Bullet Time Fun with Guns and Talking Bananas – My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge Review
Developed by DeadToast Entertainment, My Friend Pedro cast players into a hyperkinetic action-shooter that blended Deadpool and Max Payne. When it was released in 2019, the bullet-time firefights were plentiful, and it built up a bit of a cult following.
A couple years after that high-octane introduction, the developers at DeadToast saw fit to bring the Pedro experience to mobile devices in the form of My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge. This mobile spin-off carries over the fast-paced action of the original, but it also substantially simplifies the narrative and embraces a modified chibi art style.
In the original My Friend Pedro, players controlled a masked hitman who was deprived of his memory for some reason and also found himself conversing with a banana. Yes, you read that right. The only thing he remembered was his mission, which was to take up arms and wipe out a criminal organization—a task that only a madman could accomplish...or a ruthless and infallible killer. Maybe both?
In My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge there is no mysterious subplot to reveal, nor bloody ultraviolence to revel in. The chibi art style transforms both the protagonist and the various villains into super-deformed figures, eliminating the blood but leaving the plentiful gunplay intact. Oh, and the talking banana is still around, and now players have to help her save her family. Yes, you read that right as well.
Theoretically, it would have been possible to more directly translate the frenetic gameplay of the original Pedro to mobile devices, but the developers preferred to revolutionize the experience. With that in mind, they designed a control system based on the touch screen, and this change balances the game quite nicely. This was essentially the big limitation of My Friend Pedro: the impossibility of creating spectacular situations in an open and free way, as it happened in the aforementioned Max Payne, while remaining anchored to the game world.
Players do not direct the character’s movement in Ripe for Revenge in a one-to-one manner; instead the protagonist gets slingshotted in a sort of Angry Birds-esque fashion. Players can also tilt their mobile device to allow the hero to slide under obstacles. Gunplay is even easier, as traditional aiming has been eliminated altogether; you can just touch any targets in view to unleash holy hell at them.
This control system works fine for the most part, but I do have two bones to pick. Firstly, My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge does not queue up actions when the character is midair. That means that you have to touch the ground each time before taking your next leap, which breaks up the rhythm of your deadly actions quite a bit. Secondly, even the smallest of movements requires an imprecise hop. Just getting from point A to point B in a particular level was often a frustrating process.
On the other hand, My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge takes advantage of its new mechanics to create interesting situations. Even when it reproduces certain elements from the console game (such as the frying pans, switches, and skateboards), it places them in a different context, changing up how they are used to solve the puzzles that crop up from time to time.
The campaign consists of thirty-six missions that can actually be completed rather quickly, but which can be replayed in a speedrun mode with rather stringent time limits. I’d recommend against focusing on Ripe For Revenge’s speedrun mode, however; you’re going to miss a lot of this game’s intricacies by just zipping through it.
The original My Friend Pedro had some truly memorable flourishes on the visual level. This mobile spin-off has less sophisticated (and less spectacular graphics), but it holds its own and seems to have found a solid middle ground with the chibi look. This style does wonders for making the characters themselves look quite cool, but the backgrounds are left a bit bare and repetitive. The music and sound effects are spot on with engaging and rhythmic music that accompanies the insane action (in the best of ways) found in My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge.
My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge reinvents its predecessor’s interesting formula and adapts it to mobile devices with a new control system. It cranks out some cool moments mixed in with slick puzzle-solving mechanics. But it gets tripped up by its own intricacy during the most basic of situations, such as when you have to simply walk the inch or two that separates the player from the next level. In short, much like its console big brother, My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge offers players epic moments mixed in with some odd letdowns. If you are cool with those shortcomings, then you’ll be cool with what’s offered here.
SCORE: 3 STARS OUT OF 5
PLAY IF YOU LIKE:
• Bullet Time AR. Give My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge a shot (pun intended) if Coal Interactive’s more realistic take on the bullet time mechanic is your thing.
• Max Payne. My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge isn’t as polished (or as pulpy) as Remedy’s hard-boiled cop thriller, but it does lean heavily on shoot-em-up, bullet time action, and that’s always a good time in my book. Just steer clear of the movie version with Mark Walhberg. Ew.
💬 Have you played My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge? Let us know what you think of it in the comments! Even if you haven't played it, leave a comment sharing your thoughts on your favorite games that employ the Matrix-like bullet time mechanic!
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