My Friend Pedro: Hello There :)

Is it ridiculous? Yep. Is it excessive? Maybe. Does it feel awesome? Perhaps not in the moment, but watching your replay works wonders.

The first game I finished during my unexpected week off due to Covid-19 shuttering my university was My Friend Pedro, a 2-D action platformer. Very much in the same vein of gameplay as Hotline Miami, My Friend Pedro modifies the former's gameplay with a larger focus on trick shots and confrontation. It also is a radically different kind of game, being somehow more light-hearted and comical than the former despite having roughly an equal amount of violence. I thoroughly enjoyed my time dodging and weaving through My Friend Pedro, so let's get to it.

The story of My Friend Pedro is essentially nonexistent, with you and a sentient talking banana named Pedro massacring legions of goons in a futuristic city, without spoiling things that is essentially it. The game can be split into four to five chapters with a varying number of levels in each.  I didn't particularly enjoy the story of My Friend Pedro, it just seems to exist for the purpose of giving a reason to the gameplay. In Hotline Miami there was this intrigue to the plot, and the varying characters and their perspectives made a big impression on me, yet here there really seems to be little more than one day you realized that gangsters are bad, so you set out to do something about it. Pedro does add a measure of absurdity and humor to the story, but by the end it really comes across as random humor.

Things definitely get pretty bizarre in each chapter, and while it is funny I wish that the game had a bit more consistency.

Though the story of My Friend Pedro is quite weak, the gameplay is really anything but. It's essentially Hotline Miami except from a semi 2-D perspective, bullet-time, and acrobatic tricks like spins, rolls, and kicks. It's a good deal more laid back and zen-like than Hotline Miami's frantic combo-based gameplay, though the final few levels are absolutely crawling with enemies that you'll be twirling and spinning through, twin uzis roaring. The ability to ride skateboards, kick objects (including aforementioned skateboards) into people, and ricochet bullets around corners added a welcome feeling of player choice, though there were an equal number of situations where you were forced into using these techniques in order to progress. Unfortunately, the platforming of My Friend Pedro also disappointed me, being easily the least fun or compelling moments in the game due to their large lack of creativity. Perhaps it's a commentary on how limiting platforming on a 2-D plane is, but I honestly feel like I've seen every one of the platforming segments/obstacles before, just not in the same game. On the other hand, each of the almost half-dozen boss fights throughout the game's story are incredibly unique, being set pieces that really feel worthy of being called boss fights. My personal favorite would have to be the very first, which has you escaping gangsters along some sort of outrun-style highway. The controls are by and large pretty smooth, though the tutorial makes it seem harder than it is. The feeling of momentum is pretty strong in this game, a bit like parkour, though the more experimental portions like vehicle segments and riding skateboards really do not have the best controls.

One of the things that My Friend Pedro does better than Hotline Miami is the feeling of momentum. When the controls finally click there's just a perfect pace of jumping, shooting, and rolling.

My Friend Pedro's visual style didn't leave me much of an impression apart than it works alright. It's not particularly distinctive and suffers from the same feeling of being random that afflicts the plot, but on the other hand it's pretty easy on the eyes. The way that the semi 2-D environment handles 3-D transitions (like you going up an apartment staircase) is incredibly smooth, almost like you're watching the hallway scene from Oldboy, except with guns and backflips. The music is also pretty strong, with some of the songs being absolute bangers. The earlier-mentioned first boss fight on the highway had my favorite song of the game in it, and as soon as I stopped playing for the night I had to check it out ("Low Life On the Highway" is the name of the song by the way).

I normally hate rifles in my action games, but somehow the sniper rifle became my favorite weapon. Pure satisfaction.

At the end of the day while I did have fun playing My Friend Pedro, it failed to leave much of a lasting impression on me. I definitely had fun playing it for its pretty damn fun gameplay (excepting platforming), but the short runtime and lack of a compelling story essentially made me forget about it almost as soon as I completed the game. It's an enjoyable game for an afternoon, though a bit pricy at that, you could do worse with twenty bucks, but you could also get more value out of that as well. I'll give it a small recommendation because I genuinely enjoyed playing it.

Next up is either Knives Out or Betrayer, I have quite a backlog at the moment, and hopefully I'll be able to get some of that reduced.