My Friend Pedro review

Reviewed on: PC

Another psychedelic trip from Devolver Digital.

If I tell you about that game where you go around shooting everybody, possibly under the influence of heavy drugs and pulling off stunts with guns while hearing a Mutcho Loka soundtrack, leaving a trail of destruction and death wherever you go, you have a few options, but only Devolver focuses on it so obsessively.

Hotline Miami Ruiner My Friend Pedro is the company’s newest venture. Released first on Switch and then on XOne, My Friend Pedro has the company’s trademark: simple gameplay, striking music and a frenetic pace, now arriving on PS4 and PC.

Only… this time they dropped the ball.

My Friend Pedro is a good game, but it doesn’t show all the capability of what Devolver has achieved to date in its franchises. The graphics are simplified, but that is not a demerit. The music is much calmer than the franchise’s usual, although I believe it is still in the same genre. The gameplay of each weapon is unique, but you spend half the time worried about whether you’ll have ammo to play the rest of the level or whether you’ll go back to playing with the dual pistols from the start of the game, which have infinite ammo.

And often I had to go back to the dual pistols.

If there’s a mechanic where enemies drop more ammo the better your performance, I admit the fault is mine. Until then, it’s too broken to pick up a weapon, have ammo for it during its level, and after that only find something for it very sporadically. The game suffers from some glitches, but nothing that restarting the level doesn’t fix.

The game has good ideas, such as the use of split aim (you lock your aim on one enemy and aim at another), barrels you can ride and run over enemies with, skateboards and frying pans, which can ricochet your shots.

My Friend Pedro’s general problem is that it takes Devolver’s style and not only doesn’t take it further, but regresses in pacing.

A good game to pick up on sale, but don’t expect too much from it.