Let's immediately remove a potential ambiguity: Pedro is not the protagonist of the game (which actually has no name), but the banana that accompanies him. Because yes, in a Devolver game we consider it completely normal to converse with an imaginary friend in the shape of a banana. And of course, it is even more commonplace to slaughter all the human beings who are in our way. It must be said that our hero of the day unfortunately wakes up in the basement of a most glaucous butcher's shop, since she does not hesitate to use human meat to maximize her profits. Under these conditions, there is only one thing left for him to do: pick up the first gun lying around and decimate the mafioso with all his might. And the expression can almost be taken in its most literal sense because Pedro's friend shows extreme flexibility. He can thus avoid enemy fire by spinning on himself, perform somersaults, bounce on the walls, do the hanging pig hanging from a swinging rope or even, and above all, shoot two enemies located in opposite directions in spreading his arms. For the player, this maneuver is done by locking a first direction with a trigger pull or right click, then simply pulling in another direction. In general, the game is perfectly manageable, but we note all the same that it is much easier to place headshots with the mouse than with the joystick. DeadToast Entertainment's title is very oriented towards scoring and speedruns, so PC players will certainly have an advantage over their console counterparts. Note however that My Friend Pedro is never elitist. From the moment you are satisfied with a C or B score in most levels, you can completely complete the adventure without ever taking the lead, the prowess being necessary only to reach the levels A and S.
THE BIG BANANA?
It must be said that the game is very generous in terms of life and concentration, the latter being used to trigger a bullet time effect worthy of Max Payne. The competitive aspect (including against yourself) is therefore totally optional, the goal is above all to have fun. Moreover, in case of failure, we start again instantly, only a few meters from the place of our death, and without the already decimated enemies reappearing. So we have fun all the time, especially since the soundtrack is very catchy and the situations are not lacking in humor. Between our friend the banana, certain enemies taking the form of hardcore gamers who have become ultra-violent because of "decades spent playing brutal games", and our hero who inadvertently takes refuge on Christmas Eve from the bounty hunters' club when there is a bounty on his head, there is plenty to do. On the production side, only a few animations that are a little stiff or that follow each other in an imperfect way betray the fact that a single developer is in charge. But Victor Ågren has not been idle, because on the forty levels that make up the adventure, he manages to regularly offer us small novelties. Here we discover that we can kick objects to throw them at enemies, there we shoot a frying pan to kill enemies by ricochets, and again we have the possibility of riding a skateboard for a few meters. Not to mention the zip lines, barrels to roll, rope jumps, lever mechanisms, etc.
More varied in its gameplay than one might think at first glance, the game suffers on the other hand from an artistic direction that is a little too monotonous, which suffers in addition to the urban character of the levels. You have to love warehouses, construction sites, sewers and other basements. Fortunately, My Friend Pedro also knows how to show variety from time to time, like those levels that take place in the unconscious of the hero (or Pedro, we don't really know), the one that we go through in free fall, the one in a train or the very enjoyable passage on a motorbike. Moreover, we would have liked to be able to ride the two-wheeler more than once in the adventure but, fortunately, it is possible to redo this level at will, just to improve your score for example. In reality, the game is very honest in its proposal, since it does not recycle its good ideas to infinity just to artificially extend the lifespan. The deal is this: you can complete the adventure in four hours, but the room for improvement in the scores remains enormous. If you want to get your money's worth, it's up to you to start again and again to improve. History to motivate the "beautiful game", each end of level gratifies us not only with a detailed score screen, but also with a small extract of our exploits chosen automatically, and which it is possible to save in the form of GIF animated and tweet directly from the game. It's pretty clever! In the end, My Friend Pedro turns out to be very pleasant overall. Never revolutionary, of course, but is that really what we are asking of it? The pleasure of killing with style is enough on its own.
