My Friend Pedro flips out on June 20th
It's time to (banana) split
Acrobatic bullet-time platformer My Friend Pedro is just two weeks away, after over five years in development. I've been keeping an eye on DeadToast's snazzy-looking shooter for a while, as its animated GIFs and trailers are always a joy, featuring a gleeful array of acrobatic ways to shoot a dude. Shoot them while kickflipping off a skateboard, hanging upside down from a rope or with bullets ricocheted off a frying pan you kicked twenty feet into the air. It's Max Payne by way of Cirque du Soleil, and lands on June 20th. See a fresh and oddly banana-scented trailer below.
The game's title comes from the titular Pedro, who is a floating banana that only you can see, and keeps talking you into shooting bad guys. So, not the most deadly serious of games - somehow I doubt we'll see any tortured Max Payne-ian monologues here. What we do get is physics-driven platforming and slow-mo combat, with a heavy emphasis on acrobatics. Flips and pirouettes bridge the gaps in your routine as you dodge bullets, and your guns can be aimed symmetrically if you want to pump lead into two villains at once. It looks like great fun, really, and my only concern is that the environments seem a little bland.
Judging by the previous trailer, there'll be a good range of baddies to shoot, from generic tracksuited Russian Mobster stereotypes to sci-fi troopers, armoured knights and the occasional mech. The timing of My Friend Pedro's release feels a little unusual to me, coming not long after Katana Zero did much the same, only with a sword. Both games have copious use of bullet-time and bullet-deflection systems, and even motorcycle chase levels. If they weren't both published under the same banner, they'd be deadly rivals, but I feel that there's room for two to do the bullet tango.
My Friend Pedro hits Steam on June 20th, costs £13.17/€14.27/$16.99 and is published by Devolver Digital. If you don't mind dusting off Flash, you can play the original, five-year-old browser prototype of the game here on Armor Games.