IF YOU KNOW IT'S BAD, WHY ARE YOU DOING IT? Surely, the comedic, subversive thing to do would be to pretend we're having a sewer level, and then go, "Oh, bollocks to this hackneyed shit let's have a level where you ride an ostrich through a bouncy castle!" It also does the thing where it goes, "Oh, look! A sewer level! How original, roll eyes!" and then proceeds to un-ironically have a sewer level that goes on way too fucking long. It even does the same thing where one of the enemy factions is nerdy gamers, not cool gamers like what you, the player, presumably are, and it still comes across as obnoxiously aloof. But My Friend Pedro is a bag of potato chips you'll appreciate them as they go into your fat, disgusting mouth, but once they're gone, you'll never think about them again, or write a rave review for Greasy Snacks Digest.Īll the stuff that makes a game memorable - context, story moments - they're all lost in this dreary attempt at effortless humor that reminds me unpleasantly of Sunset Overdrive, except where that felt like the result of a roomful of 35-year-olds endlessly workshopping what the kids find amusing these days, My Friend Pedro feels like it reaches the same place just by being too lazy to put much thought into it. So in the second half of the game, when you get a bunch of two-handed weapons too powerful to not use and the split-kill feature all but quietly disappears like a socially awkward person leaving a party, it's disappointing, 'cos it was the combat's most unique feature it's like cutting the armpit-fuck session short to have more time for the fuck in missionary position. I particularly liked the ability to aim at two things at once while dual-wielding once you get the dual Uzis, it becomes "easy to learn, hardly need to master" as the entire world disappears into smoke and blood splatter decals. It's got the "easy to learn, hard to master" thing.
None of this is pre-animated it's all within standard game physics, so I could feel like I'm accomplishing something impressive for once in my miserable life. I want to emphasize, though, that the core combat is really good I smash through a window on a skateboard, kick the same skateboard into somebody's eye socket, back-flip over his friend, shooting two guys at once, kick a frying pan into the air and shoot at it so the bullets ricochet into three other guys who were in cover and had apparently latched onto some mad idea that it was in their power to stop me, and then, for the first time since initially entering the room, I touch the floor. These days, all the cool kids use durians and açaí berries. "It's random! The Internet loves that shit!" Except, speaking as an Internet comedy grandee, bananas are pretty old-hat as random humor goes my grandma uses bananas in her random word association jokes. I don't know, a banana with a smiley face. So the main character is some dude, in a gas mask, and he shoots people wearing Christmas sweaters, and his best friend is. The core gameplay is super-acrobatic gun combat where you use slow-motion to flip and jump all over the place getting insane kill combos, and everything else seems to have been worked out in five minutes by someone who goofs off work all day watching all the Homestar Runner videos. Anyway, My Friend Pedro is a 2.5D platform shooter I feel like I've been hearing about for ages now, which is the classic example of a game that has put a sterling amount of effort into its core second-by-second gameplay and bugger-all else.
And then, who knows? Perhaps we can get you released from that contract with Satan.
Thanks, games industry now, let's work on the "constantly trying to steal money from children and vulnerable people" thing. It's taken slightly longer than usual to have to do an indie double-bill normally, the drought period sets in pretty quickly after E3. This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews My Friend Pedro and Sea of Solitude.
0 kommentar(er)
