The Banana made me do it.
When Devolver Digital publishes a game, I often take notice. They’ve been very good at delivering extremely satisfying hidden gems year in and year out. Gris, a title that released last December on the Nintendo Switch was my game of the year, and Ruiner, released in 2017, placed third on my top ten of that year. When My Friend Pedro was announced back at E3 in 2018, it was a title I was very eager to try, not mention curious about its controls and the fact that you’re led around dozens of violent set pieces by a homicidal banana. For as crazy as its premise is, its ballet of violent destruction is even more so, offering one of the best action titles of the year.
It’s hard not to consistently remain impressed with this title as your kicking a frying pan into the air and using it to ricochet a few dozen bullets into the bodies of bounty hunters drabbed in some awful looking Christmas sweaters. The sheer variety in how you can perform kills is staggering for a title that at its surface seems initially shallow. Alongside your standard pistols and shotguns, you’ll have a decent array of weaponry to use, not to mention kicking skateboards, frying pans, knives, gasoline containers, or severed heads into your enemies, or using that fancy footwork on them instead. My Friend Pedro offers a wealth of variety that can often make additional playthroughs wildly different from one another, despite each set piece being static and constant, like most puzzle-based combat games.
Among the wall jumping and slow-motion leaps into the air with a pair of dual pistols, it’s easy to see that developer DeadToast is influenced by a variety of action films, most notably that of the more extravagant Honk Kong action films that have been the inspiration for the action genre as a whole. You can manually aim dual pistols or SMG’s at seperate enemies, even while in the air, and use the ability to slow down time to leap from above and get in some insanely sick trick shots. It’s also incredibly easy to bounce bullets off certain surfaces, all while on the deck of a skateboard, coasting through the air to leap onto a swinging crane hook, all in one fluid motion. The spectacle of action here is wild, energetic, and allows My Friend Pedro to succeed in everything it seeks out to do. While the overall experience is rather short, at around 4-5 hours, you can certainly sink more time into the game should you want to track down every last secret or S rank every single level.
The concept of the game is simple; you play as a masked man who awakes to find himself in front of a floating banana, instructing him to lash out at the leaders of a criminal organization. While there is a story revelation that is weaved through the game and revealed in the game’s final moments, the story here is peppered with some solid humor, even if the core narrative itself is rather bland and generic. In fact, the way the game conveys its story is similar to that of Ruiner, where much of the story is told to you as you move from location to location by a voice in your ear and the boss characters that will talk your ear off when they’ve discovered you.
Told across a handful of chapters, you’ll have several different types of threats to dispatch. There are typical grunts with some basic weaponry, bounty hunter clad in Christmas sweaters, a gang of violent larpers, heavily armed soldiers, to numerous environmental threats such as turrets or instant kill lasers. To progress to the next kill, you’ll take on a variety of puzzles such as flipping switches to navigate mazes, or pulling levers to access new paths; with none of them being terribly complicated to the point where you’ll find yourself stuck and looking up a walkthrough. There are also special paths to discover that will have you tracking down collectibles that offer up new game modes to try out once you’ve completed the game. These modifiers allow you to play through the campaign with infinite ammo, big head mode, increased speed, and more interesting options.
The overall moves you can perform are jumping leaps into the air, a twirling dodge that allows you to twirl your guns around while the bullets fly around you, to swinging on crane hooks, flipping tables for cover, or delivering a well-timed kick to your assailant. You also have the ability to slow down time, using what is called Focus, to not just kill in a stylish manner, but to offer you more time to pick your shots. While used sparingly, you can cruise around a few levels on a skateboard, or the single level on the back of a bike that really needed to be revisited at least another time since it was frankly the best level in the game and felt vastly underused.
For weapons, you’ll have a pair of pistols and SMG’s, a shotgun that can really tear things up, an assault rifle with a grenade launcher attachment, as well as a very capable sniper rifle that frankly can be used as easily as the pistols. Every weapon feels satisfying to use and can often give the game a very Deadpool feel with how fluid the combat feels alongside the comedic approach to its mayhem. In fact, I’d also say this is the best Deadpool type action game I’ve seen so far, despite the Merc with the Mouth having plenty of other examples to draw comparisons to.
Given the action spectacle of the chaos and the concept of aiming at multiple foes, it didn’t take me long to get acclimated with the controls. You’ll use the right stick to move your aim cursor around, while also using the Left Trigger to activate a lock-on cursor with the second equipped weapon. pushing Left stick in will trigger focus, while also being the way you’ll move around. A is to jump, B to interact, X to reload, and Y will perform a short-range kick. Pressing up on the D-pad will bring up your weapon wheel, which will slow time to a crawl, but not forever. LB is your dodge spin which can make for a life saver as your three bar health can be drained fairly quickly from incoming bullets or explosions, causing you to take a breather as the current segment recharges, pressing upon you the urgency to find more health.
There is a somewhat cartoony approach to its visuals and bloodshed, that fits in extremely well with its humor and tone. There is even a selection of levels that bring in a ton of color and a drastic change of scenery than what we see in the rest of the game. These levels also grant you the ability to fly in some respect, making it feel very different as well. The visual language is also well crafted as you’ll always have an idea on where to go, how to get there, and what aspects of the environment you can use to deal out justice.
Dressed up in some addictive synthwave music that meshes perfectly with its chaos, I thoroughly enjoyed the few hours I spent with My Friend Pedro. The title, which is currently available on Gamepass is a solid addition to the service and an action-packed ride worth taking. The kinetic energy to its traversal and mayhem is vastly entertaining, and while I wish there were more uses of the bike, I still don’t really have any major complaints and most of my critiquing is largely composed of mere nit-picking. Apart from Game Pass, the cheap price to own the game is well worth the cost, despite its short length, and given its available on almost every platform now, there is really no reason not to add this to your library and submit to the ramblings of a homicidal banana.
My Friend Pedro was downloaded via Game Pass by the reviewer and played on an Xbox One X.
All screenshots were taken on an Xbox One X.