My Friend Pedro is great out of the stalls but slips on a banana at the final hurdle, as some button combos require superhuman dexterity to pull off. Objects can be kicked into the air and weaponised2 but this requires tapping w and using the right thumbstick to aim
– in the heat of combat it’s impossible.
Taken with the game’s slooooow animation and floaty physics, a short campaign and unimaginative boss battles, the game just fails to ignite.
That’s not to say My Friend Pedro doesn’t have its moments; somersaulting and sniping is novel, and when you clear a room by weaponising the environment it’s incredibly satisfying. Just don’t expect the slickest shooter. Ian Dean