Adobe Flash has helped create a lot of amazing things. I wouldn’t say extraordinary like the cure to cancer or a tracking device to every deposit of buried treasure in the world, but internet-wise it has helped a lot of small talented individuals rise to glory. Flash is a software used to view and edit pieces of media, but in simpler terms it’s used to create content. Whether that be to design an interactive program or better yet design a moving picture. Back in the day, Flash was one of the first animation programs easily available online. Anyone could just about download Flash and start messing around with the tools on offer. Creating shorts, cartoons, and even games. The content wasn't of top quality as the tools Flash had available were limited, but it was the start of content creation. Much like any artist out there, these Adobe Flash users improved overtime through experience. The games created could be considered an early form of independent game development. Like Edmund McMillen who went on to expand his first game Super Meat Boy, and create The Binding of Issac which influenced every indie roguelike you now see. Those Flash animators are still creating cartoons today using the program. Flash even helped create a little website you know as Newgrounds. A place where animators and programmers could publish their work, and dozens of online users could easily access and enjoy their content.
Flash is brilliant. To be fair there have been some tragedies. Like the program becoming harder to use overtime, and recently it shut down meaning some of the games that utilize Flash can no longer run. Meaning they are to be abandoned in the depths of internet history. Overall though what has been made is unique, and today’s title is a game originally made using Flash. In 2014, a little side-scrolling action title known as MFP: My Friend Pedro was published by Adult Swim Games. It had a simple gameplay loop of using slow motion to flip around and shoot waves of enemies that closed in on your position. It was contrived, it was silly, and it was awesome. MFP would remain to be another unique Flash made game, but surprisingly this concept would evolve overtime as the creators evolved into Deadtoast Entertainment. Founded and directed solely by Victor Agren, Deadtoast Entertainment wanted to recapture the action packed combat of the MFP in a more professional way and using modern hardware. They would recreate the game from ground up and live up to the potential it had. By 2015, Deadtoast announced that a reimagined version of My Friend Pedro was being made.
They wanted to make this new version of the game as fun and badass as possible, but it would take time before the final product would be released. Around E3 2018, Deadtoast showed off some footage of what the new reboot of My Friend Pedro would look like, and luckily the audience with the silly humor and over the top action on display. It wasn’t as good as other indie games at the time and it looked really rough, but it was heading in the right direction. Later in 2019 with the help of Devolver Digital, a company known for publishing small indie titles, Deadtoast got the funding it needed and finally released My Friend Pedro. With expectations and the promise of bringing a Flash game to a new light, would it actually live up? The answer is yes, to a lot of people at least. My Friend Pedro received decent review scores from critics and was called an indie gem. It was one of Devolver Digital’s better selling titles and at the time of writing this it sold more than one million copies. The game is good, but why don’t I like it. What is prohibiting me from easily recommending this to you?
My Friend Pedro takes heavy influence from two sources. Max Payne and Hotline Miami. Two extremely griddy games with gorey action and combat that keeps you on your toes. No other games could recapture the feeling these two had, but recently there have been. This year we received Ape Out, Katana Zero, and this of course. Katana Zero being one of my favorite games of the year for how magical yet confusing it is of an experience. The bar has obviously been set, so does My Friend Pedro jump over or at least manage to touch the bar. Kinda. This review is probably gonna get a lot of flack for the amount of bias on display, but My Friend Pedro is pretty disappointing when you compare it to these other great hits. It’s not a bad game and a majority of people will have fun with it. The action, the humor, and the amount of replayability due to its score system and how fun it is to speedrun through levels. I certainly had fun with the game, but it’s missing that spark these other games have. The unique features that made Katana Zero and Ape Out appealing. What made them works of art. My Friend Pedro isn’t something I would exactly call art, and that’s the controversial view point because obviously it wasn’t supposed to be art or give a message. In today’s world though it does matter what it's about and if it's a work of art that represents something. Today we’ll be diving into My Friend Pedro and why I somehow don’t really love this game.
Story
We awaken in the meat locker of a butchery. It’s cold, dark, and seems to be locked from the outside. Our face is covered by a gas mask, we’re wearing a leather jacket, and we’re starting to hallucinate. No recollection of who we are and how he got there, but we are then approached by a floating talking banana who appears out of thin air. The banana’s name is Pedro and states that you're his best friend. Pedro tells you that the man who owns the butchery is named Mitch, and he is secretly an arms dealer who works for some shady people. Since Pedro is your best friend he plans to get you out, and take down whatever madlad is responsible for locking you up inside a meat locker. You sneak through an air duct, end up outside, pick up a pistol, and are immediately noticed by the hooligans hanging around the facility. Looks like we aren’t taking the easy way out. We then start blasting dudes in the face and lighting the butchery up in bullets, smoke, blood, and fire. Luckily Pedro has gifted you with the magical ability to slow down time and dodge enemy bullets, meaning you can stand a chance against the insurmountable waves of gunners heading towards you. Once you take down Mitch you learn of stronger beings in control, and you are off to pursue them alongside Pedro. You’ll accumulate a fancy arsenal of weapons, learn more of your past, what is really going on, and pull some sick moves because for a guy with no memory of anything you can do some cool stuff. Like skateboarding. It takes people years to learn how to skateboard! Anyways, the plot is pretty simple and the way I’d summarize it is that it’s a reinterpretation of Kill Bill or a villainous John Wick. Lots of villains and action, but straight forward. What My Friend Pedro really indulges in is the gameplay.
Gameplay
My Friend Pedro is a side-scrolling shoot ‘em up, and it’s as simple as it gets. Choose a gun, point it at whatever moves, and fire at it before it fires back at you. They are dead if they start rag dolling around the screen and your bullets are powerful enough to apply gravitational force. Guns range from a pistol, SMG, shotgun, and late game weapons like the assault rifle and bolt-action sniper rifle. Each weapon has set range, damage, clip size, and reload time so know when to use what. Shotguns are good up close, sniper rifles for long distance, and you can even dual wield pistols and SMGs. Pointing them in two seperate directions to attack foes coming from all sides, and just one direction to do twice as much damage to a single foe within a shorter period of time. You will be shot a lot and the only way you can dodge bullets is to either hide behind cover which breaks overtime, or to dodge through them. Dodging works in the same way as something like Bloodborne in that you are offered invincibility frames. As long as you dodge at the right time and the dodge is still active all damage will be negated. So use dodge rolls and spams whenever you. There’s even a spin move where you dodge, move, and shoot in all directions at the same time.
The game knows how to change up the combat scenarios. It’s always finding unique ways to introduce mechanics to the players and tell them to utilize them in the future. Like the game may leave a frying pan on the ground and a bunch of enemies on high ground lay above you. Throw the frying pan in the air, shoot it, and watch those bullets ricochet towards every enemy. You’ll get a skateboard. Therefore it’s skateboard time and every enemy you pass by while doing sick flips and kicks! My Friend Pedro knows when to offer a challenge and let the player feel like a badass. The game tallies up all the baddies and tricks you pulled off at the end of each level for a final score. You are graded on your performance, and the more points you rack up the higher the score gets. It’s cool, but we'll address later as to why this is one of the game’s biggest flaws.
Anyways, one of the most important aspects of My Friend Pedro is the time slow mechanic. Gunfights can be very chaotic in this game and your health can be drained very quickly if not careful. By activating time slowly you can increase your dodge rate and have an easier time shooting enemies. You even get a unique jump that allows you to slowly rotate in midair, negate all damage, and offer more time to react and shoot. Your time slow ability relies on a meter which depletes overtime, but it can be filled up when killing enemies. Meaning as long as you are killing a foe each second you can constantly be in time slow and move down every foe with ease. Great, but another flaw we’ll address later as this completely breaks the balancing of the game. Besides that there really isn’t much else to explain. You are just a guy in a gas mask who communicates to a talking banana that only you can see and nobody else. Maybe you are secretly high? Hopefully you can end these charades and stand tall.
Thoughts
My Friend Pedro seems like a solidly designed game with a strong combat loop. It’s easy to pick it up and hard to master, a motto that every good action game should live by. You can get crazily creative in each level, and the best solutions are always laid out in front of you in such a way where you can instantly get what to do. The game controls really well, especially on consoles. I was playing the Nintendo Switch version using a Pro-Controller and aiming was never a chore. In fact, My Friend Pedro makes aiming in a 2D space amazing and never sloopy. There’s a high amount of replayability due to the score system, shortness of each level, and the encouragement to perform better, mostly. This game sounds good, but why don’t I like it? Why isn't it clicking when it’s now one of Devolver Digital’s best selling releases besides Enter The Gungeon?
A couple reasons why. For a game with amazing controls the movement doesn’t really feel good. That’s not to say it’s performed terribly, but jumping around and off walls feels really odd to me.You have a wide range of weaponry and creative players should know how to switch between them often. However, I didn’t really switch between them often. There’s not enough scenarios to get you to utilize each weapon’s main capabilities, and the dual SMGs turn out to be the best due to their short reload time frame and how crazily fast they can cut down enemies. Skateboarding feels really odd and half the time when I jump using a skateboard I usually fall off it. These aren’t the biggest flaws with My Friend Pedro though. One of the biggest flaws with this game is time slow and how terribly designed and utterly broken the mechanic is. The meter resets every single time you kill an enemy. That is not good, because it means there’s no punishment for using it too long or abusing it. In Katana Zero you had a cooldown rate for the time slow. Meaning you couldn’t overly rely on it and had to understand when to use other solutions. Light an entire room ablaze, cover it in smoke, parry an attack, and use time slowly when you have no other choice.
The game also doesn’t really push the player to perform better. Enemies don’t do much damage and don’t put in much effort to kill the player. They are just there to be killed and offer the power fantasy of being badass. Which is fine, but I like when they make me earn this fantasy. Like in Katana Zero the learning curve was steep, but once I started nailing it down the game felt more satisfying. I learned how to be an epic swordsman and clear a room in less than fifthteen seconds. These comparisons seem pretty unfair, because Katana Zero goes for the one hit kill gameplay of Hotline Miami while My Friend Pedro feels more akin to May Payne. I never played the Max Payne series, but what I can tell is that with the amount of bullets flying on screen the one hit kill rule wouldn’t have worked. It would have made the game impossible to beat. Instead it offers a health bar which depletes when hit and regenerates overtime or when picking up a healthkit. This is fine, but My Friend Pedro proves that having a health bar isn’t always a good choice, because like I said it’s hard to get killed.
Another complaint is the score system at the end of each level. Aiming for a high score doesn’t really do anything. There are no rewards, improvements to your character, or cosmetics to be earned. It’s just a letter grade to look at, which isn’t good. It means most players won’t feel as motivated to earn a high score. Take the recent Devil May Cry 5 or Bayonetta for instance. Get a high score and you earn a bunch of red orbs or halos to unlock new skills and upgrades. Stuff that will expand your combo variety and improve your character. It’s fine that My Friend Pedro doesn’t offer rewards as it means players will get similar outcomes, but I want to see people play differently. To do the impossible so that the reward they earn at the end is worth it. That’s why I think games should offer rewards for pushing the player beyond their limits. It doesn’t have to be impossible, but worthwhile. A high skill ceiling should have high encouragement.
A couple more complaints before we cap this review off. I personally think the 3D graphics look terrible. The textures, models, and detailing is very minimalistic and is ugly to look at. The devs didn’t have to push themselves to create a gorgeous game, but indies like A Hat In Time demonstrate how fantastical an indie developer can make a graphically rough setting look. Final complaint was stated at the beginning in that I wouldn’t say this game is a work of art or a standout like Katana Zero, Ape Out, and Hotline Miami. Sure all these games are mindless killing action, but how are they works of art? Well look at Katana Zero, again. The amount of colors and detailing that went into making a future dystopian city. The fluidity and expressions of the characters despite being pixel art. The narrative and what it had to say. It was a mind bender and some sections got confusing later on, but it was something to look back at. I eventually got the hidden message about violence, descending down a dangerous path, and while it’s never addressed further you could say how using drugs to forget horrible memories and PTSD is a bad solution. Hotline Miami does the same thing, and while Ape Out does something different it’s art due to its visuals and how it’s combined with the gameplay to provide unique presentation and keep the flow of combat going with jazz music. My Friend Pedro needed some form of this. A message, story, or at least something unique to make it stand out. Without these elements it just feels like a mindless shoot 'em up created to offer nothing in the end. To have no message to look back up and instantly be forgotten once you beat the game.
My Friend Pedro is a game a lot of people will like, but I don’t really recommend. To be honest there are a lot of other stellar indie releases that have come out recently and are probably worth more of your time and money. Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Blasphemous, Bloodstained, and of course Katana Zero. You can play it and curate your own interpretation, but it won’t change mine. Yet, you don’t have to agree with me and I don’t have to agree with you. That’s the point of the review afterall. To express my opinions and explain my true thoughts and feelings on a video game. In the end I am giving My Friend Pedro a 7/10 for being okay. Just decent enough.
Note: This review was taken down, but is now back up. Hope you enjoyed it.
Comments