One stage may have you leaping from swinging wires like George of the Jungle, while the next will have you flipping groups of switches to power up elevators and open a maze of pathways. You’re also tossed a pretty steady stream of new twists on the gameplay and level design to keep things from feeling stale. Do you ride the skateboard and bust out Ollies through this group of foes as you gun them down? Do you punt a rock at one of their heads as a distraction first and go on a Bruce Lee kicking rampage first? Or simply dive in the old fashioned way and pump them with shotgun shells while spinning to safety? Flashier moves strung together will net you more points, but you can still usually opt for the more straightforward engagements if you wish. You can often engage in a number of different techniques to achieve the same outcome. With the abundance of moves coupled with these environmental elements, My Friend Pedro nicely balances linearity with flexibility in your actions. These include gas tanks that can blow up multiple baddies, rocks that can be kicked at their face, and even skateboards to coast around with greater speed and maneuverability.
You’re sometimes tossed environmental objects and hazards that you can interact with and use as supplemental tools during this ballet of destruction. The seamless ducking, dodging, leaping, and spinning through each area add a dynamic that makes you feel akin to a finessed action hero. These mechanics working in harmony produce a satisfying flow to the game which makes it feel like a violent dance as much as a shooter. This limited ability allows you to dodge gunfire coming at you from all sides, and, coupled with the twist evasion, to channel your inner-Neo. What is perhaps the game’s core feature, though, is the ability to slow down time by simply clicking the left joystick. On top of performing enjoyable belly flop leaps from platform to platform while shooting, you can also wall-hop, spin to avoid incoming gunfire, and roll through small areas Samus-style. For a stripped-down sidescrolling shooter, there’s a surprisingly vast array of moves at your disposal. The name of the game is to scramble and survive from A to B as you mow down gun-wielding foes with a variety of weapons. Despite this insanity, My Friend Pedro occasionally still falls back on 2D action-shooter tropes that resemble a wacked-out Shadow Complex at times. This biome is wrought with Leotard-sporting baddies that bust out amusing insults you might hear on Xbox Live, along with randomly placed googly-eyed faces, gingerbread houses, and other surreal elements. These trippy Adult Swim-tinged themes blatantly come to the surface in one of the handful of biomes featured - my personal favorite - Pedro’s World, which sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the mostly typical industrial, street, and sci-fi environments elsewhere. Buckle up, because it only gets stranger from here. While he looks harmless with his eerily joyful grin, your new friend coaxes you to run and gun your way through a variety of henchmen, turrets, and internet trolls, for motives which are uncovered as you press on. You wake up in the basement of a butcher shop in a daze, only to find you’ve got an imaginary companion at your side - a talking banana named Pedro. You’ve definitely got that trademark Adult Swim trippiness which permeates the narrative and cheeky bits of dialogue. The weird style and occasionally spotty mechanics make more sense when tracing My Friend Pedro back to its origins - as a Flash-based Adult Swim game.
0 kommentar(er)
