My Friend Pedro brings mindless fun and 80s action movie slapstick to the Switch

The streets are filthy with scum and villainy. In My Friend Pedro it's up to you, and your magic — and imaginary — banana friend, to clean them up.

When it comes to cool and quirky pitches My Friend Pedro, from DeadToast Entertainment and Devolver Digital, nails it. It delivers as well. I've played about an hour of the game through multiple demo runs at events, and it's a game that's hard to tear yourself away from.

Most people who have been present on Twitter over the last year will have seen a couple of GIFs of the game, and likely been exposed to plenty of backflipping, headshots and deflecting-shots-off-of-kicked-saucepans.

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For those unaware of it, it's a 2.5D, room-clearing shooter which is completely rammed with cinematic moments. You play as a particularly nimble, mute assassin who can wall jump, backflip and multitask like nobody's business. Players can shift the game world into slow-motion, allowing you to take more careful aim at the enemies which populate each scene. You can deflect bullets off of things, shoot barrels, backflip motorbikes, zipline upside-down and just about anything ridiculously John Woo styled that you can think of.

The demo started with the character coming to in the back-area of a vast butcher's shop. Goons are everywhere and you quickly acquire the tools to deal with them — namely guns and bullets. The tutorial is handled by your berry friend, not that you get anywhere near enough of an introduction to Pedro. Before long you're filling rooms with distractions to evade turrets, smashing your way through windows and killing your way free of the building.

• Katana Zero, also from Devolver Digital, is another action-packed, brutal platformer with time-control abilities. Its out this month.

Once free from the estate you take to the road and end up in a massive gunfight between motorbikes, cars and The Butcher. The Butcher appears in a van crammed full of meat strapped with explosives, making for an interesting boss fight.

Everything is both fast and fluid in My Friend Pedro, be that because of the cinematic slow-down, the careful pacing of enemies on screen, or the easy to use ability to simultaneously shoot in two directions. I felt as though I could have easily sat there and breezed through the entire game if it was loaded up, and am eager to see the rest of it when it launches later this year.

If you're looking for a mindless and fun adrenaline rush then it is definitely one to look out for.

My Friend Pedro is releasing in June for Nintendo Switch and PC.