STEEL DIVISION 2 REVIEW

[TLG NoStresS]

 

The gamers running at me have swords, because all gamers own swords, I guess. They also have Monty Python Dark Souls cosplay armor, but it can't save them from the shotgun blasts that reduce them to lumps at my feet. I'm out of ammo before I'm out of gamers, the last one charging with sword held high. But any object you kick is a one-shot kill in this game, and dead gamer lumps are kickable objects.

There are more impressive gun-fu stunts in My Friend Pedro than breaking somebody's neck by kicking their dead friend's torso at them, but this moment of improvisation is typical of what happens between gif-able highlights. Once or twice per level I'll do something like skateboard through a window and then kick that skateboard at someone while shooting someone else, or I'll throw a frying pan into the air and then ricochet bullets off it to clear a room. 

 

But the meat and potatoes of My Friend Pedro isn't these set pieces. It's jumping in and relying on the combination of a generous slow-mo meter, physics objects, and a lot of bullets to see you through.

I should mention the talking banana. His name is Pedro and he's full of potassium and advice on how to kill people, whether retired mafiosi or Christmas-themed bounty hunters or gamers driven to madness by violent videogames. There's a story in My Friend Pedro but a minimal one—it feels like the plot of another hyperviolent Devolver game, Ruiner, only told on fast-forward. Pedro is there to explain things, but more importantly he appears in the corner of the screen when you pull off a high-scoring combo and tells you what rank you got at the end of a level.

It's a score-attack game, with bonus points for chaining together kills in combos. There are leaderboards, and I have replayed several levels just to get a higher rank than James. (Suck it, James.) Chasing high scores makes me look ahead at a level and think things like, "I should ride the barrel onto that guy then jump off while dual-wielding and split my fire so I can shoot that one and the other before I land." 

Split-fire looked neat in the gifs Pedro's designer showed off during development, but I was worried it would feel rough in play. I was super wrong. It's easy: right-click on one dude and hold to lock him in, and then for every left-click shot, no matter where it's aimed, the right-click guy gets a bullet as well. Levels that drop you down shafts with enemies on both sides, or have doors full of goons opening around you, are built for this. I never stopped enjoying it.

 

Sursa: pcgamer

Edited July 10, 2019 by oC NoStresS

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